Principal Technical Architect - Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency - G6

Location: Swansea

This is a senior architecture role at a time when DVLA is rebuilding services on a cloud‑first platform, using containers, serverless technologies and modern CI/CD tooling.
If you enjoy setting direction, shaping design governance, and influencing delivery across multiple teams, this is a great moment to join.

What you’ll be working on

You’ll work alongside service designers and agile software teams, defining and assuring solution architectures across multiple programmes, and helping DVLA deliver secure, scalable services at pace.

You’ll also work across organisational boundaries (including DfT and wider government) to support alignment and interoperability where it adds value.

What you’ll be doing

As a Principal Technical Architect, you will:

• Provide technical design leadership and governance across a programme of work
• Define and assure solution architectures, ensuring alignment to enterprise/reference architectures and strategic direction
• Establish and maintain architectural governance so designs are robust, consistent, and supportable
• Support multiple teams by sharing best practice and emerging technologies
• Ensure security is designed in, working with security architecture and agreed standards
• Inspire and mentor other architects, and provide leadership across the architecture community
• Engage senior stakeholders confidently and communicate decisions clearly

Who this role is for

This role could be a great fit if you:

• Have a strong architecture/engineering background and have led enterprise, cloud‑based solutions
• Can set a cross‑project vision (principles, patterns, target state) and translate business goals into a technical roadmap
• Understand programme‑level risk (dependencies, technical debt, scalability, compliance)
• Enjoy improving governance processes and enabling teams to deliver safely at pace
• Are confident influencing senior leaders and explaining complex technical topics to mixed audiences

What you’ll bring

You’ll likely have experience with:

• Designing/building cloud‑native solutions (e.g., AWS)
• Secure design and protecting sensitive data
• Leading technical direction across multiple teams and stakeholders

Interested?

This post is a snapshot.

Click through to the full Civil Service Jobs advert to read the full role profile and apply