Security Architect - Department for Education - G7

Location

Coventry, West Midlands (England), CV1 2WT : Darlington, North East England, DL1 5QE : Manchester, North West England, M1 2WD : Sheffield, Yorkshire and the Humber, S1 2FJ : City of Westminster, London (region), SW1P 3BT

About the job

Job summary

Who we are 

At our heart, we are the department for realising potential. We enable children and learners to thrive, by protecting the vulnerable and ensuring the delivery of excellent standards of education, training and care. 

Our Cyber Security department 

The Department for Education is responsible for children’s services and education, including early years, schools, higher and further education policy, apprenticeships, and wider skills in England. We work to protect the department’s essential services, like funding schools and colleges, and safeguarding children from cyber threats, ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of systems and data that underpin these essential citizen services. 

We are responsible for the whole spectrum of cyber and information security services across the department, including Information Security, Security Operations, and Security Architecture and Engineering. We also lead on the department’s cyber security offering to the education sector, developing strategies and leading on the development of services to increase cyber resilience throughout education and across our Arms-Length-Bodies. 

This is a great opportunity if you want a challenge at a national level in a role that makes a difference to so many. Joining us means you will help to safeguard children and ensure their education and care is delivered effectively.

Job description

Our security architects play a key role in designing and implementing security solutions across a wide range of technologies throughout the department, for both internal and external users. 

Working with teams to continuously improve the security of platforms and services, you understand that security isn’t just a technology problem, and lead on driving our shift-left approach to security so that services are built to be secure by design, by default. 

Key Responsibilities 

• Define and mature security architecture frameworks and strategies to improve the security of IT infrastructure and cloud systems, and address systemic challenges with holistic cyber security solutions.
• Identify and promote best practises for multidisciplinary teams to deliver robust, resilient, secure and scalable solutions, supporting and leading technical teams and projects as required across a wide range of technologies.
• Stakeholder leadership and cross‑government influence, acting as an ambassador for our cyber security team to encourage adoption of standard patterns and tools across the department.

Person specification

Essential Criteria: 

• Extensive security architecture expertise across multiple domains, with hands‑on experience in early‑stage secure design and applied threat modelling to meet organisational and regulatory requirements.
• Strong cloud security skills, including architecting and securing Azure or AWS environments using cloud‑native technologies.
• Deep technical knowledge of vulnerabilities and remediation, covering IT infrastructure and in‑house applications.
• Experience defining and leading security architecture standards, including patterns, guidelines, and governance, and the ability to communicate and influence effectively across a wide range of stakeholders.

Desirable Criteria:  

• Knowledge of modern SDLC practices, with experience integrating security into Agile and distributed delivery teams. 
• Experience ensuring organisation‑wide security strategy is applied consistently across complex, distributed environments without relying on centralised control.
• Experience working in an Agile organisation. 

Desirable criteria will only be assessed at interview, in the event of a tie break situation, to make an informed decision.