Senior Technical Architect - MoD - G7

Location

Abbey Wood North, Stoke Gifford, Bristol, South West - Tomlinson House, Norcross, Blackpool, Lancashire - Kentigern House - Glasgow

About the job

Job summary

Are you a dedicated person who is passionate about making a difference? 

Would you like to work for the Ministry of Defence?  

Defence Business Services (DBS) is one of the largest shared service organisations in Europe that provides a wide range of corporate services, to over 1.2 million end users, including serving and past military and families, as well as MoD civil servants and industry. DBS delivers large scale administration and smaller specialist services to enable the wider MOD to focus on its core aims, maintaining the UK’s Defence and Security. Services include Human Resources, Pay, Veterans, Finance and Procurement. 

•    Our Vision - To support UK defence customers with outstanding service every time.
•    Our Mission – Together we will proudly support Defence, continuously improving and delivering flexible, timely, sustainable and value for money services that underpin the whole force and enhance operational capability. 

DBS is committed to creating a great place to work for all our colleagues. We are building an inclusive culture and respectful environment that reflects the diversity of the society.  

We want to maximise the potential of everyone who chooses to work for us through opportunities to develop your skills and experience. We also offer a range of flexible working patterns and support to make a fulfilling career accessible to you and offer a Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 28.97%. Where your role permits, we support a blended working approach alternatively known as hybrid working. 

Where business needs allow, some roles may be suitable for a combination of office and home-based working.  This is a non-contractual arrangement where all office-based employees will be expected to spend a minimum of 60% of their working time in office, subject to capacity and any required workplace adjustments.  Requirements to attend other locations for official business, or work in another MOD office, will also count towards this level of attendance. Applicants can request further information regarding how this may work in their team from the Vacancy Holder (see advert for contact details). Defence Business Services cannot respond to any questions about working arrangements. 

Come and join the DBS community today! 

Job description

DBS Technical Architects support DBS with the design and transition of shared service capabilities to meet the needs of UK Defence and its stakeholders.  

DBS Techncial Architects ensure that Defence procurement, financial and human resource capabilities are designed and delivered in line with effective standards and strategies to meet Defence shared service capability and technology modernisation goals. 

The roles work as an integral part of the DBS Architecture Profession to ensure all delivered services integrate cleanly into DBS business, technology, application, and data architecture layers.  

As Senior Lead Technical Architect you will lead the Finance and Commercial Architecture team supporting the implementation of the Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) strategy for DBS and the vision set by the Chief Technology Officer. It wil also include leading on architecture activities for our On Premis Infrastrucutre, supporting the Finance and Commercial move to a cloud service.

The post holder will:  

• Collaborate with architects across the enterprise to assess change impacts and ensure a coherent delivery approach. Providing support and advice to other architects who are undertaking the design of new business solutions  
• Design solutions in line with MoD design and security policy and gain approvals through the DBS Technical Design Authority governance forum. 
• Design models and reference artifacts enabling re-use of solution components supporting other architects to conform to required processes and standards. 
• Ensure that new business capabilities are designed for clean integration with existing services. Considering service, applications, data and technology architectural layers and including through life compliance with business and technology policy and strategy 
• Design and support development of governance, processes, and tooling to monitor and manage new business design, delivery and usage across the DBS enterprise 
• Engage with MOD, industry, and government wide leaders and technical / service experts to identify and implement best architecture practice solutions to meet business needs. 
• Support proofs of concept for technologies and services new to DBS.  
• Support, coach and mentor colleagues in adapting to new delivery approaches as a result of architectural design changes. 
• Ensure architectures are compliant with DBS technical principles and contribute to achievement of the DBS Digital, Data and Technology Strategy aims

You will need the following skills for this role. Further information on DDaT capability framework and expectations at each level can be found on the government web site.  

Architect for the whole context : Practitioner - You can identify and assess relevant strategic information and trends that may impact your work and use it to inform your actions. You can understand how your work impacts others and collaborate with them. 

Architecture communication : Practitioner - use architecture representations to communicate with stakeholders at all technical knowledge and seniority levels to gain stakeholder support. You can mediate architectural discussions.  

Commercial Perspective : Working - Commercial management involves exploring commercial opportunities whilst complying with the regulations on how we conduct and manage both internal and third-party relationships. 

Governance and Assurance: Working - Governance and assurance involves defining and ensuring adherence to an organisation's quality control and compliance processes. 

Life cycle perspective : Practitioner -You can identify which tools and techniques should be used at each stage of the product lifecycle understanding the team and product needs. You can deal with risks between all stages and support stakeholders move through the product lifecycle. 

Making and guiding decisions : Pratitioner - You can recommend / make and justify decisions characterised at varying risk levels. You can build consensus of opinion between stakeholders. 

Problem definition and shaping: Working - You can look beyond the immediate problem and identify the wider implications across the whole enterprise. You can understand relevant historical context and future impact, and how current work fits in broader contexts and strategies. You can identify underlying problems and opportunities, and carry out horizon scanning to identify future threats or opportunities 

Requirements definition and management : Working - Requirements definition and management involves identifying and validating user or business requirements for a product or service 

Strategy: Practitioner - You can produce a strategy for technology that meets business needs. You can create, refine and challenge patterns, standards, policies, roadmaps and vision statements. For this skill, senior roles tend to be more proactive as they set the strategy, whereas junior roles tend to be more reactive, responding to the strategy. 

Systems Design : Practitioner - Systems design involves creating the specification and design of systems to meet defined business needs. 

Technical Breadth : Expert - Involves having strategic understanding of IT trends and technologies, developing frameworks based on the needs of the team and being able to work across different tools and software languages. 

Person specification

In addition to essential DDaT skills, all DBS architects will be expected to have or develop the following core technical skills for the effective delivery of DBS business. 

Communication skills. To listen to the needs of technical and business stakeholders and interpret them. Manage stakeholder expectations and be flexible. Manage proactive and reactive communication. Facilitate difficult discussions within the team or with diverse senior stakeholders. Understand the appropriate mediums to communicate findings. Shape communications for the audience. 

Architectural governance. To support the evolution of architecture governance, and take responsibility for collaborating and supporting in wider CSM governance. Assure and integrate capabilities to meet the needs of multiple business services. Working proactively to ensure the organisation designs coherent infrastructure architecture.  

Technical innovation. To understand the impact of emerging technology trends on the organisation and adopt as appropriate.  

Architecture modelling. To understand the concepts and principles of architecture modelling and can produce relevant models to describe capability interrelationships. Know how to reverse-engineer models from a live system. Understand industry recognised modelling patterns and standards and know when to apply them. You can compare and align different architecture models.  

Architectural standards. To develop and set standards for new business implementation across DBS. Act as the escalation point for non-compliance with standards providing advice and guidance on roadmaps to resolution.  

Problem resolution. To ensure that the most appropriate actions are taken to resolve productivity problems as they occur. You coordinate teams to resolve problems and implement solutions and preventative measures.  

Strategic thinking. To work within a strategic context and communicate how activities meet strategic goals.  

You will hold a recognized technical certification appropriate to the role or be prepared to obtain this while in post. 

Desirable Experience / Knowledge 

• Principles and practices of good system design. 
• Use of BizzDesign tool 

Desirable qualifications 

• The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) Certification 
• Archimate modelling language certification  
• Formal qualifications in  
• Computer science/computer engineering/information technology  
• Enterprise architecture management 

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Leadership
• Communicating and Influencing
• Delivering at Pace
• Making Effective Decisions

We only ask for evidence of these behaviours on your application form:

• Leadership

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Communicating between the technical and non-technical (technical architect)
• Making and guiding decisions
• Turning business problems into technical design
• Understanding the whole context