84552 - Senior Technical Architect

The national salary range is £54,358 - £61,585, London salary range is £58,847 - £66,670. Your salary will be dependent on your base location
Total pay in the range of '£50,001 to £60,000, £60,001 and over' are subject to capability, skills and experience. Salary may consist of base pay and a Recruitment and Retention Allowance (RRA)
1
12 Months
National
National
NATIONAL
Please note: Some of our MoJ Office locations, such as our Liverpool Justice Collaboration Centre, require higher levels of National Security Vetting. The MoJ is working to open more Justice Collaboration Centres and Justice Satellite Offices over time. Click here to learn more about where our currently open Justice Collaboration Centres and Justice Satellite Offices are, to identify where you may be based and understand National Security Vetting requirements of each location.
Grade 7
Grade 7
Permanent
Full Time, Part Time, Flexible Working
Digital

We encourage applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that represents the wider society that we serve. We pride ourselves on being an employer of choice. We champion diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued and a sense of belonging. To find out more about how we do this visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about/equality-and-diversity.

Grade: Grade 7

(MoJ candidates who are on a specialist grade, will be able to retain this grade on lateral transfer) 

Salary: London: £58,847 - £78,225 (which may include an allowance up to £19,378) National: £54,358 - £73,450 (which may include an allowance up to £19,092) 

Working pattern: Full-time, part-time & flexible working 

Contract Type: Permanent 

Vacancy number: 84552 

*We offer a hybrid working model, allowing for a balance between remote work and time spent in your local office. Office locations can be found ON THIS MAP 

The Role:

We’re recruiting for a Senior Technical Architect here at Justice Digital, to be part of our warm and collaborative Director of Digital team. 

As a Technical Architect, you’ll work as part of core multidisciplinary teams delivering innovative services for use by the public or teams across the Ministry of Justice.

Technical Architects can act as a technical product owner, developing short, medium, and long term strategies for services within Justice Digital. You’ll also be designing and delivering digital services that make a genuine difference to people’s lives, alongside championing the adoption of emerging technologies. 

At Justice Digital, you’ll be working on our acclaimed open-source public services, with user needs at the heart of everything we do, helping us to transform government for the future. 

To help picture your life at MoJ Justice Digital please take a look at our blog and our Digital and Technology strategy 2025 

Key Responsibilities:

As a Senior Technical Architect in Justice Digital, you will:

  • Work with Lead Technical Architects to own the technical strategy and roadmap for services of various sizes and complexity, defining how they integrate with other services and teams, and how they evolve over time
  • Undertake structured evaluation of technical concepts, translating this into technical designs that describe a solution
  • Look for opportunities to collaborate and reuse common components, communicating with both technical and non-technical people
  • Support transforming government into a more agile organisation by helping embed modern development practices
  • Guide technical teams, influence technical choices and seek out opportunities for digital transformation
  • Align your teams work with departmental and wider government’s technology strategy
  • Collaborate and find agreement with senior stakeholders, providing both technical and non-technical direction and challenge
  • Support hiring, taking part in recruitment for both Technical Architects and other professions such as developers
  • Mentor, coach, and line manage less senior colleagues 

If this feels like an exciting challenge, something you are enthusiastic about, and want to join our team please read on and apply! 

Benefits:

  • 37 hours per week and flexible working options including working from home, working part-time, job sharing, or working compressed hours.
  • We are committed to nurturing our staff and provide lots of training and development opportunities with learning platforms such as: Linux Academy, O’Reilly, Pluralsight, Microsoft Learning, Civil Service Learning, GDS Academy, etc.
  • 10% dedicated time to learning and development with a budget of £1000 a year per person
  • Generous civil service pension based on defined benefit scheme, with employer contributions of 26-30% depending on salary.
  • 25 days leave (plus bank holidays) and 1 privilege day usually taken around the Kings’ 5 additional days of leave once you have reached 5 years of service.
  • Compassionate maternity, adoption, and shared parental leave policies, with up to 26 weeks leave at full pay, 13 weeks with partial pay, and 13 weeks further leave. And maternity support/paternity leave at full pay for 2 weeks, too!
  • Wellbeing support including access to the Calm
  • Nurturing professional and interpersonal networks including those for Carers & Childcare, Gender Equality, PROUD and SPIRIT
  • Bike loans up to £2500 and secure bike parking (subject to availability and location)
  • Season ticket loans, childcare vouchers and eye-care
  • 5 days volunteering paid
  • Free membership to BCS, the Chartered Institute for
  • Some offices may have a subsidised onsite

Person Specification:

Across Justice Digital, we use a variety of technologies, and we don’t expect anyone to be an expert in anything, or have an engineering background. If you don’t feel like you meet all of the below, we still encourage you to apply as we will proactively help you learn our technical landscape. 

Teams typically use:

  • Programming languages such as TypeScript, Kotlin, Java, Go, Ruby, Python, PHP, or Node.js
  • AWS and Azure using infrastructure as code such as Terraform, CloudFormation, or ARM templates
  • Container orchestration tools like Kubernetes or Fargate
  • Public GitHub repositories for our work
  • Modern development practices such as domain-driven design, test-driven development, continuous integration and continuous delivery
  • Mac laptops
  • plus other tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, AppInsights, GitHub Actions, CircleCI, and more 

Essential:

  • Experience of making and guiding effective technical choices by understanding the whole context
  • Experience of communicating technical detail to non-technical stakeholders
  • Enjoy learning and helping others
  • Ensure plans and activities in your area of work reflect wider strategic priorities and communicate effectively with senior management to influence future strategies.
  • Able to identify and mitigate security risks when designing and operating in a public cloud environment
  • Experience of introducing and encouraging best practices such as TDD, continuous integration, continuous delivery, and DevOps to teams
  • Experience at many levels of the web stack, such as frontend and backend, APIs, databases, and pub/sub architectures 

Willingness to be assessed against the requirements BPSS clearance 

We welcome the unique contribution diverse applicants bring and do not discriminate based on culture, ethnicity, race, nationality or national origin, age, sex, gender identity or expression, religion or belief, disability status, sexual orientation, educational or social background or any other factor. 

Our values are Purpose, Humanity Openness and Together. Find out more here about how we celebrate diversity and an inclusive culture in our workplace. 

How to Apply:

Candidates must submit a CV, which describes how you meet the requirements set out in the Person Specification above. 

In Justice Digital, we recruit using a combination of the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability and Success Profiles Frameworks. We will assess your Experience, Technical Skills and the following Behaviours during the assessment process: 

  • Communicating and Influencing
  • Developing Self and Others
  • Seeing The Bigger Picture 

A diverse panel will review your application against the Person Specification above. 

Successful candidates who meet the required standard will then be invited to a 1.5 hour panel interview, consisting of an on screen exercise, held via video conference. 

Should we receive a high volume of applications, a pre-sift based on Experience as a Technical Architect or a Developer will be conducted before the sift. 

Should you be unsuccessful in the role that you have applied for but demonstrate the capability for a role at a lower level, we reserve the right to discuss this opportunity with you and offer you the position without needing a further application. 

A reserve list may be held for up to 12 months, from which further appointments may be made. 

Terms & Conditions:

Please review our Terms & Conditions which set out how we recruit and provide further information related to the role and salary arrangements. 

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact recruitment@digital.justice.gov.uk

London: £58,847 - £78,225 (which may include an allowance up to £19,378)

National: £54,358 - £73,450 (which may include an allowance up to £19,092)

05/03/2024, 23:55 hours.

If you require any assistance please call 0345 241 5359 (Monday to Friday 8am - 6pm) or e mail Moj-recruitment-vetting-enquiries@gov.sscl.com Please quote the job reference - 84552.

To apply for roles in MOJ you will need to confirm your employment history for at least 3 years prior to the date of application so that pre-employment checks (BPSS) can be undertaken. If you have spent significant time abroad (a total of 6 months in the past 3 years) you would be required to give a reasonable account of the reasons why. 

For some roles you will be required to successfully complete National Security Vetting at Counter Terrorism (CTC), Security Clearance (SC) or Developed Vetting (DV) level as a condition of appointment. To meet CTC/SC/DV requirements you will normally need to have been resident in the UK for at least 3/5/10 years prior to the date of application (The level of checks that are required are stated in the advert).

If you do not meet the above requirements, you may still be considered if, for example:

  • You've been serving overseas with HM Forces or in some other official capacity as a representative of HM Government
  • You were studying abroad
  • You were living overseas with parents

In such cases you will need to be able to provide referee cover for the period(s) of residence overseas. The duration of overseas residence and the country of abode will also be taken into account.

Success Profiles will enable a fairer and more inclusive method of recruitment by enabling us to assess the range of experiences, abilities, strengths, behaviours and technical/professional skills required for different roles. This flexible approach to recruitment focuses more on finding the right candidate for the specific role. To find out more about Success Profiles to support your application please click here for further guidance.

if you feel that your application has not been treated in line with the Civil Service Recruitment Principles, please contact SSCL (Moj-recruitment-vetting-enquiries@gov.sscl.com) in the first instance

We have provided detail of the assessment stages and areas being assessed to help you prepare for completing your application form, and to advise of what will be assessed following this, if you successfully pass the application stage.


Application form stage assessments

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

You must ensure that any evidence submitted as part of your application, including your CV, statement of suitability and behaviour examples, are truthful and factually accurate. Please note that plagiarism can include presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own.

Interview stage assessments

There is 1 interview stage for this vacancy.

A Great Place to Work for Veterans

The "Making the Civil Service a Great Place to work for veterans" initiative includes a guaranteed interview scheme to those who meet the minimum criteria to provide eligible former members of the Armed Forces with opportunities to secure rewarding jobs. Allowing veterans to continue to serve their country, and to bring highly skilled individuals with a broad range of experience into the Civil Service in an environment, which recognises and values your previous service in the Armed Forces.
For further details about the initiative and eligibility requirements visit : https://www.gov.uk/government/news/making-the-civil-service-a-great-place-to-work-for-veterans

Redeployment Interview Scheme

Civil Service departments are expected to explore redeployment opportunities before making an individual redundant. The MoJ are committed, as part of the Redeployment Interview Scheme, to providing opportunities to those who are 'at risk of redundancy'.

MoJ are able to offer an interview to eligible candidates who meet the minimum selection criteria, except in a limited number of campaigns. Candidate's will not be eligible for the Redeployment Interview Scheme if they are applying on promotion.

For further information and to apply for this position please see the following link: https://www.jobtrain.co.uk/justicedigital/Job/JobDetail?jobid=234.

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

· UK nationals

· nationals of the Republic of Ireland

· nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK

· nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window) https://www.gov.uk/settled-status-eu-citizens-families

· nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)

· individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020

· Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window) https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nationality-rules

This Vacancy is closed to applications.