49348 - Lead Technical Architect
We welcome and encourage applications from everyone, including groups currently underrepresented in our workforce and pride ourselves as being an employer of choice. To find out more about how we champion diversity and inclusion in the workplace, visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about/equality-and-diversity
Role: Lead Technical Architect
Salary:
London £ 63,886 - £95,600 which may include an allowance up to £31,734
National £60,504 - £87,952 which may include an allowance up to £27,448
Location: London, Birmingham, Nottingham, Sheffield, Glasgow
Contract type: Permanent
Grade: 6
Number of open roles: 2
Work pattern: Full Time
Note - SC Security Clearance is required for this role. Candidates must have been resident in the UK for 5 years (unbroken) prior to their application. Applications received not able to meet this criteria will be rejected.
ROLE DESCRIPTION
The Technology Team design, deliver and support the core infrastructure and systems that enable End User Compute Services and line of business applications for over 100,000 Ministry of Justice users across over 1400 locations.
Our Lead Technical Architect will work with multiple projects, teams and/or business areas on problems that require broad architectural thinking. They are responsible for leading the technical design of systems and services and can justify and communicate their design decisions.
The Lead Technical Architect will work collaboratively with colleagues in the Technology Team, across Digital and Technology and the wider organisation and build strong relationships with Service Owners, Information Security, Customer Service Operational Teams, Project Managers, Technology Teams and other key stakeholders.
The Lead Technical Architect leads at one the highest level and is responsible for making sure the strategy is agreed and followed. At this level, you will:
- Network and communicate with senior stakeholders across organisations and proactively seek out opportunities for digital transformation
- Support multiple teams, finding and using best practice and emerging technologies
- Inspire other architects and help them understand how to deliver the goals of the organisation
- Be responsible for governance, solving complex and high-risk issues or delivering architecture design
MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES
- Undertake structured analysis of technical issues, translating this analysis into technical designs that describe a solution
- Provide Technical Architecture Leadership throughout the design, implementation, administration and support of infrastructure solutions and services.
- Assure services and system quality, ensuring the systems integration function works effectively.
- Ensure solutions fit into the broader strategy for government.
- Collaborate and find agreement with senior stakeholders, providing direction and challenge
- Mentor and coach colleagues while providing line management and supervision to the team
- Establish standards and procedures across a service lifecycle including the development lifecycle.
- Anticipate and advise on future technology changes that present opportunities for the product or programme.
- Acting as subject matter expert, be directly involved in service delivery, troubleshooting and identifying problems across different technology capabilities including compute, storage, networking, physical infrastructure, software, commercial off the shelf (COTS) and open source.
Candidate Attributes:
Our Lead Technical Architects are expected to have a good understanding of a broad range of technologies at all levels of the technology stack and be able to converse easily with and translate between non-technical stakeholders and technical practitioners.
Essential:
- Able to turn business problems into technical design - The ability to work with business and technology stakeholders to translate business problems into technical designs.
- Experience of building application configuration and lifecycle management in Intune (or another cloud management ecosystem)
- Deep technical knowledge in the design, configuration and operation of the Microsoft 365 cloud product Wide Area Technologies – Internet, SD-WAN, MPLS
- Good automation tooling and DevOps ways of working to deliver reliable, effective and efficient infrastructure platforms knowledge and experience of using automation and DevOps tools such as Kubernetes, Ansible, Python, Terraform, Git, Concourse, Jenkins, or Azure DevOps
- Able to switch between different problems and responsibilities
- Able to bridge the gap between technical and non-technical - Translates technical concepts between software engineering, delivery management and service management so they are understood by all.
- Making and guiding decisions - Capable of making and guiding effective decisions, explaining clearly how the decision has been reached.
- Understanding the whole context - The ability to look beyond the immediate technical problem and identify the wider implications.
- You should have practical working knowledge of modern cloud-first architectures, and how to build services and applications to take advantage of the opportunities they offer.
- Adept at lateral thinking with the ability to dissect a problem to its component parts to identify and diagnose root causes.
- A working knowledge of Cloud first strategies and related systems
- Has a strong understanding and application of the most appropriate modern standards and practices.
Desirable:
- Demonstrable experience of agile development in Ruby, Python, JavaScript, or similar, and their associated frameworks, and ideally working knowledge of several programming languages.
- Experience of introducing practices such as TDD, continuous integration, continuous delivery, and DevOps to teams
- A solid background in version control with Git, and experience of automated testing techniques, continuous integration, automated deployment pipelines and associated infrastructure.
- Governance - Understands technical governance and is able to participate in or deliver the assurance of a service.
- Strategy - Capable of producing strategy for technology that meets business needs. Able to create, refine and challenge patterns, standards, policies, roadmaps and vision statements.
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 Queens’ birthday. 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 app.
- Nurturing professional and interpersonal networks including those for Careers & 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 vouchers.
- 5 days volunteering paid leave.
- Free membership to BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT.
- Some offices may have a subsidised onsite Gym.
How to Apply
Candidates must submit CV, a covering letter describing how you meet the requirements set out in the Person Specification above would be useful for us but is not essential.
In D&T, we recruit using a combination of the Digital, Data and Technology Capability and Success Profiles Frameworks. We will assess your Experience, Technical Skills and the following Behaviours during the assessment process:
Working together
Leadership
Delivery at pace
Managing a quality service
Your application will be reviewed and sifted against the Person Specification above by a diverse panel.
Successful candidates who meet the required standard will then be invited to a 1-hour panel interview held via video conference.
Should we receive a high volume of applications, a pre-sift based on technical experience will be conducted prior to the sift.
Further Information
Please review the following Terms & Conditions which set out the way we recruit and provide further information related to the role.
If you have any questions please feel free to contact recruitment@digital.justice.gov.ukk
12/12/2021, 23:55 hours.
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.
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
Network Routing / Switching - Cisco, Juniper, Aruba
Network Firewalls – Palo Alto, Fortinet, Cisco ASA
Wireless Technologies - Cisco Meraki, Juniper Mist, Aruba - 250 word limit
Interview stage assessments
JNCIE, PCNSE, AWS Advanced Networking)
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.
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.