Lead Integration Architect

Location: National*

Closing Date: 14^th May

Interviews: 27, 28, 29 May

Grade: 6

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

Salary** (detailed information below):

London: £75,674 - £87,875 (which may include an allowance of up to £12,201)

National: £71,381 - £83,700 (which may include an allowance of up to £12,319)

Working pattern: full-time, part-time, flexible working

Contract Type: Permanent

Number of vacancies: 1

Vacancy number: 17143

*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

Please note this role requires you to pass Security Check clearance. Please click on the link for details.

We’re recruiting for a Lead Integration Architect here at Justice Digital, Data and Science, to join the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO), working within the Chief Architect function and under the Head of Integration. You will provide architectural leadership across our integration landscape, helping ensure that services and data can be connected securely, reliably and consistently across the Ministry of Justice.

OCTO sets technical direction across the organisation. It defines standards, shapes shared platforms and ways of working and supports teams to build and operate systems that are secure, reliable and sustainable.

We are establishing a new integration hub to enable more consistent, reusable and governed approaches to how systems interact across the MoJ estate. This will play a key role in reducing point-to-point integrations, improving interoperability, and enabling services to evolve more independently.

As a Lead Integration Architect, you will shape the architecture and approach for this integration hub and the wider integration ecosystem. You will define and champion integration patterns and standards (such as APIs, events and messaging), ensuring that teams can design and deliver integrations that are robust, reusable and aligned to organisational strategy.

You will work across organisational boundaries, supporting integration not only within the Ministry of Justice but increasingly across the wider Criminal Justice System, enabling better data and service interoperability between departments and partner agencies.

You will collaborate closely with product teams, platform teams and other architects to guide the design of integrations between systems, helping to reduce duplication, improve reuse and ensure services remain loosely coupled but well connected.

We are a flexible organisation, and we understand that people can't always work 5 days a week or might have responsibilities that sometimes clash with standard office hours. We work as flexibly as we can, including offering part time hours, so if in doubt please do get in touch. If you're the right candidate, we will do our best to work around you.

This role aligns against the Lead technical architect role from the Government Digital and Data Framework.

You’ll receive a range of excellent benefits when you join our department, including:

• A generous employer pension contribution of 28.97% through the Civil Service Pension Scheme.
• 25 days of annual leave, (increasing to 30 days once you have reached 5 years of service), plus 8 bank holidays and a privilege day for the King’s birthday.
• Flexible working arrangements including hybrid working, working part time or compressed hours. Designed to support a positive work–life balance.
• Employees are allocated 10% of their working time for personal and professional development.
• A £1k per person learning budget is in place to support all our people, with access to best-in-class conferences and seminars, accreditation with professional bodies, fully funded vocational programmes and e-learning platforms.
• 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!

You can find more details of the Benefits we offer here. To help picture your life at MoJ Justice Digital, Data and Science please take a look at our blog.

Our Tech Stack

We use a broad range of technologies and are looking for people with strong practical experience in modern software delivery environments.

• Cloud platforms: AWS
• Infrastructure as code: Terraform
• Containerisation and orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes
• Source control and CI/CD: GitHub, GitHub Actions
• Languages: Python

You will be supported to deepen your knowledge of our platforms once in post.

Our work is largely open source. You can explore repositories at:
https://github.com/ministryofjustice

Key Responsibilities

• Define and champion the integration architecture across Justice Digital, Data and Science, aligning with wider technology strategy.
• Shape the vision, design and evolution of the integration hub, establishing it as a reusable, scalable platform for connecting systems across the MoJ estate.
• Define and promote integration patterns and standards (including APIs, event-driven architecture and messaging), enabling teams to build consistent and interoperable services.
• Work across organisational boundaries to enable integration within MoJ and across the wider Criminal Justice System, collaborating with partner organisations where required.
• Guide and assure the design of integrations, identifying and reducing point-to-point complexity and promoting reuse of shared capabilities.
• Influence technical decisions, supporting teams to adopt best practices and modern integration approaches, and identifying opportunities for simplification and transformation.
• Mentor and support other architects and engineers, helping to build integration capability across the organisation and foster a strong architecture community.
• Look for opportunities to collaborate and reuse common components, communicating effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

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

A Day in the Life

Curious what this role looks like day to day?

If you’re interested in finding out more about the work our architects do at Justice Digital, Data and Science (JDDS), the projects they lead, the challenges they tackle and the impact their work has, join us for an exciting event we’re organising with Architect Her. You’ll hear first-hand from four of our Technical Architects and have the opportunity to ask questions and learn more about the team.

For more information and to register, visit:

https://luma.com/sbgcnpl3?tk=QsKx5w

Person Specification

Essential:

• Strong knowledge of integration architecture patterns and approaches, including APIs, event-driven architecture, messaging and asynchronous integration, and how to apply them in complex, distributed environments.
• Experience designing and evolving integration ecosystems, including API management, service-to-service communication, and reducing point-to-point complexity through reusable and scalable patterns.
• Experience of designing secure integration patterns, including authentication, authorisation and identity (e.g. OAuth2, service-to-service auth), and the ability to identify and mitigate security risks across organisational boundaries.
• Experience working with legacy and modern systems, including designing integration approaches that enable gradual modernisation and decoupling.
• Ability to translate technical concepts between multidisciplinary teams and other senior stakeholders so they are understood by all.

Willingness to be assessed against the requirements for SC 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.

Six Months in – Building the Women in Engineering Working Group.

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

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan and the Civil Service D&I Strategy.

Salary Information**

Base salary for this role is from £71,381 - £80,419 (National) or £75,674 - £85,257 (London).

• New entrants to the Civil Service joining the MoJ are expected to start at the minimum of the pay band.
• Existing Civil Servants moving on a level transfer will retain their current base salary or move to the minimum of the pay band for the role, whichever is higher.
• Existing Civil Servants who are promoted will either move to the bottom of the new grade’s pay band or receive a 10% uplift, whichever provides the greater increase.
• Candidates may also be eligible for a non‑pensionable Government Digital & Data Allowance of up to £12,201 per year (London) or £12,319 (National). This is a temporary allowance, reviewed annually and may be retained, amended, or withdrawn.

The final offer will reflect the skills and experience you demonstrate during the assessment process.

How to Apply

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

Stage 1 - Application and sift:

To apply for this position, you must submit the following as part of your application:

• A CV detailing your career history (including any relevant qualifications). Your CV will be assessed against the essential criteria outlined within the Person Specification of this advert.
• A Personal Statement (no more than 750 words) which should outline your experience and skills, giving clear examples of work undertaken. It should specifically address the following 2 criteria listed below, using a separate paragraph for each.
• Strong knowledge of integration architecture patterns and approaches, including APIs, event-driven architecture, messaging and asynchronous integration, and how to apply them in complex, distributed environments.
• Experience designing and evolving integration ecosystems, including API management, service-to-service communication, and reducing point-to-point complexity through reusable and scalable patterns.

A diverse sift panel will review the information in your CV and Personal Statement to assess the sift criteria specified above. We operate an anonymous shortlisting process. Please ensure your CV and Personal Statement do not include your name or any other identifying details.

Please access the following link for guidance on how to apply - Application Guidance

Stage 2 - Interviews:

Successful candidates who meet the required standard will then be invited to a panel interview held via Microsoft Teams. At interview stage, you will be assessed against the following Success Profile elements - Experience, Technical and the following Behaviours:

• Communicating and influencing
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Making Effective Decisions

As part of your interview, you will be asked to deliver a 10-minute presentation that assesses your technical capability. Further details will be provided if successful at sift.

Appointments are made strictly in merit order. In the event that two or more candidates receive identical interview scores, the technical skill “Strong knowledge of integration architecture patterns and approaches, including APIs, event-driven architecture, messaging and asynchronous integration, and how to apply them in complex, distributed environments” will be applied as the primary lead criterion to determine the final merit order.

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.

Use of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Please Note

Recruitment Process Notice
This role is being delivered in partnership with PeopleScout, our managed recruitment service provider. As part of the recruitment process, your personal data will be shared with PeopleScout for the purposes of candidate assessment, communication, and selection.
PeopleScout will process your data on behalf of the Ministry of Justice in accordance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. Your data will be handled securely, used only for recruitment purposes, and retained only as long as necessary.
The Ministry of Justice processes your personal data under the lawful bases of:

• Contractual necessity – to assess and progress your application,
• Legal obligation – for checks such as right to work,
• Legitimate interest – to improve recruitment processes and ensure fair selection.

You have the right to:

• Access your personal data,
• Request correction or deletion,
• Restrict or object to processing,
• Request data portability.

Your data will be retained for up to 12 months following the recruitment process or the duration of the appointment, whichever is shorter, after which it will be securely deleted.
For more information on how your data will be used and your rights under data protection law, please refer to our https://justice.gov.uk/privacy or contact the MoJ Data Protection Team at data.protection@justice.gov.uk

Terms & Conditions

Please review our Terms and 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 digitalanddatarecruitment@justice.gov.uk