Senior Technical Architect

Location: National*

Closing Date: 29th May

Interviews: w/c 15th June

Grade: G7

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

Salary**:

London: £63,343 - £78,225 (which may include an allowance up to £14,882)

National: £58,511 - £73,450 (which may include an allowance up to £14,939)

Working pattern: Full-time, Part-time, Flexible working

Contract Type: Permanent

Number of vacancies: 3

Vacancy number: 17523

*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

Please note that unless you are an existing member of staff at Justice Digital, Data and Science, the only London location being recruited to is 10 South Colonnade, E14 4PU. We are no longer recruiting to 102 Petty France, SW1H 9AJ.

The Role

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

We’re recruiting for Senior Technical Architects here at Justice Digital, Data and Science to be part of our warm and collaborative Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO).

This role aligns against the Senior Technical Architect role from the Government Digital and Data Framework

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

Our Senior Architects are responsible for assuring, designing, and delivering digital services that make a genuine difference to people’s lives. Together we will collaborate to develop our strategy, connect people and build trust with clear communication, and provide empathetic technical leadership across diverse teams.

Our Senior Technical Architects will work to understand our technology, our business, and our people (colleagues, stakeholders, and users of our services), and to create an ambitious and pragmatic vision for our teams, using their technical expertise to bring our challenges and opportunities into focus alongside the views of other professions in our leadership team.

A Senior Technical Architect can see the big picture, understanding our complex technology landscape, and can clearly and effectively communicate that big picture by building trust, developing great relationships, and empathising with others. They provide mentoring and support to other architects and engineering leadership in their service area, and they have a good understanding of a broad range of technologies, with experience in both software engineering and commercial enterprise, as well as providing effective governance, both within our organisation, and across our suppliers.

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.

Key Responsibilities

• Collaborate with the Lead Technical Architect to create a technical vision for OCTO, develop our strategy, and be accountable for our technology estate.
• Communicate about our technology across teams and professions, both within our Digital unit and across all parts of the Ministry of Justice; seeing the big picture and bringing it to all stakeholders.
• Advocate for a diverse, inclusive culture across the engineering community, growing awareness, inclusivity, and balance, including being a champion for increasing women and minorities in our workforce.
• Collaborate and find agreement with senior stakeholders, providing both technical and non-technical direction and challenge, as well as pragmatic compromise to deliver value.
• Mentor, coach, line-manage, and recruit more great technical architects and engineering leadership, helping build a sustainable work force plan to deliver our strategy.
• Create structured analysis of technical concepts, providing insight for multi-disciplinary decision-making, whilst seeking opportunities to collaborate and reuse common components.
• Empower teams to make pragmatic and incremental change, through influence and inspiration, setting both a vision for the future and an empathetic path that people and teams will be able to follow.
• Guide and influence choices to align with strategy, and seek out opportunities for digital transformation, helping all understand the value of technical decisions.
• Engage with our portfolio, assurance, risk management, cyber, and information assurance leadership to ensure their priorities are represented alongside those of the business and other digital teams.

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

Person Specification

Essential:

• Proven experience in a technical or infrastructure architecture role, with a background in either software engineering or enterprise/cloud infrastructure, contributing architectural expertise to guide and support delivery teams.
• Strong communication and influencing skills, with the ability to explain complex technical information clearly and concisely to a range of audiences, from developers and engineers to senior non-technical colleagues, and to build trust, negotiate, and persuade stakeholders to achieve shared outcomes.
• Ability to take a holistic view of services and systems, understanding how components interact across multidisciplinary teams, and to communicate this effectively to ensure shared understanding and trust.
• Experience in applying and championing best practices such as agile development, DevOps, CI/CD, test-driven development (TDD), infrastructure-as-code, and automation, contributing to a high-quality engineering culture.
• Experience in designing and assuring secure, scalable, and resilient cloud-first architectures, addressing risks in public cloud and hybrid environments, such as:

• multi-tier web applications, microservices, APIs, event-driven systems, or data persistence technologies;
• cloud and infrastructure services, including networking, platforms, and container orchestration.

• Experience in upholding and helping engineers to uphold standards of security, quality, and operational resilience, while meeting the needs of stakeholders and live service users.

• Ability to assess current systems and services, and to deliver iterative, outcome-focused improvements aligned with a wider strategic vision.
• Understanding of how to integrate modern and legacy technologies, supporting safe, incremental change and delivering value throughout service lifecycles.
• Proficiency with modern source control tools, specifically Git.

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 £58,511 to £65,329 (National) or from £63,343 to £70,725 (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 £14,882 per year (London) or £14,939 (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 5 criteria listed below, using a separate paragraph for each.
• Proven experience in a technical or infrastructure architecture role, with a background in either software engineering or enterprise/cloud infrastructure, contributing architectural expertise to guide and support delivery teams.
• Ability to take a holistic view of services and systems, understanding how components interact across multidisciplinary teams, and to communicate this effectively to ensure shared understanding and trust.
• Experience in applying and championing best practices such as agile development, DevOps, CI/CD, test-driven development (TDD), infrastructure-as-code, and automation, contributing to a high-quality engineering culture.
• Understanding of how to integrate modern and legacy technologies, supporting safe, incremental change and delivering value throughout service lifecycles.

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.

Should we receive a high volume of applications, a pre-sift based on will be conducted before the sift:

• Proven experience in a technical or infrastructure architecture role, with a background in either software engineering or enterprise/cloud infrastructure, contributing architectural expertise to guide and support delivery teams.

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
• Working Together
• Managing a quality service
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Delivering at pace

As part of your interview, you will be asked to deliver a presentation that assesses your technical capability. You will be given a scenario and a set amount of time to prepare your presentation before delivering to the panel. 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 behaviour Communicating and influencing 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.

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