Lead Technical Architect

Location: We currently offer hybrid working which includes 2 days per week in your local office. Office locations are Sheffield, Newcastle, Birmingham, Leeds, Nottingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Cardiff/Bristol.

Closing Date: 12 June 2024

Interviews: As this is a rolling campaign, we will be reviewing applications as soon as they come in and will hold multiple 1-stage interviews from the 3rd June 2024.

We will also be presenting offers as we go.

Grade: G6 

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

Salary: National: £66,314 - £83,700 (which may include an allowance up to £17,386)

Working pattern: Full time, Part time, Flexible working

Contract Type: Permanent

Vacancy number: 87772

The Role

We’re recruiting for Lead Technical Architects here at Justice Digital, to be part of our warm and collaborative teams within HM Prison & Probation Service designing and delivering digital services that make a genuine difference to people’s lives, alongside championing the adoption of emerging technologies.

This role aligns against the Lead technical architect role from the Government Digital and Data Framework.
Our Lead Technical Architects work with and oversee multiple projects or teams on problems that require broad architectural thinking. They are responsible for defining and championing the strategy, leading the technical design of systems and services and justifying and communicating their design decisions.
They assure other services and system quality, making sure the technical work fits into the broader strategy for their agencies. They provide mentoring within teams and provide peer support to other architects.

They have a good understanding of a broad range of technologies, can switch between different problems and responsibilities and are able to converse easily with and translate between non-technical stakeholders and technical practitioners.

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.

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.

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

• Work with the Principal Technical Architects to define, maintain and 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
• Collaborate and find agreement with senior stakeholders, providing both technical and non-technical direction and challenge
• Mentor, coach, and line manage senior and mid level technical architects
• Guide technical teams, influence technical choices and seek out opportunities for digital transformation
• 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
• Assure other services and system quality, ensuring the technical work fits into the broader strategy for the agency
• Align your team's work with departmental and wider government technology strategy
• Support hiring, taking part in recruitment for both Technical Architects and other professions such as Software Developers

Our Tech Stack

• Programming languages such as TypeScript/Node, Kotlin/Java.
• AWS and/or Azure using infrastructure as code such as Terraform, CloudFormation, or ARM templates
• Container orchestration tools such as Kubernetes.
• 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

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
• 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 
• Staff have 10% time to dedicate to develop & grow
• Generous civil service pension based on defined benefit scheme, with employer contributions of 28.97% from April 1st 2024 (Contribution Rates)
• 25 days leave (plus bank holidays) and 1 privilege day usually taken around the Kings’ 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
• 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

Person specification

Across Justice Digital, we use a variety of technologies and are looking for people with a proven architecture background but we don’t expect anyone to be an expert in everything. 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.

• Experience in a technical/solution architecture role and can act as a recognised technical expert to guide, critique and support teams in the delivery of outcomes
• Practical working knowledge of modern cloud-first architectures, and how to build applications to take advantage of the opportunities they offer
• Experience of devising software architecture for multitier web solutions which typically include frontend and/or backend microservices, event-driven processing, API provision/consumption, databases, and pub/sub patterns.
• Able to identify and mitigate security risks when designing and operating in a public cloud environment
• Experience of architecting digital services that align to a wider technical strategy that meets business needs
• Experience of making and guiding effective technical choices by understanding the trends and practices within the broader organisation
• Capable of looking for deeper underlying problems and opportunities
• Experience of introducing and championing best practices such as TDD, continuous integration, continuous delivery, and DevOps to teams
• Translates technical concepts between multidisciplinary teams and other stakeholders so they are understood by all. Expert at mediating and mending relationships and communicating with senior stakeholders
• Can act decisively and make bold, unbiased decisions. Able to clearly communicate the purpose and reasons for recommendations and decisions.
• Can consult with others where necessary to ensure decisions meet the diverse needs of the end users. Clearly recommend the best option articulating risks and impacts
• Ensure plans and activities in your area of work reflect wider strategic priorities and communicate effectively with senior leaders to influence future strategies
• Technical leadership of teams. You have demonstrable experience of leading technical teams in the successful delivery of complex outcomes. You can work across disciplines and are able to engage with a wide range of technical professions

Willingness to be assessed against the requirements for BPSS clearance.

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.

How to Apply

Candidates must submit:

• a CV which describes how you meet the requirements set out in the Person Specification above
• a cover letter which describes your suitability for the job and why you are applying.

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:

• Leadership
• Communicating and Influencing
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Making Effective Decisions

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 80-minute panel interview held via video conference, consisting of a 45-minute STAR interview, a 25-minute technical exercise, and 10 minutes for candidate questions.

Should we receive a high volume of applications, a pre-sift based on Technical Experience will be conducted prior to the sift.

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

A reserve list may be held for a period of 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