Senior Technical Architect

Location: National*

Closing Date: 24th September

Interviews: Week commencing 28^th September

Grade: Grade 7

(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: 7

Vacancy number: 21982

*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 Legal Aid Agency team.

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

We believe that architecture is not purely a technical discipline. The systems we build are shaped by the teams that build them, the organisational structures they sit within, and the communication patterns between the people involved. Our architects think about how team structures, domain boundaries, and organisational dynamics shape systems — and how the systems we design, in turn, shape the organisation. We are looking for people who understand that designing great systems means considering the social and technical dimensions together, and who bring both technical depth and organisational awareness to their work.

You will be working with developers, Site Reliability Engineers and security experts, user researchers, product managers, designers, delivery managers, and content specialists who share a vision for improving government through smarter use of technology. Together we will collaborate to develop our strategy, connect people and build trust with clear communication, and provide empathetic technical leadership across diverse product teams.

You 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 your 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 the organisational landscape that produces it. You can clearly and effectively communicate that big picture by building trust, developing great relationships, and empathising with others. You provide mentoring and support to other architects and engineering leadership. You have a good understanding of a broad range of technologies, combined with the ability to reason about how organisational structures and team designs affect what can and should be built.

As a Senior Technical Architect, your days will be varied. For example, you might be creating diagrams and data flows for replacing a legacy service; working directly with developers to ensure their services are robust and secure; supporting a new delivery manager to introduce or improve ways of working; or liaising with engineering leadership to develop guardrails and patterns for use across the department.

We take security seriously. You will work closely with the security engineers and architects embedded in our Legal Aid Agency team, and with our Cyber Security Team, to build services that are Secure by Design — considering security and data protection from the very start rather than bolting them on later. You don't need to be a security specialist; you need to treat security as part of good design and know when to bring our specialists in.

We are looking for people who will encourage open discussion and build the architecture community within the Ministry of Justice and the Legal Aid Agency in particular. You should have a mindset for growth and learning, constantly looking for emerging technologies, tools and good practice.

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.

Key Responsibilities

• Collaborate with Lead Technical Architects to create a technical vision for Legal Aid, develop our strategy, and be accountable for our technology estate.
• Ensure that team structures, domain boundaries, and technical architecture are aligned and support the flow of value — recognising that how we organise people shapes what we can build, and vice versa.
• Communicate about our technology and organisational landscape 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.
• Collaborate and find agreement with senior stakeholders, providing both technical and non-technical direction and challenge, as well as pragmatic compromise to deliver value across your teams and the service area.
• Create structured analysis of technical concepts and options, providing insight for multi-disciplinary decision-making and making or guiding proportionate architectural decisions with clear trade-offs, risks and rationale, using governance and assurance at the appropriate level.
• Create, guide and evolve technical designs for both new services and changes to existing services, working closely with engineers throughout delivery to maintain quality and architectural coherence as evidence, constraints and priorities change.
• Guide and influence choices in line with architecture strategy and organisational priorities, seeking opportunities for safe, incremental transformation and using evidence and feedback to evolve direction over time.
• Work closely with the LAA Cyber Security Team to help teams improve security across new, changing and legacy services, shifting security considerations earlier in architectural change, supporting threat modelling and structured security assessment, and helping teams make risk-based decisions and prioritise remediation.
• Engage with our portfolio, assurance, risk management, cyber, and information assurance leadership to ensure priorities are represented alongside those of the business and other digital teams.
• 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.
• Mentor, coach, line-manage, and help recruit more great technical architects and engineering leadership.

Our Tech Stack

This is our tech, both strategic and legacy. You don't need to have experience with all of these, but we hope you see some familiar things. We're more interested in how you think about systems and organisations than in whether you've used a specific tool. You do need enough technical depth to reason about unfamiliar technologies, ask good questions, and work credibly with engineers.

• Modern strategic software built in Java, Python and Ruby
• Resilient infrastructure in the cloud (primarily AWS), using infrastructure as code (IaC) and platforms as a service (PaaS)
• Progressive software development practices such as Domain-Driven Design (DDD), test-driven development (TDD), continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD)
• A new multi-tier architecture, creating central data and business logic platforms to accelerate our product development
• Security built in by default through our LAA Secure by Design guardrails, with security engineers and architects embedded in the team to support you
• Enterprise Oracle software, including Enterprise Resource Planning (E-Business Suite)
• Mac laptops for delivering our work

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

Benefits

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.

Person Specification

Essential

• Experience in a software engineering, cloud, or architecture role, with sufficient technical depth to reason about unfamiliar technologies and contribute your expertise to the delivery of digital services on the web.
• Strong architecture communication and influencing skills, with the ability to explain complex information clearly and concisely to technical and non-technical audiences, build trust and shared understanding, and create enough alignment to move forward where priorities or interests differ.
• Whole-context systems thinking: understanding how technology, people, process, governance and organisational structure interact, and being comfortable making progress in ambiguity as changes in one part of the system affect the others.
• An ability to reason about boundaries between systems and teams so that ownership, technical architecture and business domains support the flow of value, rather than treating technical modularity in isolation.
• Ability to make and guide proportionate architectural decisions in complex or ambiguous situations: exploring options, explaining trade-offs and rationale, managing technical and architectural risk, and knowing when decisions need wider assurance or escalation.
• Ability to create, communicate and evolve technical designs throughout the delivery life cycle, working closely with engineers to maintain security, resilience, maintainability, quality and architectural coherence as constraints and understanding change.
• Ability to connect near-term technical decisions to a wider technical vision and strategy, evolving the technology estate safely and incrementally as evidence, business priorities and constraints change, while working across teams and professions to achieve pragmatic outcomes.
• Ability to lead and influence beyond formal authority: shaping outcomes, inspiring change, and building coalitions across teams, disciplines and organisational boundaries where you have no positional authority, using vision, trust and example rather than command.

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.

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 £63,343 to £70,225 [London] and £58,511 to £65,329 [National].

• 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 and relevant experience (including any relevant qualifications).
• A Personal Statement of no more than 750 words

Your CV and Personal Statement will both be assessed against the following three sift criteria only:

• Experience in a software engineering, cloud, or architecture role, with sufficient technical depth to reason about unfamiliar technologies and contribute your expertise to the delivery of digital services on the web.
• Strong architecture communication and influencing skills, with the ability to explain complex information clearly and concisely to technical and non-technical audiences, build trust and shared understanding, and create enough alignment to move forward where priorities or interests differ.
• Ability to make and guide proportionate architectural decisions in complex or ambiguous situations, exploring options, explaining trade-offs and rationale, managing technical and architectural risk, and knowing when decisions need wider assurance or escalation.

Candidates who do not adhere to the Personal Statement directions above may be rejected on this basis.

A diverse sift panel will assess the evidence in your CV and Personal Statement against these three criteria. The remaining Person Specification criteria will be assessed at later stages of the recruitment process through the relevant Success Profiles elements, including Experience, Technical Skills and Behaviours.

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 - Technical discussion:

Candidates who meet the required standard at sift will be invited to a short technical discussion held via Microsoft Teams. You will be given a fictional system and asked to talk through how you would approach it. The discussion will last approximately 25 minutes and assess the following:

Technical Skills:

• Architect for the whole context

Behaviours:

• Communicating and Influencing
• See the Big Picture
• Making Effective Decisions

Candidates who meet the required standard at Stage 2 will be invited to the final interview. Scores from Stage 2 will contribute to the final merit order alongside scores from Stage 3.

Stage 3 - Final interviews:

Candidates who meet the required standard at Stage 2 will be invited to a panel interview held via Microsoft Teams. The final interview will assess your Experience, and the Technical Skills & Behaviours below.

Technical Skills:

• Strategy design

Behaviours:

• Leadership
• Changing and Improving

Appointments are made strictly in merit order. In the event that two or more candidates receive identical interview scores, the 'experience in a software engineering, cloud, or architecture role, with sufficient technical depth to reason about unfamiliar technologies and contribute your expertise to the delivery of digital services on the web' criterion 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