Lead Solutions Architect

A large central Government body are seeking a Lead Solutions Architect on an initial 6 month contract, inside IR35.

Key accountabilities and responsibilities

• Drive activities and synchronise technical work across the Programme
• Provide technology leadership within the Programme, directing and supporting technologists, acting as an escalation route for technology and data-related concerns and shielding teams
• Work with the technology and data communities to manage dependencies, spot opportunities for join-up, build capability and help to continuously revise the agency's technical strategy and vision
• Ensure that digital solutions are in line with the clients architecture vision by providing appropriate guidance around the enterprise and solutions architecture
• Understand the organisation's ecosystem and its inter-dependencies, ensuring quality and integrity of new solutions
• Guide development of technical transition plans to migrate between as-is and to-be solutions.
• Ensure all teams work in line with the Technology Code of Practice, technology governance, standards, and processes
• Work closely across digital and wider business teams to build modern digital services in collaboration with technical architects and software developers as part of the multi -disciplinary teams to lead the technical direction of the products
• Oversee multiple concurrent projects from a technical viewpoint to ensure that all projects align with the clients architectural vision
• Work with service designers and product owners to write system design specifications and associated documentation and diagrams to support development. Ultimately be accountable for all aspects of the technical design of the digital services within your remit

Key skills and knowledge
We're looking for people who are passionate about fixing the housing market and making government work better for users. We welcome people from a diverse range of backgrounds.

The types of people we're looking for in this role will have:

Experience:

• Experience of working in a lead architect capacity with business and technology stakeholders to translate business problems into solution options and designs, producing clear architecture artefacts
• Ability to collaborate with business and technology stakeholders to translate business problems into technical designs
• Able to visualise the ideal user service with design ideas and possible design approaches
• Experience designing blended solutions using Software as a Service (SaaS) and bespoke in-house development
• Experience if delivery using waterfall and agile delivery methodologies
• Work with digital and technology teams to understand user needs, constraints and non-functional requirements to define, design and deliver the Department's critical services

Skills:

• Cloud-native platforms and services (such as Azure, AWS, GOV.UK PaaS, O365, ServiceNow)
• Experience of modern IT paradigms including containers, microservices, APIs and loose coupling
• Excellent knowledge of architecture methodologies, frameworks, and tools (such as TOGAF, ArchiMate and UML) and experience of their application to support solution designs
• HTML/CSS, C# .Net and .NET Core, Java
• Database technologies (such as Oracle, MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL DBs, DWHs, Cosmos DB, MongoDB)
• Understanding of modern engineering practices (such as DevOps automation and culture, CI/CD, PaaS)

Key competencies:

• Communication: is politically astute and targets key partners with whom to build relationships to shape and influence events
• Leadership: Leader who thinks ahead to ensure that the capability of the team match future requirements
• Ability to clearly define and communicate the architecture solutions to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Effective use of technology to deliver organisation goals

Key performance measures

• Supporting the development of the Architecture Practice within the organisation and across wider government
• All solutions support our architectural principles, standards, blueprints, roadmaps, and transitions states
• Decreasing technical debt across the Programme
• Builds strong relationships with internal digital operations teams, information security and data protection officers

Values and key behaviours

• Creative - We're always thinking up new ideas and disrupting the status quo.
• Collaborative - We work together to get things done.
• Diverse - We value everybody as an individual, and in their thoughts and ideas

Please get in touch with lauren.pocknell@investigo.co.uk to apply for this position.