12137 - Lead Technical Architect

Ministry of Justice; United Kingdom; Hybrid; GBP 71,000 - 84,000; Full time

Job summary

A UK government agency is seeking a Lead Technical Architect to join their team, focusing on defining technical strategies and leading design solutions. This role offers flexibility, mentoring opportunities, and a range of modern technologies to work with. Candidates should possess leadership skills and experience in programming and cloud technologies. The position promises a collaborative environment with generous benefits including a learning budget and pension scheme.

Benefits

Flexible working options

Learning budget

Generous pension plan

25 days leave plus bank holidays

Wellbeing support

Paid volunteering leave

Qualifications

• Experience with various programming languages, preferably TypeScript/Node and Java.
• Strong understanding of AWS and infrastructure as code.
• Proficiency in container orchestration tools like Kubernetes and modern development practices.

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain the technical strategy and roadmap.
• Collaborate with senior stakeholders for direction.
• Mentor and manage technical architects.
• Guide teams on digital transformation opportunities.
• Evaluate technical concepts and design solutions.
• Ensure technical quality aligns with wider strategy.
• Support recruitment for technical roles.

Skills

Technical design

Leadership

Collaboration

Mentoring

Technical architecture

Tools

TypeScript/Node

AWS

Kubernetes

Terraform

CloudFormation

Job description

Lead Technical Architect

Location: National*
Closing Date: 5th December
Interviews: 16th – 17th December
Grade: 6 (MoJ candidates who are on a specialist grade, will be able to retain this grade on lateral transfer)
Salary: London: £75,674 – £87,875 (allowance of up to £12,201); National: £71,381 – £83,700 (allowance of up to £12,319)
Working pattern: full-time, part-time, flexible working
Contract Type: Permanent
Vacancy number: 12137
*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

We’re recruiting for a Lead Technical Architect here at Justice Digital, to be part of our warm and collaborative HM Prison & Probation Service team. This role aligns against Lead Technical architect 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, 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

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
• 25 days leave (plus bank holidays) and 1 privilege day usually taken around the King’s 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. Maternity support/paternity leave at full pay for 2 weeks, too!
• Wellbeing support including access to the Calm app.
• Nurturing professional and interpersonal networks including those for Carers & Childcare, Gender Equality, PROUD and SPIRIT
• 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.
• Some offices may have a subsidised onsite Gym.