Technical Architect

Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities; Manchester; On-site; GBP 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

A UK government department seeks a Senior Technical Architect to lead a team in assessing service requests and managing core services. Your role encompasses working with Azure, AWS, and cybersecurity teams to ensure compliance and develop technical solutions. Ideal candidates will have significant experience in enterprise environments with a focus on integrating technical solutions and must hold relevant architectural certifications. This opportunity allows you to work on impactful projects within a dynamic environment.

Qualifications

• Experience in enterprise environments integrating technical elements.
• Hands-on experience architecting secure solutions.
• Ability to translate business problems into technical designs.

Responsibilities

• Lead a team assessing requests for new and existing services.
• Manage core services and ensure compliance.
• Triage new requirements into solution designs.

Skills

Integration of technical elements

Architectural design

Stakeholder management

Agile methodology

Terraform usage

Education

Microsoft Azure Solutions Architect Expert Certification

AWS Solutions Architect Professional Certification

Tools

Azure

AWS

Terraform

Job description

Lead a small team that assesses requests from the organisation relating to new and existing services, understanding the actual requirement and identifying an overall solution that will meet the needs.

Work closely with dedicated Azure, AWS and Cyber Security teams to ensure the necessary work is then taken forward.

Be responsible for day to day management of some core services such as DNS, New Requirements, Data, Mail and systems/services migrations/integrations and Zscaler Administration.

Identify changes to infrastructure and solutions in Azure, AWS or other services that allow introduction of new services to meet business needs whilst ensuring alignment of solutions to our target architecture and broader technical strategy.

Evaluate the impact of change of your proposed solutions on our current technical cloud estate and core IT services such as M365.

Line manage engineers, educate, mentor and coach them and other teams in applying architectural techniques and improving capabilities or skills to meet changing needs.

Articulate key technologies' impact on cost, capacity, transformation, risk, business enablement and transformation objectives.

Manage migration of systems, services and/or data whilst leading on your own set of services to develop, maintain, automate, monitor, audit, and de-provision using Infrastructure-as-Code or other tools.

Ensure your solutions or services are secure and compliant, working with cyber-security and other areas to design well, remediate issues and ensure that solution designs achieve sign off at relevant checkpoints.

Responsibilities:

• Triage new requirements, translating business requirements and non-functional requirements into solution designs, working across multiple technologies and subject matter experts to integrate components into an overall service.

Experience:

• Experience within an enterprise environment of integrating various technical elements to provide an overall solution within Azure, AWS or SaaS based services.
• Prior experience as an architect in an enterprise setting, with hands-on experience architecting and implementing secure, reliable & resilient solutions and/or applications at a broad level to meet business needs.
• Experience of being able to work with business and technology stakeholders to articulate and translate business problems into technical designs for systems characterised by levels of risk, impact and business or technical complexity.
• Experience working with the enterprise and AWS/Azure architects to develop strategies and roadmaps from a business and technology perspective, including 'as-is', 'to-be' and transitional states.
• Experience working under broad direction in a fast-paced and results-oriented environment, using Agile and waterfall.
• Prior use of Terraform as Code for deployment and maintenance of cloud infrastructure and resources.
• Experience in modern authentication, authorisation, and Identity Management systems, particularly in using them to provide a seamless user experience with SaaS applications and cloud hosted services.
• Experiences or knowledge in network security best practices, including Zero Trust (Zscaler), IAM/Entra, and encryption standards.
• Microsoft Azure Solutions Architect Expert Certification or AWS Solutions Architect Professional Certification.

Here at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), we work on things that make a real difference to people's lives. Whether it's through the homes we live in, the work of our local councils, or the communities we're all a part of, our work is at the top of the political agenda.

We have ambitious and far-reaching outcomes to achieve this year and, if you're thinking of joining us, there's never been a more exciting time. We have circa 3,500 staff who are based in 20 offices across the UK. As a senior technical architect for MHCLG you'll sit within the heart of the technology team in our digital directorate. The technology team is responsible for delivering various modern technology services to a user base.

We work flexibly to deliver excellent user centred services within Microsoft Azure, AWS, Microsoft 365 and other SaaS and Desktop apps. We're now looking to build internal capability and skills so that we can take forward cloud-based services for the department.