Security Architect at Department for Work & Pensions, UK Office/Remote, 6 Months, £Contract Rate

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is responsible for welfare, pensions, and child maintenance policy. As the UK's biggest public service department, it administers the State Pension and a range of working age, disability and ill health benefits to around 20 million claimants and customers. As such, we operate on a scale that is almost unmatched anywhere in Europe and most people in Britain come into contact with us at some point in their lives.

Working with DWP, you will be helping us to drive our priorities to:

• Help people to move into work and support those already in work to progress, with the aim of increasing overall workforce participation
• Help people to plan and save for later life, while providing a safety net for those who need it now
• Provide effective, efficient, and innovative services to the millions of claimants who rely on us every day, including the most vulneable in society
• Improve experience of our services while maximising value for money for the taxpayer.

In this role you will join the Health and Disability Security Team, part of Health and Disability function of DWP Digital. You will be part of a team that manages the Health and Disability technical assets across hybrid environments (cloud and on-prem) which support some of DWP's most vulnerable customers.  

You will work with project and engineering teams to provide security advice, assess security of technical designs and identify security solutions and controls for Health and Disability. You will also own or support other architects to gain acceptance of solution architecture through DWP governances processes. You will be part of a team including risk managers making sure that risk and threats are considered in the design and implementation phase, and ensuring mitigations are put in place.

Essential:

• An active SC Clearance is an essential requirement for this role, as a minimum you must be willing & eligible to undergo checks. (Please note, due to the exceptional requirements of this position (short-term nature of this role and speed at which we require a postholder in situ) preference may be given to candidates who meet all of the essential criteria and hold active security clearance.) 
• Experience of designing, modelling and implementing Security Architecture in a complex technical environment or organisation (cloud and on-prem).
• Ability to assess the security of platforms, software and code and advise security best practice or controls to mitigate any threats or risks identified.
• Application and Cloud security experience - ideally AWS. 
• Experience / knowledge of the following - Open Source Software, Java Microservices and Web applications , Container Architecture (e.g. Docker, Amazon ECS), Code Security e.g. Gitlab, OWASP, SAST, DAST , Identity and Access Management including federation, SSO, OIDC, OAUTH, Aws IAMs, Entra ID, Information and Data Security (Encryption, Backup etc), Key Management and PKI (AWS KMS etc), Cloud infrastructure and network-based controls.
• Ability to provide clear communication of security architecture designs and decisions to various stakeholders to gain governance approval. 

Desirable:

• Public Sector / Health industry experience. 

Please be aware that this role can only be worked within the UK and not Overseas.

Disability Confident 

As a member of the Disability Confident Scheme, DWP guarantees to interview all candidates who have a disability and who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of candidates who have a disability who meet all the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group. This scheme encourages candidates with a disability and/or neurodivergence to apply. In exceptional circumstances, we may also need to apply the desirable criteria in our shortlisting process which may include holding active security clearance.

In applying for this role, you acknowledge the following this role falls in scope of the Off Payroll Working in the Public Sector legislation. Any rates of payment quoted will reflect the gross rate per day for the assignment and will be subject to appropriate taxes and statutory costs. As such the payment to the intermediary and your income resulting from this contract will be different.