Senior Technical Architect - SC Cleared at Ministry of Justice, UK Office/Remote, 6 Months, £Contract Rate

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, (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. 

The role is as the technical architect working as part of a multi-disciplinary team in HMPPS digital. The team are building a service that aims to create a single, consistent identity record for individuals within HMPPS, replacing the current fragmented approach. By providing a centralised, authoritative source of truth, the service will enable accurate matching and deduplication of person data across systems, improve data quality, reducing manual input, and support a seamless user journey.

Key Responsibilities:

• Work with the Principal Technical Architect 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
• 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
• Align your team 's work with departmental and wider government technology strategy
• Look for opportunities to collaborate, 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
• 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

Skills & experience required:

• Experience in a technical/solution architecture role within multi-disciplinary teams
• Practical working knowledge of modern cloud first architectures, and how to build applications to take advantage of the opportunities they offer
• Experience of devising software architecture for multitier web solutions which typically include frontend and/or backend microservices, API provision/consumption, databases
• Able to identify and mitigate security risks when designing and operating in a public cloud environment
• Experience of building software to meet user needs
• Experience of introducing and championing best practices such as TDD, continuous integration, continuous delivery, and DevOps to teams
• Translates technical concepts between multidisciplinary teams and other stakeholders so they are understood by all. Expert at mediating and mending relationships and communicating with senior stakeholders

Tech stack:

• Programming languages such as TypeScript/Node, Kotlin/Java
• AWS using infrastructure as code with Terraform
• 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
• Other tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, AppInsights, GitHub Actions, CircleCI

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, MOJ 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.

Armed Forces Covenant

The Ministry of Justice guarantees to interview veterans or spouses / partners of military personnel who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of ex-military candidates / military spouses or partners, who meet all of the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group. 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.