Technical Architect Lead - SC Cleared at MOD, Bristol/Remote, 3 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 (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 SC clearance. 

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) is a central government department with a mission to protect our country and provide the ultimate guarantee of its security and independence, as well as helping to protect its values and interests abroad.

The MOD is one of the biggest public procurement organisations in Europe and the single largest customer for UK industry. It currently manages approximately £20 billion of spend on capital investments in equipment and infrastructure every year. Over the next decade the MOD is committed to spending over £190 billion on equipment and support. The MOD’s customers include both the armed forces and national security agencies, and it has a diverse range of requirements, including military fighting vehicles, education services, nuclear submarines and facilities management.

The MOD’s aim is to provide its armed forces with the best capabilities to enable them to protect the UK’s security and advance national interests, both now and in the long term.

To do this the MOD has an annual budget of almost £53 billion and a workforce comprising 197,000 people. of which 54,000 are civilians working for the UK MOD.

The work really matters; the MOD offers a range of engaging roles which have a direct impact on the quality of services they provide, in many locations across the UK. We support teams working in HR, Primary Health Care, Corporate Services, and many others.

As a Lead Technical Architect, your main responsibilities will be:

Roles and Responsibilities:

1. 
   
   1. Responsible for reviewing the designs and providing constructive feedback and ensuring the solutions are fit for purpose and optimised.
   2. Work with multiple stakeholders across the program and the Defence Digital to maintain the technical coherence and make sure the solutions are fully compliant and optimised.
   3. Lead the architecture, design, and delivery of secure, scalable, and resilient enterprise solutions across AWS, Azure Cloud environments.
   4. Define and implement optimised technical solutions aligned with business, operational, and security requirements.
   5. Ensure compliance with industry standards, technical governance frameworks, and GOV.UK technical standards and Defence Digital architectural principles.
   6. Provide technical leadership across multiple projects and programmes within a complex multi-cloud ecosystem.
   7. Design and govern cloud-native and containerised solutions using Kubernetes and modern DevOps practices.
   8. Collaborate with engineering, security, delivery, and operational teams to ensure successful end-to-end solution implementation.
   9. Drive adoption of UCD, DevOps culture, CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), automation, and platform engineering best practices.
   10. Support integration of enterprise systems, APIs, and data platforms, including Data migrations and large-scale data integration solutions.
   11. Conduct architecture reviews, risk assessments, technical assurance, and solution governance activities.
   12. Produce high-quality architecture artefacts, including HLDs, LLDs, integration diagrams, and technical roadmaps.
   13. Knowledge and experience in Learning and Management Systems, Mobile App Architecture.

Technical Skills:

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  • BizzDesign, ArchiMate, TOGAF, NATO Architecture Frameworks (NAF), Data Architecture, Data Migrations, Data Modelling, UML, API, Open API Spec, Learning Management Systems.
  • AWS Cloud, Azure Cloud
  • React JS, Java, SpringBoot, NodeJS, API Gateway, Microservices, SAML, SSO, OpenID Connect, OAuth 2.0
  • DevOps, Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD, GitHub, GitHub Actions, Argo CD, Trivy Scan, LMS, COTS