JOB SUMMARY

The Government Digital Service (GDS) is the digital centre of government. We are responsible for setting, leading and delivering the vision for a modern digital government.

Our priorities are to drive a modern digital government, by:

• joining up public sector services
• harnessing the power of AI for the public good
• strengthening and extending our digital and data public infrastructure
• elevating leadership and investing in talent
• funding for outcomes and procuring for growth and innovation
• committing to transparency and driving accountability

We are home to the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (I.AI), the world-leading GOV.UK and at the forefront of coordinating the UK’s geospatial strategy and activity. We lead the Government Digital and Data function and champion the work of digital teams across government.
We’re part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and employ more than 1,000 people all over the UK, with hubs in Manchester, London and Bristol.
The Government Digital Service is where talent translates into impact. From your first day, you’ll be working with some of the world’s most highly-skilled digital professionals, all contributing their knowledge to make change on a national scale.
Join us for rewarding work that makes a difference across the UK. You’ll solve some of the nation’s highest-priority digital challenges, helping millions of people access services they need.
The GOV.UK One Login Programme represents a once in a generation opportunity to simplify and widen access to all digital government services. Sitting at the heart of the government, we are building one simple, safe and secure way for users to log in and prove who they are that will work across all government services.
Effective identity assurance is central to digital transformation and GOV.UK One Login enables people to prove who they are online, with the necessary level of confidence to access and use particular services. Our technology stack runs on AWS, using serverless compute and storage products. Backend services are written in TypeScript/Node.js and JVM technologies. Web applications also use TypeScript.

JOB DESCRIPTION

As a GDS Technical Architect, you’ll share the responsibility for the digital transformation of government. You’ll ensure a project’s overall technical design meets user needs and acceptance criteria, whilst conforming to time and budget constraints. You’ll thrive using agile methods and enjoy working collaboratively with departments and multidisciplinary teams. Above all, you’ll want to make government better, which may sometimes involve challenging the status quo.

As a Technical Architect, you’ll:

• design technical services or plan system integration, selecting necessary platforms and technologies to meet project requirements and user needs
• provide technical leadership and consultancy to both internal and external development teams, ensuring designs & solutions are fit for purpose, whilst meeting time and budget constraints
• build and maintain technical roadmaps, looking ahead for future opportunities or blockers, and ensuring decisions by development teams align with the strategy
• encourage communication across multiple development teams to identify strategic requirements and dependencies
• help develop services by contributing code, testing technologies and producing rapid prototypes
• be involved in the wider software engineering community, including cyber security and operations teams, identifying good practices to adopt and sharing your experiences, eg through blog posts, tech talks at conferences etc
• enable a positive technical culture, applying agile methods to development and completing quality assurance practices
• ensure delivery is aligned with the GDS Way and work with others across GDS to keep that up to date and relevant
• advise product managers on the estimated effort and technical implications of current user stories, as well as those in the backlog
• be involved in helping recruiting technical architects and other technologists, where appropriate, helping sift and interview
• help colleagues with their career development, coaching and managing more junior staff members

NATIONALITY REQUIREMENTS

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements

The standard selection process for roles at GDS consists of:

• a simple application screening process - We only ask for a CV and cover letter of up to 750 words. Important tip - please ensure that your cover letter includes how you meet the skills and experience listed in the “person specification” section above
• a 30 minute phone screen where you will be asked a few role-related questions to enable us to get to know you better (may not be required depending on the volume of applications)
• a 90 minute video interview. As part of the interview process there will be a presentation exercise. Details around the presentation exercise will be shared for candidates invited for an interview

For this role we’ll be assessing you against the following Civil Service Behaviours:

• Seeing the big picture
• Changing and improving
• Making effective decisions
• Communicating and influencing
• Working together
• Managing a quality servic

We’ll also be assessing your experience and specialist technical skills against the following skills defined in the Government Digital and Data Capability Framework for the Technical Architecture role:

• Architect for the whole context
• Architecture communication
• Community collaboration
• Making architectural decisions
• Strategy design
• Technical design throughout the life cycl