THE ROLE
Most public sector architecture work asks for SC before it asks for anything else, and most of it puts you in a hub two or three days a week. This one does neither.
It is remote, with ad hoc travel, and BPSS is all that is needed to start.
You would design technical solutions across several live services for one of the UK's largest government departments, delivered through a Tier 1 systems integrator.
The role is deliberately broad — it spans multiple services and delivery teams at once rather than owning a single product, and several of those services interface directly with another government department, so a good part of the job is agreeing architecture with counterparts outside your own organisation.
The department is explicit that this is as much a communication role as a technical one.
Producing a consistent set of solution views, making complex designs understandable to people who are not architects, and taking those designs through technical governance.
YOU WILL
- Design technical solutions that meet user needs and align to the department's architecture strategy and standards
- Produce a consistent set of solution views that describe the construction of the solution to every stakeholder group
- Work alongside engineering teams and wider digital stakeholders to create value-for-money designs
- Ensure technical quality and adherence to architecture principles, patterns, Enterprise Architecture and product roadmaps
- Identify, capture, share and implement reusable architecture patterns across services
- Present and defend architecture designs at technical governance forums
- Support several services and delivery teams concurrently, and agree architecture with counterparts in another department
ESSENTIAL REQUIREMENTS
- Architecture design and modelling techniques, patterns, tools and standards — you work in a recognised notation, not slideware
- Microservice and API-led architecture and integration design, with the tooling and best practice behind it
- Event-based architecture design including pub-sub and data streaming patterns — designed and delivered, not read about
- Public cloud at design level across AWS, Azure or GCP, including cloud hosting, container and networking design patterns
- Agile delivery methodologies, and DevOps CI/CD as a normal part of how you deliver
- Experience presenting architecture design to technical governance forums — presented and defended, not attended
- Technical authoring — you produce the design and specification documents yourself
- Right to work in the UK and eligibility for BPSS clearance
ADVANTAGEOUS
- Supporting multiple services and delivery teams concurrently rather than a single product
- Working with architectural counterparts in another organisation — a different department, client or delivery partner
- Prior UK central government delivery, in any department
- Shaping technology initiatives at programme or portfolio level rather than project level
WHY THIS ONE
Two things make it unusual. It is genuinely remote, which is rare on government architecture work.
And there is no clearance gate, so if you have never held SC you are not shut out of it — which on this kind of programme almost never happens.
Beyond that, the breadth is the appeal. Several services, several teams, and architecture agreed across departmental boundaries rather than inside one delivery squad.
THE DETAILS
- Rate: £575 per day, inside IR35
- Location: Remote, with ad hoc travel
- Level: SFIA Level 5
- Clearance: BPSS. No SC required
- Start: ASAP