Overview

Location: National (hybrid working model; remote work with local office time). Office locations are available as described in the original posting. Closing Date: 19 October. Interviews: Expected w/c 3 November. Grade: 7. Salary: London: £63,343-£78,225 (may include an allowance up to £14,882). National: £58,511-£73,450 (may include an allowance up to £14,939). Working pattern: full-time, part-time, flexible working. Contract Type: Permanent. Vacancy number: 10650.

*We offer a hybrid working model, allowing for a balance between remote work and time spent in your local office. Office locations can be found on the map referenced in the original posting.

The Role

We’re recruiting for a Senior Technical Architect here at Justice Digital, to be part of our warm and collaborative Legal Aid Agency team. This role aligns against the senior architect role from the Government Digital and Data Framework. Our Senior Technical Architects are responsible for assuring, designing, and delivering digital services that enable both the public and legal professionals to apply and claim for legal aid.

You will work with developers, SRE and security experts, user researchers, product managers, designers, delivery managers, and content specialists who share a vision for improving government through smarter use of technology. You will collaborate to develop our strategy, connect people and build trust with clear communication, and provide empathetic technical leadership across diverse product teams.

Our Senior Technical Architects will work to understand our technology, our business, and our people (colleagues, stakeholders, and users of our services), and to create an ambitious and pragmatic vision for our teams, using their technical expertise to bring our challenges and opportunities into focus alongside the views of other professions in our leadership team. A Senior Technical Architect can see the big picture, understand our complex technology landscape, and communicate that big picture effectively by building trust, developing great relationships, and empathising with others. They provide mentoring and support to other architects and engineering leadership in their service area, and they have a good understanding of a broad range of technologies, with experience in both software engineering and commercial enterprise, as well as providing effective governance within our organisation and across suppliers.

As a Senior Technical Architect, your days will be varied. For example, you might create diagrams and data flows for replacing a legacy service; work directly with developers to ensure their services are robust and secure; support a new delivery manager to introduce or improve ways of working; or liaise with engineering leadership to develop guardrails and patterns for use across the department.

We are looking for people who encourage open discussion and build the architecture community within the Ministry of Justice and the Legal Aid Agency in particular. You should have a growth mindset, constantly looking for emerging technologies, tools and good practice.

We are a flexible organisation and understand that people may not always work 5 days a week or may have responsibilities that clash with standard office hours. We work flexibly as much as possible, including offering part-time hours. If you are the right candidate we will do our best to accommodate you.

To help picture life at MoJ Justice Digital, please look at our blog and our Digital and Technology Strategy 2025.

Key Responsibilities

• Collaborate with the Lead Technical Architect to create a technical vision for Legal Aid, develop strategy, and be accountable for the technology estate.
• Communicate about technology across teams and professions within the Digital unit and across the Ministry of Justice; see the big picture and bring it to all stakeholders.
• Collaborate and find agreement with senior stakeholders, providing technical and non-technical direction and challenge, plus pragmatic compromise to deliver value across teams and the service area.
• Create structured analyses of technical concepts, providing insight for multidisciplinary decision-making, and develop patterns and guidelines for the Digital Unit.
• Guide and influence choices to align with strategy and seek opportunities for digital transformation, helping all understand the value of technical decisions.
• Engage with portfolio, assurance, risk management, cyber, and information assurance leadership to ensure priorities such as Secure by Design are represented.
• Advocate for a diverse, inclusive culture across the engineering community, supporting increased representation of women and minorities.
• Mentor, coach, line-manage, and assist in recruiting more technical architects and engineering leadership.

Our Tech Stack

• Modern software built in Ruby, Java, and Python (strategic and legacy).
• Public GitHub repositories for our work.
• Resilient cloud infrastructure (primarily AWS), using IaC and PaaS.
• Progressive development practices (DDD, TDD, CI, CD).
• New multi-tier architecture with central data and business logic platforms.
• Enterprise Oracle software including E-Business Suite.
• Mac laptops for delivering our work.

Benefits

• 37 hours per week with flexible options including home working, part-time, job sharing, or compressed hours.
• A £1k per person learning budget with access to conferences, accreditation, and e-learning.
• Staff have 10% time to develop and grow.
• Generous Civil Service pension with employer contributions of 28.97% (from April 1st, 2024).
• 25 days leave plus bank holidays, with 1 privilege day around the King’s birthday and 5 extra days after 5 years of service.
• Compassionate leave policies for maternity, adoption, and shared parental leave with generous pay provisions.
• Wellbeing support including access to the Calm app.
• Networks and support for Carers, Gender Equality, PROUD, SPIRIT, etc.
• Bike loans, secure parking, season ticket loans, childcare vouchers, and eye-care vouchers.
• 5 days volunteering paid leave and possible subsidised onsite gym depending on location.

Person Specification

• Experience as a software engineer, cloud engineer, or software architect delivering digital products on the web.
• Experience across web stack (frontend, backend, API management, microservices, databases, event-driven architectures) in public cloud environments.
• Ability to make and guide technical decisions with understanding of wider context.
• Strong communication and influencing skills to explain technical information clearly to diverse audiences and to build trust and persuade stakeholders.
• Ability to identify and mitigate security risks in public cloud environments and uphold security, quality, and operational resilience.
• Experience introducing and championing best practices such as TDD, CI/CD, and DevOps across multiple teams.
• Willingness to be assessed against SC clearance requirements.
• Commitment to diversity and inclusion; non-discrimination statement from the original posting remains.

How to Apply

Please submit a CV and a cover letter (maximum 750 words) describing how your skills meet the requirements below. Include evidence of experience as a software engineer, cloud engineer, or software architect delivering digital products on the web; experience across web stack in public cloud environments; and strong communication and influencing skills.

Application guidance and assessments follow the Government Digital and Data Profession capability and success profiles. A diverse panel will review applications against the person specification, followed by a 1-hour panel interview with a technical exercise via video conference. A reserve list may be held for up to 12 months. Use of artificial intelligence is permitted only for assisting your own truthful and original content; plagiarism may lead to withdrawal or disciplinary action.

For questions, contact digitalanddatarecruitment@justice.gov.uk.

Refer to the attached Job Description for the person specification.