Lead Technical Architect - One Login

Government Digital & Data • Full-time • United Kingdom • £69.52k - £103.92k / year • 2w ago

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 Lead Technical architect, you’ll share the responsibility for the digital transformation of government. You will help design and drive the technical strategy for the area you work in while ensuring alignment with broader GDS standards and goals. You’ll hold the vision for technical architecture best practice in your area, enabling us to build resilient and reliable government services, communicating this to technical and non-technical audiences alike.

Lead Technical Architects often work across different teams and services. You’ll ensure that technical designs meet 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 Lead Technical Architect, you’ll:

lead by example, be a visible leader who takes responsibility and acts as a role model
contribute to the development and iteration of GDS architectural and engineering practices, principles and standards
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 restraints
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 teams and wider organisational areas to identify strategic requirements and dependencies
help develop services by contributing code, testing technologies and producing rapid prototypes
advise teams on the right mix of capabilities to achieve their roadmapped goals and desired service levels
act as a digital ambassador across government, supporting recruitment, identifying good practices for GDS to adopt and sharing experiences, e.g. through blog posts, tech talks at conferences etc
be involved in helping recruiting technical architects and other senior technologists, where appropriate, helping sift and interview
manage, coach and mentor more junior Technical Architects as well as others in the wider software engineering community