Contents
- Location
- About the job
- Benefits
- Things you need to know
- Apply and further information
This role will be located in one of the following locations; Birmingham, Blackpool, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne or Sheffield. Please find further information on the Corporate hub locations here.
About the job
Job summary
Looking to lead on the design of IT solutions that will support millions of customers and improve the experience of government services for UK citizens?
DWP Digital have a Lead Solution Architect vacancy in Children and Families, managing the design, development, delivery and maintenance of IT products and services across the Children and Families area, working collaboratively with multiple stakeholders to create value-for-money solution designs that meet user needs.
The successful candidate will:
- Help to lead and support the community to build high quality products and services.
- Provide architecture coaching and mentoring for other solution architects.
- Understand a broad range of technical solutions ranging from niche legacy systems to green field digital solutions that will be used across the enterprise.
- Bring a breadth of understanding across a range of technical specialisms and depth of experience in a number of specialisms.
Job description
- Coach and mentor other architects, managing a small team of solution architects, and the associated architecture design backlog.
- Contribute to the inclusive culture across Children and Families, as part of the area’s leadership team.
- Working collaboratively with multiple stakeholders (engineers, policy, legal, other Digital colleagues including cross-government if necessary) to create value-for-money solution designs that meet user needs.
- Ensure that architecture design artefacts are produced to agreed quality and timescales and presented effectively at governance forums.
- Own the product architecture, develop product roadmaps, and represent product designs at governance forums, providing clear communication of architecture design and decision making, in order to gain approval to proceed with designs.
- Ensure architecture best practice and reference architectures are shared across DWP Digital, and cross-government where appropriate.
Person specification
When giving details in your employment history and personal statement you should highlight your experience in line with essential criteria below:
- Leading Architecture design across multiple teams drawing upon a wide range of experience of architecture modelling techniques, patterns, tools and standards.
- Significant experience in Microservice, event driven and API-led architecture recognising and guiding to best practice.
- Shaping and supporting technology initiatives, projects, programmes and portfolios, eg - influencing Director level stakeholders in a large-scale corporate environment.
- Experience designing application architectures, when transitioning from a complex monolithic system e.g. experience of applying the Strangler Fig pattern.
- Significant experience in public cloud technologies and cloud hosting design patterns.
- Experience in establishing and or maintaining sustainable and healthy working relationships between Architecture and Engineering both during design as well as into delivery phases.
If you would like to learn more about the role, please contact caicy.sandford1@dwp.gov.uk.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Working Together
- Communicating and Influencing
Technical skills
We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- Turning Business Problems into Technical Designs
- Technical Breadth
Benefits
Alongside your salary of £72,664, Department for Work and Pensions contributes £21,050 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
We also have a broad benefits package built around your work-life balance which includes:
- Working patterns to support work/life balance such as job sharing, term-time working, flexi-time and compressed hours.
- Generous annual leave – at least 25 days on entry, increasing up to 30 days over time (pro–rata for part time employees), plus 9 days public and privilege leave.
- Support for financial wellbeing, including interest-free season ticket loans for travel, a cycle to work scheme and an employee discount scheme.
- Health and wellbeing support including our Employee Assistance Programme for specialist advice and counselling and the opportunity to join HASSRA a first-class programme of competitions, activities and benefits for its members (subscription payable monthly).
- Family friendly policies including enhanced maternity and shared parental leave pay after 1 year’s continuous service.
- Funded learning and development to support progress in your role and career. This includes industry recognised qualifications and accreditations, coaching, mentoring and talent development programmes.
- An inclusive and diverse environment with opportunities to join professional and interpersonal networks including Women’s Network, National Race Network, National Disability Network (THRIVE) and many more.
This job role may be suitable for hybrid working, which is where an employee works part of the week in their DWP office and part of the week from home. This is a voluntary, non-contractual arrangement and your office will be your contractual place of work. The number of days that anyone will be able to work at home will be determined primarily by business need but personal circumstances and other relevant circumstances will also be taken into account. If you are successful, any opportunities for hybrid working, including whether a hybrid working arrangement is suitable for you, will be discussed with you prior to you taking up your post.
Salary Information
Pay for this role is from £72,664 to £89,995.
The maximum salary for the grade is £77,740, however a Digital Allowance of up to £12,255 per annum is available for exceptional candidates. Digital Allowance is non-salary, and non-pensionable, and is classed as a temporary allowance. It is reviewed annually where it could be retained, amended, or removed.
Our offer to successful candidates will be based on an assessment of your skills and experience as demonstrated at interview.
Existing Civil Servants who secure a new role on lateral transfer should maintain their current salary.
Existing Civil Servants who gain promotion may move to the bottom of the grade pay scale or 10% increase in salary whichever would be the greater.
The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment (opens in new window).
Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.
Contact point for applicants
Job contact :
- Name : Caicy Sandford
- Email : caicy.sandford1@dwp.gov.uk
Recruitment team
- Email : digitalrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk
Further information
Appointment to the Civil Service is governed by the Civil Service Commission Recruitment Principles. If you wish to make a complaint, please find further details here https://careers.dwp.gov.uk/how-we-recruit/.
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