About the job

Job summary

Are you a dedicated person who is passionate about making a difference?

Would you like to work for the Ministry of Defence? 

Defence Business Services (DBS) is one of the largest shared service organisations in Europe that provides a wide range of corporate services, to over 1.2 million end users, including serving and past military and families, as well as MoD civil servants and industry. DBS delivers large scale administration and smaller specialist services to enable the wider MOD to focus on its core aims, maintaining the UK’s Defence and Security. Services include Human Resources, Pay, Veterans, Finance and Procurement.

• Our Vision - To support UK defence customers with outstanding service every time.
• Our Mission - Together we will proudly support Defence, continuously improving and delivering flexible, timely, sustainable and value for money services that underpin the whole force and enhance operational capability. 

DBS is committed to creating a great place to work for all our colleagues. We are building an inclusive culture and respectful environment that reflects the diversity of the society. 

We want to maximise the potential of everyone who chooses to work for us through opportunities to develop your skills and experience. We also offer a range of flexible working patterns and support to make a fulfilling career accessible to you and offer a Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%. Where your role permits, we support a blended working approach alternatively known as hybrid working.

DBS has recently undertaken a review of its operational locations in the North West, and have consolidated all activities in Norcross, Blackpool. A further move, to the new Government Hub at Talbot Gateway in Blackpool, is scheduled to take place in 2026. 

Come and join the DBS community today!

Job description

In this role, you will be responsible for providing technical leadership and architectural design for digital services. You will work collaboratively in small, multi-disciplinary agile teams to ensure the appropriate infrastructure is specified to enable the smooth running of MOD services on www.gov.uk, helping us to deliver key services to veterans and their families. You will help deliver services in line with the Government Digital Service Standard and support the team at GDS Service Assessments. 

The role works as an integral part of the DBS Architecture Profession team to ensure all delivered services integrate cleanly into DBS business, technology, application, and data architecture layers.

Key Responsibilities:  

DBS Architects support the implementation of the Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) strategy for DBS and the vision set by the Chief Technology Officer. 

The post holder will: 

•    Work closely with the team to solve architectural problems, designing solutions in line with MoD and GDS design and security policy and gain approvals through the DBS Technical Design Authority governance forum. 
•     Create and maintain architecture documents to considering applications, infrastructure, data, security, integration and operations, designing models and reference artifacts enabling re-use of solution components supporting other architects to conform to required processes and standards. 
•    Ensure that new business capabilities are designed for clean integration with existing services. Considering service, applications, data and technology architectural layers and including through life compliance with business and technology policy and strategy 
•    Fulfil the role of lead technical architect at GDS assessments, demonstrating how services have met the GDS Service Standard to senior stakeholders and specialists from across Government. 
•    Support development of governance, processes, and tooling to monitor and manage new business design, delivery and usage across the DBS enterprise 
•    Engage with MOD, industry, and government wide leaders and technical / service experts to identify and implement best architecture practice solutions to meet business needs. 
•    Support proofs of concept for technologies and services new to DBS.  
•    Support, coach and mentor colleagues in adapting to new delivery approaches 
•    Support Chief Technical Officer as required. 

Person specification

Key Role Skills  

•    Communication skills. To listen to the needs of technical and business stakeholders and interpret them. Manage stakeholder expectations and be flexible. Manage proactive and reactive communication. Facilitate difficult discussions within the team or with diverse senior stakeholders. Understand the appropriate mediums to communicate findings. Shape communications for the audience. 
•    Technical innovation. To understand the impact of emerging technology trends on the organisation and adopt as appropriate.  
•    Architecture modelling. To understand the concepts and principles of architecture modelling and can produce relevant models to describe capability interrelationships. Know how to reverse-engineer models from a live system. Understand industry recognised modelling patterns and standards and know when to apply them. You can compare and align different architecture models.  
•    Problem resolution. To ensure that the most appropriate actions are taken to resolve productivity problems as they occur. You coordinate teams to resolve problems and implement solutions and preventative measures.  
•    Strategic thinking (architecture). To work within a strategic context and communicate how activities meet strategic goals.  
•    Turn business opportunities into solution designs. To design end-to-end solutions by dealing with capabilities that span different business areas. Draw links between challenges in order to reach common solutions. Work across multiple subject areas to ensure the enterprise has single, coherent solutions for each business capabilities.

Technical skills:

Further information on DDaT capability framework and expectations at each level can be found on the government web site.  

•    Communicating between the technical and non-technical (Practitioner) Communicate effectively across organisational, technical and political boundaries, understanding the context. Make complex and technical information and language simple and accessible for non-technical audiences. Advocate on behalf of a team and communicate what it does, to create trust and authenticity. Successfully respond to challenges. 
•    Governance and Assurance (Practitioner) Governance and assurance involves defining and ensuring adherence to an organisation's quality control and compliance processes. 
•    Making and Guiding Decisions (Working) Make and guide effective decisions, explaining clearly how the decision has been reached. Understand and resolve technical disputes across varying levels of complexity and risk. 
•    Turning business problems into technical design (Practitioner) Work with business and technology stakeholders to translate business problems into technical designs. Create optimal designs through iterative processes, aligning the system requirements and organisational objectives with the user needs. 
•    Understanding the whole context (Working) Look beyond the immediate technical problem and identify the wider implications. You can demonstrate knowledge of the relevant historical context and future impact. Understand how current work fits in broader contexts and strategies. Identify deeper underlying problems and opportunities. 

Desirable knowledge and experience: 

•    Javascript application design, 
•    Experience in cloud architecture; 
•    Experience of GDS projects

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £43,080, Ministry of Defence contributes £11,631 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.

Please ensure that at the application and interview stages of the campaign you review the Success Profiles Framework to assist you in the demonstration of your skills and experience.

Your suitability for the role will be assessed using the Success Profile elements that have been chosen for this campaign. Each element will be scored accordingly, and the successful candidate will be appointed on merit.

Applications will be sifted on all Success Profile elements, but in the event of a high number of applications, an initial sift will be conducted on the following success profile elements:

Primary: Technical - Senior technical architect - Communicating between the technical and non-technical (technical architect)

Secondary: Technical - Senior technical architect - Understanding the whole context

In this instance the remaining elements will be tested at interview.

At application stage you will be assessed against the following:

• Technical - Senior technical architect - Communicating between the technical and non-technical (technical architect)
• Technical - Senior technical architect - Turning business problems into technical design
• Technical - Senior technical architect - Understanding the whole context
• Technical - Senior technical architect - Governance and Assurance
• Experience - CV
• Experience - Personal statement - Please provide information of how you meet the criteria set out in the job description. You may wish to further include examples of how you have tackled similar tasks or demonstrated the skills outlines in the job advert. 

At interview 1 stage you will be assessed against the following:

• Experience - Personal statement
• Behaviour - Leadership
• Behaviour - Communicating and Influencing

Those that pass the minimum score criteria will then be invited to Interview 2 where you will be assessed on the following for the application and the Digital Skills Allowance Assessment:

• Technical - Senior technical architect - Communicating between the technical and non-technical (technical architect)
• Technical - Senior technical architect - Turning business problems into technical design
• Technical - Senior technical architect - Understanding the whole context
• Technical - Senior technical architect - Governance and Assurance

In the rare case where individuals have exact matching scores, the order of merit will be determined based on the behaviour scores at interview in the following order:

• 1 - Technical - Senior technical architect - Communicating between the technical and non-technical (technical architect)
• 2 - Technical - Senior technical architect - Turning business problems into technical design
• 3 - Technical - Senior technical architect - Understanding the whole context
• 4 - Technical - Senior technical architect - Governance and Assurance
• 5 - Experience - Personal statement
• 6 - Behaviour - Leadership
• 7 - Behaviour - Communicating and Influencing

If candidate scores are still exact, the merit order will then be determined on the sift score in the following order:

• 1 - Technical - Senior technical architect - Communicating between the technical and non-technical (technical architect)
• 2 - Technical - Senior technical architect - Turning business problems into technical design
• 3 - Technical - Senior technical architect - Understanding the whole context
• 4 - Technical - Senior technical architect - Governance and Assurance
• 5 - Experience - CV
• 6 - Experience - Personal statement

We want to offer opportunities to all who are successful at interview for our roles, but this isn’t always possible, so we do hold candidates on an active reserve list for 12 months. – this will need amending to 3 months for internal or across government roles

Application sifting is scheduled to take place in early January.

Interviews 1 and 2 are currently taking place remotely via Ms Teams and will be conducted mid January.

A minimum of 2 full working days’ notice will be provided for interviews.We endeavour to stick to these dates, but these are subject to change around business needs.

To assist with your application please find attached below: 

1.     DBS Candidate Information Guide -   Working for Defence Business Services - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

2.     Technical framework - https://ddat-capability-framework.service.gov.uk/index.html

The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equality of opportunity. There is a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.  

If you need to advise us that you need additional help or reasonable adjustments for the recruitment process, please contact: DBS-EnhancedRecruitmentTeam@mod.gov.uk 

MOD Recruitment Satisfaction Survey – we may contact you regarding your experience to help us improve our customer satisfaction. The survey is voluntary and anonymous. You may however be given the opportunity to provide additional information to help us improve our service which includes the collection of some personal data as defined by the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). The MOD Privacy Notice sets out how we will use your personal data and your rights.

As a result of the changes to the UK immigration rules which came into effect on 1 January 2021, the Ministry of Defence will only offer sponsorship for a skilled worker visa under the points-based system, where a role has been deemed to be business critical. 
The role currently being advertised has not been assessed as business critical and is therefore NOT open to applications from those who will require sponsorship under the points-based system. Should you apply for this role and be found to require sponsorship, your application will be rejected, and any provisional offer of employment withdrawn. 

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window). People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

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) (opens in a new window)
• 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 (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.