About the job

Job summary

As the UK’s regulator for the energy industry, Ofgem works on behalf of energy consumers to ensure that every household and business in the UK can rely on a safe, affordable and environmentally sustainable energy supply. Now more than ever, we need to go further and faster in pursuing the country’s climate goals and assist the UK in reaching Net Zero. That’s where you come in. 
 
As a Principal Software Applications Architect, within Ofgem you will leading the solution architecture practice and ensuring alignment with the enterprise architecture vision and principle and collaborating with stakeholders, business analysts, and technical teams to understand the requirements and design the best-fit solutions 

Providing technical leadership and guidance to other solution architects and developers and ensuring adherence to the best practices and standards and working closely with our agile Digital Delivery team you’ll offer further advice and guidance in order to design technical services or plan system integration, selecting necessary platforms and technologies to meet project requirements and user needs.  

Innovative, confident and ambitious, your excellent communication skills will allow you to lead high-profile environmental schemes and projects within the directorate. Interpersonal skills will not only allow your team to thrive but also your collaborative work with colleagues across the organisation and the UK energy market. You will have exposure across .Net, DevOps and designing systems and architecture in a fast-paced agile environment. 
 
Ofgem relies on having a workforce that reflects the society we serve, so we welcome candidates from all backgrounds, and especially those from underrepresented groups. While this is a full-time role, flexible working patterns and job shares are welcome. We will also support you with excellent training and development opportunities, plus a competitive benefits package. 

Job description

Purpose 

As the Lead Software Solutions Architect, you’ll take ownership of the architecture of all of the projects within Delivery and Schemes, leading a team of architects who will focus on individual projects.  The role involves taking ownership of Ofgem’s Reference Architecture, overall responsibility for the architecture of all the schemes and designing a suite of Shared Services that can be reused across multiple projects.   

Coming from a software development background, you will have experience in writing .NET applications and architecting the bigger picture solution.  You’ll be security conscious and have knowledge of GDS and government services and are able to communicate with technical and non-technical colleagues.    

You’ll ensure a project’s overall technical design meets 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. 

Person specification

Key Responsibilities 

• Lead a team of Architects who will have overall responsibility for the Architecture of the Delivery and Schemes applications. 
• Design technical services or plan system integration, selecting necessary platforms and technologies to meet project requirements and user needs. 
• Design solutions, including data storage and security, in line with the Ofgem’s reference architecture. 
• Collaborate and network with infrastructure, security, data and operations colleagues. 
• Implement a Microservice Shared Service Architecture. 
• Create and maintain clear and concise architecture documentation and designs. 
• Provide Solution Architecture solutions to the Technical Leads and Developers to enable them to design the Technical Architecture and implement the solution. 
• 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 development teams to identify strategic requirements and dependencies. 
• Contribute to the Technical Design Authority.
• Enable a positive technical culture, applying agile methods to development and completing quality assurance practices. 
• Advise product managers on the estimated effort and technical implications of current user stories, as well as those in the backlog. 
• Help enable the reuse of patterns, tools, and components across the whole government service landscape. 

Essential Criteria

• (Lead criteria) Strong software development and application architecture experience, testing and at least one programming language. 
• (Lead criteria) Expert levels of technical knowledge for designing, implementing and supporting technology architecture across a broad range of Microsoft technologies. 
• Experience managing and leading a team in an Agile/Scrum environment. 
• Extensive experience with cloud technology architectures (predominately Azure). 
• Understanding of how to influence senior management and communicate with both technical and non-technical audiences. 

Desirable Criteria

• Strong previous experience of applying IT security to technology architecture and software lifecycles. 
• Experience working with CRM/XRM Software experience such as Salesforce. 

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £58,520, OFGEM contributes £15,800 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 and Technical skills.

When you press the ‘Apply now’ button, you will be asked to complete personal details (not seen by the sift panel), and upload a copy of your CV anonymising all details where necessary.  

You will then be asked to answer 3 Technical Questions evidencing how you meet the essential and desirable skills and capabilities listed in the role profile. Please ensure you demonstrate clearly, within these answers how you meet each of the essential and desirable skills and capabilities. 

The Civil Service values honesty and integrity and expect all candidates to abide by these principles. Ofgem take any incidences of cheating very seriously. Please ensure all examples provided are of your own experience. Any instances of plagiarism or other forms of cheating will be investigated and, if proven, the relevant applications will be withdrawn from the process. 

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

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. 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.