About the job

Job summary

This position is based nationally

Job description

We encourage applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that represents the wider society that we serve. We pride ourselves on being an employer of choice. We champion diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued and a sense of belonging. To find out more about how we do this visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about/equality-and-diversity.

Grade: Grade 7

(MoJ candidates who are on a specialist grade, will be able to retain this grade on lateral transfer)

 

Salary: London: £58,847 - £78,225 (which may include an allowance up to £19,378) National: £54,358 - £73,450 (which may include an allowance up to £19,092)

 

Working pattern: Full-time, part-time & flexible working

 

Contract Type: Permanent

 

Vacancy number: 84552

 

*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 THIS MAP 

The Role:

We’re recruiting for a Senior Technical Architect here at Justice Digital, to be part of our warm and collaborative Director of Digital team. 

As a Technical Architect, you’ll work as part of core multidisciplinary teams delivering innovative services for use by the public or teams across the Ministry of Justice.

Technical Architects can act as a technical product owner, developing short, medium, and long term strategies for services within Justice Digital. You’ll also be designing and delivering digital services that make a genuine difference to people’s lives, alongside championing the adoption of emerging technologies. 

At Justice Digital, you’ll be working on our acclaimed open-source public services, with user needs at the heart of everything we do, helping us to transform government for the future. 

To help picture your life at MoJ Justice Digital please take a look at our blog and our Digital and Technology strategy 2025 

Key Responsibilities:

As a Senior Technical Architect in Justice Digital, you will:

• Work with Lead Technical Architects to own the technical strategy and roadmap for services of various sizes and complexity, defining how they integrate with other services and teams, and how they evolve over time
• Undertake structured evaluation of technical concepts, translating this into technical designs that describe a solution

• Look for opportunities to collaborate and reuse common components, communicating with both technical and non-technical people
• Support transforming government into a more agile organisation by helping embed modern development practices
• Guide technical teams, influence technical choices and seek out opportunities for digital transformation
• Align your teams work with departmental and wider government’s technology strategy
• Collaborate and find agreement with senior stakeholders, providing both technical and non-technical direction and challenge
• Support hiring, taking part in recruitment for both Technical Architects and other professions such as developers
• Mentor, coach, and line manage less senior colleagues 

If this feels like an exciting challenge, something you are enthusiastic about, and want to join our team please read on and apply! 

Benefits:

• 37 hours per week and flexible working options including working from home, working part-time, job sharing, or working compressed hours.
• We are committed to nurturing our staff and provide lots of training and development opportunities with learning platforms such as: Linux Academy, O’Reilly, Pluralsight, Microsoft Learning, Civil Service Learning, GDS Academy, etc.
• 10% dedicated time to learning and development with a budget of £1000 a year per person
• Generous civil service pension based on defined benefit scheme, with employer contributions of 26-30% depending on salary.
• 25 days leave (plus bank holidays) and 1 privilege day usually taken around the Kings’ 5 additional days of leave once you have reached 5 years of service.
• Compassionate maternity, adoption, and shared parental leave policies, with up to 26 weeks leave at full pay, 13 weeks with partial pay, and 13 weeks further leave. And maternity support/paternity leave at full pay for 2 weeks, too!
• Wellbeing support including access to the Calm
• Nurturing professional and interpersonal networks including those for Carers & Childcare, Gender Equality, PROUD and SPIRIT
• Bike loans up to £2500 and secure bike parking (subject to availability and location)
• Season ticket loans, childcare vouchers and eye-care
• 5 days volunteering paid
• Free membership to BCS, the Chartered Institute for
• Some offices may have a subsidised onsite

Person Specification:

Across Justice Digital, we use a variety of technologies, and we don’t expect anyone to be an expert in anything, or have an engineering background. If you don’t feel like you meet all of the below, we still encourage you to apply as we will proactively help you learn our technical landscape. 

Teams typically use:

• Programming languages such as TypeScript, Kotlin, Java, Go, Ruby, Python, PHP, or Node.js
• AWS and Azure using infrastructure as code such as Terraform, CloudFormation, or ARM templates
• Container orchestration tools like Kubernetes or Fargate
• Public GitHub repositories for our work
• Modern development practices such as domain-driven design, test-driven development, continuous integration and continuous delivery
• Mac laptops
• plus other tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, AppInsights, GitHub Actions, CircleCI, and more 

Essential:

• Experience of making and guiding effective technical choices by understanding the whole context
• Experience of communicating technical detail to non-technical stakeholders
• Enjoy learning and helping others
• Ensure plans and activities in your area of work reflect wider strategic priorities and communicate effectively with senior management to influence future strategies.
• Able to identify and mitigate security risks when designing and operating in a public cloud environment
• Experience of introducing and encouraging best practices such as TDD, continuous integration, continuous delivery, and DevOps to teams
• Experience at many levels of the web stack, such as frontend and backend, APIs, databases, and pub/sub architectures 

Willingness to be assessed against the requirements BPSS clearance 

We welcome the unique contribution diverse applicants bring and do not discriminate based on culture, ethnicity, race, nationality or national origin, age, sex, gender identity or expression, religion or belief, disability status, sexual orientation, educational or social background or any other factor. 

Our values are Purpose, Humanity Openness and Together. Find out more here about how we celebrate diversity and an inclusive culture in our workplace. 

Person specification

Please refer to Job Description

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £54,358, Ministry of Justice contributes £15,165 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

Candidates must submit a CV, which describes how you meet the requirements set out in the Person Specification above. 

In Justice Digital, we recruit using a combination of the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability and Success Profiles Frameworks. We will assess your Experience, Technical Skills and the following Behaviours during the assessment process: 

• Communicating and Influencing
• Developing Self and Others
• Seeing The Bigger Picture 

A diverse panel will review your application against the Person Specification above. 

Successful candidates who meet the required standard will then be invited to a 1.5 hour panel interview, consisting of an on screen exercise, held via video conference. 

Should we receive a high volume of applications, a pre-sift based on Experience as a Technical Architect or a Developer will be conducted before the sift. 

Should you be unsuccessful in the role that you have applied for but demonstrate the capability for a role at a lower level, we reserve the right to discuss this opportunity with you and offer you the position without needing a further application. 

A reserve list may be held for up to 12 months, from which further appointments may be made. 

Terms & Conditions:

Please review our Terms & Conditions which set out how we recruit and provide further information related to the role and salary arrangements. 

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact recruitment@digital.justice.gov.uk

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.