Shared Platform Services Principal Architect

Defra is the UK government department responsible for safeguarding our natural environment, supporting our world-leading food and farming industry, and sustaining a thriving rural economy. Our broad remit means we play a major role in people's day-to-day life, from the food we eat, and the air we breathe, to the water we drink., The Principal Architect is responsible for the end to end design, assurance and strategic direction of technical architecture and cloud-based re-usable services across Defra Shared Platform Services (SPS), representing Group Infrastructure & Operations (GIO) within the wider DDTS Architecture function while contributing to cross-domain architectural strategy and standards.

As a key member of the GIO Platforms team, the role contributes to the roadmap for Shared Platform adoption, evolution and reuse across the organisation, ensuring alignment with business needs and provision of value driven services in support of an expanding portfolio of externally facing digital services.

The role provides technical leadership across multiple platforms (including Customer, Identity, Data Platform and Integration), ensuring that systems are secure, scalable, interoperable, and adhere to organisational strategy and governance., * Provide architectural leadership in implementation of technical architecture and reusable cloud-based services.

• Support and oversee solution architects and technical teams in the completion of high-quality architectural artefacts - including Solution Overviews, Conceptual Service Designs, Architectural Design Records, High-Level System Records and Security documentation.

• Lead the design and support the build of technical architecture for Shared Platform Services using established technologies and innovation, applying expertise in emerging platform technologies and innovation (with awareness of how these are used and adopted in other organisations).
• Translate complex business and technical requirements into coherent solution designs, guide technical teams, influence governance decisions, and ensure that architectural artefacts meet required quality standards.
• Conduct deep technical investigations, represent technical teams to senior stakeholders, and ensure alignment with broader digital and organisational strategy. Identify trends, wider industry practices and innovation to inform the architectural approach and ensure alignment to broader strategy.
• Design systems characterised by manageable levels of business and technical complexity. Identify reuse opportunities and promote shared components across the organisation.
• Drive architectural assurance, quality control, and risk identification across systems. Make and influence decisions based on managed levels of risk and complexity, follow governance procedures and take responsibility for technical assurance and risk identification across services. Ensure that standards, patterns, policies and designs are applied correctly, challenged where appropriate, and influence improvements in governance processes where appropriate.
• Communicate with stakeholders at technical and non-technical levels across the business and multiple delivery programmes across the organisation. Communicate complex architecture to varied audiences, including senior leaders, and speak on behalf of technical teams and build strong relationships with both direct and indirect stakeholders.
• Champion architectural coherence across shared services, ensuring decisions taken within GIO support Defra-wide strategic direction preventing creation of siloed or tactical solutions. Provide architectural leadership beyond operational boundaries, ensuring infrastructure, platform and shared services designs align with enterprise strategy, security principles, service tiering, and long-term technology roadmaps., Where the location is ‘National’ the successful appointee should discuss and agree an appropriate contractual location in line with both Defra’s location policy and site capacity, prior to proceeding with pre-employment processes.

The agreed amount of time spent at a workplace for this post will reflect the requirement for Civil Servants to spend at least 60% of their working time in an organisation workplace with the option to work the remaining time flexibly from home. Working time spent at a workplace may include time spent at other organisational locations including field-based operational locations, together with supplier, customer or partner locations. This is a non-contractual agreement which is consistent with common Civil Service expectations.

Travel costs to non-contractual workplaces will be subject to departmental travel and subsistence policies. Travel costs to contractual workplaces are the responsibility of the employee.

The successful candidate is required to carry out all their duties from a UK location, and cannot do so from an overseas location at any time.

Defra includes the core department, APHA, RPA, Cefas and VMD.

Reserve list

A reserve list may be held for a period of 12 months from which further appointments can be made.

Near miss

Candidates who are judged to be a near miss at interview may be considered for other positions in Defra which may be at a lower grade, but have a potential skills match., If a person with disabilities is put at a substantial disadvantage compared to a non-disabled person, we have a duty to make reasonable changes to our processes., * 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)
• 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

As a senior member of the platforms team, the role requires a broad technical knowledge of platform technologies, as well as expertise in implementation and delivery of reusable cloud-based services - including, but not limited to:

• Microsoft tech stack (including Azure SaaS and PaaS services)

• Amazon Cloud Infrastructure / Services

• Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Services

• Identity Management - inc. Identity & Access Management (IdAM), Identity Services and authentication protocols (inc. OIDC) and Microsoft Identity services.

• Microsoft Cloud Service for Data inc. MS Fabric, Purview and Power BI

• Data ingestion, modelling and visualisation

• MS Dynamics 365

• Power Platforms

• Dell Boomi Managed Cloud Services

• Azure API Management (APIM)

• Azure DevOps

• Significant experience leading architecture for large-scale digital or platform services.

• Demonstrate a good understanding of current and emerging platform technologies, including awareness of how these are used and adopted in other organisations.

• Experience in implementation of shared and reusable platforms, including those relating to Customer, Identity, Data and Integration services.

• Experience in the development and application of reusable design patterns and producing high-quality architectural documentation.

• Experience working within an architecture practice, defining and evolving standards, patterns, reference architectures and target-state designs, and providing architectural assurance across complex programmes and portfolios.

• Proven experience authoring and reviewing architectural artefacts, including High-Level Designs (HLDs), strategy papers, roadmaps, and options papers, ensuring documentation is clear, evidence-based, and aligned to organisational strategy and governance frameworks., * Changing and Improving

• Communicating and Influencing

• Making Effective Decisions

• Seeing the Big Picture

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Making architectural decisions - practitioner
• Architect for the whole context - practitioner
• Architecture communication - communication between the technical and non-technical) - expert
• Strategy design - practitioner
• Community collaboration - practitioner
• Technical design throughout the life cycle - expert, This vacancy is using Success Profiles , and will assess your Behaviours, Strengths, Experience and Technical skills., Please take note that Defra does not hold a UK Visa & Immigration (UKVI) Skilled Worker License sponsor and are unable to sponsor any individuals for Skilled Worker Sponsorship., Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Pulled from the full job description

• Childcare
• Employee discount
• Employee assistance programme
• Company pension
• Paid volunteer time
• Cycle to work scheme
• Season ticket loan, £67,730 - £81,535 National: £67,730 - £75,480 London: £73,165 - £81,535 plus industry leading pension and benefits.

This post offers successful candidates the opportunity to be considered for an additional Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) Skills Supplement. The level of the awarded supplement is determined following a separate skills assessment process, the outcome of which has no impact on the decision to make a job offer. This digital capability supplement ranges from £0 to £28,995 and you may be awarded a pay supplement within this range based on results of your additional skills assessment.

For details of our pay on appointment policy, please see below under the heading ‘Salary’ A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97% GBP, Alongside your salary of £67,730, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs contributes £19,621 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides .

• 25 days leave (rising to 30 days over 5 years) plus bank holidays.

A Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 28.97%. A day off per year for the King's birthday. Access to a range of retail discounts (these include supermarket, tech, gym, holiday, phone and more). Flexible working options such as condensed hours, part-time and flexi time. 3 paid volunteering days per year. Funding for professional membership of a recognised professional body. Learning and development tailored to your role and budget for training or qualifications. A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity. Cycle to work scheme. Health cash plan to help you manage health costs for a reduced monthly fee. Access to the Employee Assistance Programme open 24 hours, 7 days a week, that provides support to you during any times of stress or difficulty. Free access to Headspace for wellbeing.

• Season ticket loan for public transport., New entrants to the Civil Service are expected to start on the minimum of the pay band. The internal roles rules apply to existing Civil Servants, i.e. level transfers move on current salary or the pay range minimum, transfers on promotion move to new pay range minimum or receive 10% increase. Either case is determined by whichever is the highest.

We have around 1000 colleagues across DDTS and our ambition is to make it easier and faster than ever for people to interact with Defra. If you are ready to drive innovation and push boundaries, we want to hear from you. Join us and together we will create a great place for living, and a green and healthy future for all.