Head of Technical Architecture - Central Government

Role: Head of Technical Architecture

Contract Length: 6 months

Location: Hybrid/London, Manchester or Bristol - formal onsite expectation is two days per week

IR35: Inside

Pay Rate to Intermediary: £875 - £900 per day

Security Clearance: BPSS and SC eligible requested

Spinwell is recruiting for a Head of Technical Architecture for an excellent opportunity within the public sector.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE HEAD OF TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE

• Lead the Architects within the programme, being the head of the line management tree and reporting to the Head of Technical Architecture for Personalisation.
• Be responsible for designing and driving the technical strategy for our AI digital products within the Product and Services directorate while ensuring alignment with broader client standards and goals.
• Hold the vision for technical architecture best practice for AI digital product development and support this work across client, enabling us to build resilient and reliable government services, communicating this to technical and non-technical audiences alike.
• Thrive using agile methods and enjoy working collaboratively with multidisciplinary teams.
• Want to make the government better, which may sometimes involve challenging the status quo.
• Be responsible for the development of the Technical Architecture community, which includes continued professional development, ensuring proper line management is in place, and community-owned assets (e.g. role descriptions and recruitment approaches).
• Lead and head the Technical Architecture community to both develop and deploy capability, knowledge, and skills to meet digital delivery needs and objectives together, with the Deputy Director and with Engineering.
• Take ownership of the architectural strategy for client products and services, including languages, frameworks, integration, CI/CD, hosting, and monitoring. Documented in The client Way.
• Together alongside the Head of Cyber Security, work with stakeholders in other government departments and agencies to develop and align technical standards and governance.
• Contribute from an architecture perspective to the continuous development of the overall client strategy - review technical roadmaps, looking ahead for future opportunities or blockers, and ensuring decisions by teams align with the strategy.
• Work with senior technologists to define and shape how technical governance works across client to ensure decision making is happening in the right moments.
• Work with other discipline heads to ensure that all technology and products are built in line with user needs, and have an effective ownership and operational model for their ongoing support.
• Identify good practices to adopt and sharing your experiences, eg through blog posts, tech talks at conferences.

SKILLS/EXPERIENCES OF THE HEAD OF TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE

• Experience of designing (as well as launching) technical architectures for AI enabled digital products.
• A passion for technology and its delivery in building a user-centric service in an ever-changing space, ensuring the right technology solutions meet outcomes for our users.
• Strong software development and application architecture experience, with good knowledge of cloud technologies, open-source technologies, testing.
• An understanding of how to influence, manage and challenge complex stakeholder relationships and communicate with both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Experience of developing and managing high performing, agile, technical teams and creating an inclusive, collaborative culture across boundaries and locations.
• Practical knowledge at all levels of the modern serverless technology stacks, from front-end code down to infrastructure and networking.
• A deep understanding of modern technology practices such as test-driven development (TDD), continuous integration, continuous delivery and DevOps.
• A good knowledge of cloud security architecture, including threat modelling, analysis and operations.
• Experience developing and implementing technical strategy and standards.
• Experience defining and refining technical governance in multidisciplinary agile environments.

We welcome all applications regardless of background, in line with our commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion.

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