Enterprise Architect

GCHQ

Cheltenham, UK

Hybrid

Expires: Expiring in less than 5 weeks

Full time

£71,889 - £80,079 per year

Job summary

As an Enterprise Architect, you’ll lead and support other Architects in shaping, and embedding GCHQs enterprise architecture. With responsibility for a defined remit of one or more departments, you’ll work across teams to design and guide architectures, influence decision- making and manage risk. You’ll be a trusted advisor, communicating complex architectural topics to a wide range of stakeholders. And as you work on our cutting-edge, unique technology, you’ll have the opportunity to apply your skills to interesting challenges and grow your career in a purposeful way.

Job description

Working on a complex portfolio of solutions, you’ll design and maintain artifacts for programmes and services within your departments, balancing organisational priorities and practical delivery. You’ll work with senior colleagues to ensure alignment with our long-term strategic goals, user needs, and industry best practice. Once you’re established in the role, you’ll also take on line management responsibilities for a small team, using your experience to support them their work and careers.

You’ll collaborate with delivery teams, engineers and business colleagues, and work extensively with senior leaders, external partners and industry bodies to shape shared direction and manage dependencies. Please note that occasional travel to sites across the UK will be required to enable close working with colleagues from across the organisation.

Person specification

You’ll have practical experience working as an Enterprise Architect, including leading teams or line-managing others. We’re interested in your support for our shared mission, the practical experience you’ve gained in the field and how you’ve contributed to architectural work across technology, data, digital or business-change initiatives. You will be required to provide mentoring to less-senior colleagues. In addition, you’ll be confident in your understanding of architecture standard and frameworks (such as ArchiMate TOGAF, Zachman and MODAF), as well as principles and governance models.

You will bring expertise in translating organisational goals into actionable architectural strategies. You’ll have experience leading design initiatives, proactively identifying risks and constraints, and optimising environments across technology, data, and processes to deliver impactful solutions. This means you’ll be well-equipped with the skills needed to take on complex, high-level projects that require trade-offs, strategic decision-making, and active management of organisational impact.

Your communication skills will be key as you work with senior stakeholders from technical and non-technical backgrounds, explaining decisions and technical concepts in a way that suits different audiences. You’ll be collaborative and adept at influencing and negotiating, and comfortable working across different teams. As your priorities will shift depending on business needs, you’ll also need to be adaptable and able to manage your own time effectively

Benefits

You’ll receive a starting salary of £71,889 to £80,079, plus other benefits including:
- 25 days’ annual leave automatically rising to 30 days after 5 years' service, and an additional 10.5 days of public and privilege holidays
- opportunities to be recognised through our employee performance scheme
- an interest-free season ticket loan (travel and parking)
- an excellent pension scheme
- a cycle to work scheme
- facilities such as a gym, restaurant, and on-site coffee bars (at some locations)
- paid parental and adoption leave

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

GCHQ is proud to have achieved Leader status within the Department for Work and Pensions’ Disability Confident scheme. This is aimed at encouraging employers to think differently about disability and take action to improve how they recruit, retain and develop disabled people. Being Disability Confident, we aim to offer a fair and proportionate number of person-to-person interviews to any candidate who self-identifies as disabled and meets the essential criteria for the role. This is our ‘Offer of Interview’ (OOI). To secure an interview for this vacancy, the essential criteria (in order of application process) are:

experience leading and guiding architecture design by translating organisational strategy and business and user needs into architectures and artifacts that are adopted across teams, and align with enterprise standards (assessed at application sift)
experience making and guiding architectural decisions involving managed levels of risk and complexity, balancing trade-offs (for example, cost, risk scalability or maintainability) and using governance and standards to enable sustainable delivery (assessed at application sift)
ability to influence and align multiple teams and senior stakeholders by communicating complex architectural concepts and building agreement around shared architectural direction (assessed at application sift)

There is a wide range of extra support available throughout the recruitment process to enable you to do your best, visit our How to Apply page for information on reasonable adjustments we can offer.

What to expect

Our recruitment process is fair, transparent, and based on merit. Here is a brief overview of each stage, in order:

application sift
virtual interview (assessing your technical skills and the organisational competencies)
if successful, you’ll receive a conditional offer of employment

Please note, you must successfully pass each stage of the process to progress to the next. Your application may take around 6 to 9 months to process including vetting, so we advise you continue any current employment until you have received your final job offer.

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

Security

Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is developed vetting (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

Open to UK nationals only.

Working for the Civil Service

Please note this Post is NOT regulated by the Civil Service Commission.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.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

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Contact point for applicants

Salary range

£71,889 - £80,079 per year