Principal Solutions Architect

Job summary

Right now, within government departments and secure facilities around the world, people are making decisions that protect the UK's interests. They're sharing sensitive intelligence, coordinating responses to emerging threats, and collaborating on work that is imperative to UK interests.

They can do this because of Rosa.

Our work is the foundation for what comes next. The government has committed to a programme that will upgrade Rosa to a modern cloud-first platform. But transformation doesn't happen in a vacuum - it happens because the current service is trusted, reliable, and run by people who understand what government actually needs.

We need your help to deliver Rosa brilliantly today. This is how we earn the right to deliver the next generation capability for working at SECRET. Every improvement we make, every incident we resolve, every user we support builds the credibility and capability that makes transformation possible.

Job description

We are looking for a motivated Solution Architect to take on the challenge of solving complex problems by designing, modernising and securing services that play a critical role in protecting some of the UK government’s most sensitive information.

More than ever, we need to stay ahead of the latest threats, proactively defend our systems and continuously improve our tools, techniques, and processes. And most importantly, we place our users at the heart of everything we do.

Whilst we sit in an established government department, the team structure and ethos are dynamic and agile, more akin to a modern tech start-up. We are pioneering new ways of delivering IT shared services across government, and we’re having fun doing it.

If you thrive in an exciting and complex environment and can bring experience and ambition to the team, this extremely rewarding role is perfect for you.

As Principal Solution Architect your main responsibilities will include:

Technical Vision & Strategy: Lead the development of technical vision and strategies for digital and product solutions at Rosa, ensuring alignment with strategic goals and government policy. This includes translating business needs into technical requirements, defining technical architecture, and developing implementation roadmaps.

Solution Design & Development: Oversee the design, development, and integration of digital and product solutions at Rosa, focusing on user experience, security, accessibility, technical debt resolution, and value-for-money. This involves collaborating with stakeholders, recommending technologies, and ensuring solution quality.

Security Governance & Compliance: Ensure adherence to security standards and governance of high classification systems within Rosa's digital solutions. This includes implementing security measures, meeting regulatory requirements, and maintaining the integrity of sensitive data.

Technical Leadership & Collaboration: Lead and mentor technical teams at Rosa, promoting best practices and continuous improvement. This involves guiding architects, building stakeholder relationships, and developing technical talent.

Innovation & Emerging Technologies: Stay updated on emerging technologies and trends, identifying opportunities to improve efficiency and user experience at Rosa. This includes evaluating new technologies, developing proofs of concept, and sharing knowledge.

Communication & Stakeholder Management: Communicate effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders at Rosa, ensuring alignment on solution design and implementation. This involves presenting technical information, facilitating discussions, and maintaining documentation.

Person specification

When giving details in your employment history and personal statement you should highlight your experience in line with essential criteria below:

Essential Criteria

• Architecture Leadership: You will have deep experience in working in an architecture function and leading the development of the vision, principles, and strategy for architects for a set of products, projects, and technologies. You will be practised in creating technical standards, blueprints, reference architectures, roadmaps, transition states and target solutions across multiple services.
• Stakeholder Management: You will have proven ability to lead and influence stakeholders across multiple disciplines, crafting and advocating for long-term technical vision aligned with business strategy. This will include experience of interacting with, and influencing, senior stakeholders and a wide range of people across large teams, departments, suppliers, and customers.
• Communicating & Influencing: You will have exceptional communication skills, adept at translating complex technical concepts for both technical and non-technical audiences. Proven ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams and build strong relationships with vendors.
• Delivery: You will have practical hands-on experience in technical and solution architecture and design including within programmes, projects, or a product-centric organisation, across agile and waterfall methodologies.
• Secure by Design: Proven track record of incorporating security considerations into all phases of the solution design lifecycle, ensuring compliance with relevant security standards and regulations.
• Making Effective Decisions: You will have strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a demonstrated ability to identify and address technical challenges. You will be passionate about exploring and implementing innovative solutions to meet evolving government needs.
• General Technology Expertise: You will have a good understanding of a broad range of industry-standard technologies, both proprietary and open source, across a diverse range of Microsoft and Linux-based deployments, across physical, virtual, and containerised services.
• Cloud Expertise: Experience designing and implementing cloud solutions across major providers (Azure, AWS, GCP, Oracle) ideally including air-gapped and/or cloud deployments. Expertise in navigating platform-specific features and optimising and automating (IaC) deployments for maximum security, performance, and cost-effectiveness. Strong understanding of cloud governance models and compliance frameworks relevant to government environments.

Desirable Criteria

• On-Premise Classified Environments: Extensive experience architecting and securing solutions within highly sensitive and classified environments, including familiarity with relevant security policies, regulations, and best practices.
• Zero Trust: Deep understanding of zero trust principles and their application in designing secure architectures, including experience with identity-based access control, micro-segmentation, and data encryption.
• Identity & Access Management: Experience with identity and access management solutions, including privileged access management, and ability to architect secure authentication and authorisation mechanisms.
• Software Defined Data Centres: Experience with software-defined networking, storage, and compute solutions, including virtualization technologies and their implementation in government data centres.

Additional Info

A minimum 60% of your working time should be spent at your principal workplace in East Kilbride. Regular travel to other UK office locations will also be required - requirements to attend other locations for official business will also count towards this level of attendance.

Behaviours

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

• Communicating and Influencing
• Delivering at Pace
• Managing a Quality Service

Technical skills

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

• Technical Design throughout the Lifecycle
• Problem Definition and Shaping

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £69,500, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office contributes £20,134 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

• We understand that people are at the heart of our success. We promote and encourage all our staff to follow continued professional development, offering our staff access to a range of learning and development opportunities
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 28.97%
• Working patterns to support work/life balance such as job sharing, term-time working, flexi-time and compressed hours.
• Work that directly enables UK national security
• The satisfaction of keeping critical infrastructure running for users who depend on it
• The pride of supporting the most sensitive work government does -and knowing it depends on you
• 25 days annual leave (rising to 30), Civil Service pension, genuine flexibility
• A pathway to shaping the future for working at SECRET for HMG

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

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.

Step 1.

Submit a CV outlining your employment history detailing your responsibilities, skills, accomplishments, plus your qualifications and relevant training. Please ensure you have provided reasons for any gaps within the last two years.

Step 2.

A Personal Statement of 750 words explaining how you consider your skills, qualities and experience to evidence your suitability for the role, focusing on the essential skills in the job profile.

These responses along with behaviours and technical skills will be explored further during the interview process for shortlisted candidates.

Step 3.

Additional Eligibility Questions. Answers to these questions will determine if you are eligible to apply.

Applications will be sifted anonymously so please remove any biographical data that would identify you.

As part of the online application process, you will be asked several diversity-related questions. If you do not wish to provide a declaration on any of the characteristics, you will have the option to select ‘prefer not to say’. The information you provide when submitting your application will help us monitor the Civil Service commitment to diversity and inclusion. You can refer to the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy for more information.

You will receive an acknowledgment of your application through the online process.

Step 4.

For the interview, an assessment tool will be used in addition to the behaviours and technical skills listed. You will be given details of this prior to interview to prepare.

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

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.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

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.

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

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : Business Support
• Email : RSOBusinessSupport@fcdo.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : RSOBusinessSupport@fcdo.gov.uk

Further information

The FCDO’s recruitment processes are underpinned by the principle of selection for appointment on merit, on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission Recruitment Principles. If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with the Recruitment Principles and you wish to make a complaint, you should, in the first instance, contact External.Recruitment@fcdo.gov.uk. If you are not satisfied with the response you receive from the FCDO, you can contact the Office of the Civil Service Commissioners.

Attachments

RSO Role Profile - G6 Principal Solutions Architect 2 Opens in new window (pdf, 235kB)