Technical & Security Architect

Job summary

The Technical & Security Architect is a key member of the EA Team and is responsible for the architecture and security of the team’s domains monitoring platform and to ensure that the .gov.uk registry provider delivers a resilient service.

The UK Public Sector depends on internet domain name spaces such as “.gov.uk”, and you will ensure these name spaces remain stable, trusted, well managed and resistant to compromise.

You will bring together your proven technical and cyber expertise with business transformation where branding, government policy and law all play a part through the creation of secure technical solution designs ensuring all our services and infrastructure are secure by design.

It is essential that you are positive, proactive and collaborative with a commitment to providing excellent customer service.

Job description

The key responsibilities and deliverables for this post are working with your UKEF colleagues and customers to ensure that UKEF is able to meet evolving customer demand using a secure, scalable and robust enterprise architecture blueprint.

The main activities of your role will be:

• Designing secure systems - you can design and review system architectures through the development of patterns and principles.
• Security technology - you can demonstrate strong knowledge of system architectures. You can understand and articulate the impact of vulnerabilities on existing and future designs and systems, and how easy or difficult it will be to exploit these vulnerabilities. You can be recognised as an expert by peers in the broader security industry.
• Communicating between the technical and non-technical - you can identify the needs of business and technical stakeholders. You can effectively manage stakeholder expectations. You can demonstrate excellent communication skills and can manage difficult conversations or negotiations.
• Making and guiding decisions - you can make decisions characterised by managed levels of risk and complexity and recommend decisions as risk and complexity increase. You can resolve technical disputes between wider peers and indirect stakeholders, considering all views and opinions.
• Strategy - you can apply strategy, using and challenging patterns, standards, policies, roadmaps and vision statements. You can provide guidance.
• Turning business problems into secure technical designs - you can design systems characterised by high levels of risk, impact, and business or technical complexity. You can simultaneously work across multiple services or a single large or complicated service.
• Understanding the whole context - you can understand trends and practices outside your team and how these will impact your work. You can see how your work fits into the broader strategy and historical context. You can consider the patterns and interactions on a larger scale.
• The public core of the internet - you will have detailed and extensive experience of naming and numbering systems, cryptographic mechanisms, packet routing and common protocols and how the domain name system (DNS) works

You will also have detailed and extensive expertise of at least two of the following:

• managing domains for a large, distributed and federated organisation
• how domains are used to support internet services and their security
• different ways that a domain vulnerability can be exploited, and how to prevent them
• developing tools that interact with domain records
  
  

This list is not exhaustive, and you may be required to carry out additional duties according to business needs.

Person specification

Qualifications

• Relevant degree in associated Computer Science subject or equivalent demonstrable professional experience (A, I)
• Recognised architectural qualification e.g. TOGAF, BCS (A)

Knowledge

• Demonstrable knowledge of the creation of and embedding of relevant architectural policies, standards and models (A, I, P)
• Demonstrable knowledge of security frameworks, standards and regulatory requirements e.g. GDPR, PCI DSS (A, I)

Skills/Ability

• Ability to demonstrate the creation of and embedding of relevant architectural policies, standards and models. (I, P, T)
• Ability to create and deliver enterprise architectures. (A, P, I.)
• High level stakeholder relationship management. (A, I)
• Ability to provide guidance to development teams, mentor team members, foster professional growth, and create an inclusive and collaborative environment. (A, I)

Experience

• Leadership and management in an enterprise architecture function. (A, I)
• Demonstrable extensive experience in the field of technical and security architecture, covering a wide range of activities, aligning to the technology, digital and data requirements of the role; to ensure business priorities, value for money and risk are all considerations. (I, P, T)
• Experience of working across the business to ensure strategic needs are captured within the vision and roadmaps of the enterprise architecture. (A, I)
• Experience of advising and developing the future state architecture of an organisation to meet strategic needs, including a working knowledge of cloud technologies. (A, I)
• Experience of applying best practice Data Management methods, to develop data quality metrics to optimise system performance. (A, I)
• Experience of applying best in practice architectural concepts and processes, including working with relevant tooling that supports enterprise architecture development, mapping and monitoring. (A, I)

Qualifications

•Relevant degree in associated Computer Science subject or equivalent demonstrable professional experience (A, I)
•Recognised architectural qualification e.g. TOGAF, BCS (A)

Behaviours

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

• Seeing the Big Picture
• Changing and Improving
• Communicating and Influencing

Technical skills

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

• Technical questions where you will be assessed across your technical expertise and acumen, in relation to the essential criteria.
• Presentation - the topic will be agreed by UKEF and shared with the relevant candidates ahead of the interview

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £61,250, UK Export Finance contributes £17,744 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

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.

We are assessing candidates using Success Profiles (see Appendix 1) and across the whole process we will assess your Experience, Technical, and Behaviours as highlighted below.

The application must be completed by 23.55 on the day of the closing date for it to be accepted.

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

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 for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Please ensure that you read through the Candidate Information Pack attached to this advert, before applying.

All applications will be sifted against our essential criteria outlined in the personal specification.

• Qualifications:
  • Relevant degree in associated Computer Science subject or equivalent demonstrable professional experience (A, I)
  • Recognised architectural qualification e.g. TOGAF, BCS (A)
• Statement of suitability - you should fully articulate in 750 words how you meet the essential criteria outlined in the person specification within the Information Pack.

For the initial sift your application will be evaluated against:

1. Experience - Application and Statement of Suitability

The activities listed in the job description are linked closest to the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework, role: both Technical architect - Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework

In the event of a high volume of applications we will carry out an initial sift based on the following essential criteria from the person specification:

• Experience of applying best in practice architectural concepts and processes, including working with relevant tooling that supports enterprise architecture development, mapping and monitoring. (A, I)
• Ability to create and deliver enterprise architectures (A, I, P)
• Experience of advising and developing the future state architecture of an organisation to meet strategic needs, including a working knowledge of cloud technologies (A, I)

If you are successful following the full sift stage, you will be invited to an initial technical interview; this will include the following assessment:

1. Technical - technical questions where you will be assessed across your technical expertise and acumen, in relation to the essential criteria

If you are successful following the initial technical interview, you will be invited to a panel interview; this will include the following assessment:

1. Behaviours/Experience - a formal panel interview where you will be interviewed across all three behaviours highlighted.
2. Technical - you will be assessed across your technical expertise and acumen, in relation to the essential criteria
   1. Presentation - the topic will be agreed by UKEF and shared with the relevant candidates ahead of the interview

Details of interview panel members will be e-mailed to all successful candidates who are invited for interview.

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 security check (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

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.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 : UKEF Resourcing Team
• Email : Recruitment2@ukexportfinance.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : Recruitment2@ukexportfinance.gov.uk

Further information

Should you have a complaint or wish to raise any concerns regarding the recruitment process, please e-mail your complaint to the Head of Pay and Resourcing (UKEF) at Recruitment2@ukexportfinance.gov.uk and include “Complaint” in the subject heading. Should you remain dissatisfied following UKEF’s investigation then you can refer your complaint to the Commission - http://civilservicecommission.independent.gov.uk/making-complaint.

Attachments

Candidate Info Pack - T&S Architect Opens in new window (pdf, 4369kB)