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Job summary

The Government Digital Service (GDS) is the digital centre of government. We are responsible for setting, leading and delivering the vision for a modern digital government.

Our priorities are to drive a modern digital government, by:

1. joining up public sector services
2. harnessing the power of AI for the public good
3. strengthening and extending our digital and data public infrastructure
4. elevating leadership and investing in talent
5. funding for outcomes and procuring for growth and innovation
6. committing to transparency and driving accountability

We are home to the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (I.AI), the world-leading GOV.UK and at the forefront of coordinating the UK’s geospatial strategy and activity. We lead the Government Digital and Data function and champion the work of digital teams across government.

We’re part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and employ more than 1,000 people all over the UK, with hubs in Manchester, London and Bristol.

The Government Digital Service is where talent translates into impact. From your first day, you’ll be working with some of the world’s most highly-skilled digital professionals, all contributing their knowledge to make change on a national scale.

Join us for rewarding work that makes a difference across the UK. You'll solve some of the nation’s highest-priority digital challenges, helping millions of people access services they need

Job description

The Spend Assurance team leads the assurance of digital delivery plans across central government. Before 1 April, its primary objective was to enforce compliance with government digital policy and standards through control gates and approvals on behalf of Ministers. Its focus has now shifted to helping the most important public sector services access the insight, assurance and support they need to make better decisions earlier and deliver more effectively across the digital lifecycle, ensuring citizens, businesses and staff experience better public services sooner.

The service focuses on:

• Supporting the Chief Secretary to the Treasury (CST) to make well-informed decisions on digital delivery by providing access to digital expertise through integrated assurance

• Working with departmental assurance colleagues to improve their approaches, enabling faster delivery while managing risk effectively

• Acting as a critical friend to digital teams, offering independent challenge to avoid groupthink and blind spots

• Maintaining a strategic understanding of delivery across organisations to support more effective performance conversations in Digital Business Reviews (DBRs)

• Generating and sharing insights from delivery activity across government

• Connecting teams undertaking similar work to spread knowledge and lessons

• Signposting delivery teams to the support and interventions they need to solve problems

We assess digital delivery plans through four lenses:

• Alignment with strategic objectives: understanding how initiatives contribute to organisational and cross-government strategies, identifying tensions and trade-offs, and helping decision-makers strike the right balance

• Alignment with standards: understanding how standards and the Technology Code of Practice apply, and where trade-offs may be necessary to support successful delivery while continuing to meet legal requirements

• Avoiding duplication: identifying opportunities to reuse existing capability, components, patterns or knowledge to accelerate delivery, while managing the risks created by dependencies, and

• Meeting outcomes: understanding the intended change or result beyond outputs and assessing whether delivery plans provide a credible route to realising those outcomes early and incrementally.

The service team is small, comprising 4 Senior Advisors and a Head of Spend Assurance, with 2 further advisor roles being recruited via this campaign. Given the scale and ambition of the team’s objectives, close collaboration with other teams is essential. We also use an “AI in Assurance” product that enables us to access useful insight more quickly.

In integrated assurance, we work as part of a multidisciplinary team alongside Commercial Business Partners in the Cabinet Office, Project Delivery Advisors in NISTA, and Spend leads in HM Treasury.

We also work closely with more than 100 assurers across government departments and arm’s-length bodies, bringing them together as a cross-government assurance community. This community acts as a force multiplier for the objectives across the public sector.

The Role

The Senior Solutions Architect will lead technical assurance of Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) delivery and spend across several central government organisations, acting as a trusted adviser to internal assurance functions, service owners, and programme and project leaders.

You will also advise senior leaders across the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), and His Majesty's Treasury (HMT), alongside the Government Commercial Function (GCF), and the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA), supporting oversight of DDaT delivery, procurement and spending plans and helping build confidence that they are technically sound, deliverable, aligned to strategic objectives, and represent value for money.

A key aspect of the role is providing credible technical leadership across a complex portfolio of major programmes. You will engage confidently with senior technical and delivery stakeholders, shaping discussions on architecture, delivery approaches, and technical risk, and providing robust, evidence based advice to support decision making.

You will also contribute to the continuous improvement of the cross government DDaT assurance service, helping develop its approaches, tools and standards.

The UK's national security depends on advanced digital and data capabilities to meet evolving threats and increasing technological complexity. Depending on your work experience (including already holding the right level of security clearance, or a willingness and ability to successfully undertake vetting at joining) you may have an opportunity to assure digital delivery within the national security space.

Person specification

We understand that every person will bring something different to the role and expect you to demonstrate the following skills:

• making and guiding architectural design decisions of medium risk and complexity, identifying and addressing architectural risks that affect multiple teams or domains, and using and contributing to architectural governance and assurance to manage technical risks at the appropriate level

• framing problems of medium complexity, complication or risk so that solutions can be created, and describing options for solving them so that appropriate delivery methods can be decided

• leading the communication of complicated, complex or risky architecture topics with technical and non-technical stakeholders, communicating with senior stakeholders across the organisation, adapting your message to your audience, and advocating on behalf of a team

• aligning your work with other architects and technical professionals, tracking emerging issues, strategies, roadmaps, patterns and technologies to assess opportunities and risks, and identifying how other teams contribute to delivering outcomes through change

• understanding commercial processes and the appropriate internal contacts within a government department, and understanding different sourcing strategies and when to apply them

• negotiating with and influencing stakeholders and managing relationships effectively, influencing decisions and removing blockers in challenging situations, and building long-term strategic relationships that support mutual needs and commitments while focusing on user needs

Benefits

There are many benefits of working at GDS, including:

• flexible hybrid working with flexi-time and the option to work part-time or condensed hours
• a Civil Service Pension with an average employer contribution of 28.97%
• 25 days of annual leave, increasing by a day each year up to a maximum of 30 days
• an extra day off for the King’s birthday
• an in-year bonus scheme to recognise high performance
• career progression and coaching, including a training budget for personal development
• a focus on wellbeing with access to an employee assistance programme
• job satisfaction from making government services easier to use and more inclusive for people across the UK
• advances on pay, including for travel season tickets
• death in service benefits
• cycle to work scheme and facilities
• access to an employee discounts scheme
• 10 learning days per year
• volunteering opportunities (5 special leave days per year)
• access to a suite of learning activities through Civil Service learning

Any move to Government Digital Service from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax Free Childcare. Determine your eligibility at https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk

Office attendance
The Department operates a discretionary hybrid working policy, which provides for a combination of working hours from your place of work and from your home in the UK. The current expectation for staff is to attend the office or non-home based location for 40-60% of the time over the accounting period.
DSIT does not normally offer full home working (i.e. working at home); but we do offer a variety of flexible working options (including occasionally working from home).

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

The standard selection process for roles at GDS consists of:

• a simple application screening process - We only ask for a CV and to answer 2 application questions. Your application will be assessed against making architectural decisions, and problem definition and shaping.
• a 60 minute video interview. Candidates invited to the interview will be asked to:
  • submit a paper (maximum 1,000 words) 24 hours before the interview, on a technology subject shared 1 week prior to the interview, follow up questions may follow at the interview
  • provide a short presentation followed by Q&A
  • explain how they will approach a given scenario, followed by Q&A
  • respond to one behaviour-based question on delivering at pace, and
  • respond to one technical question, testing your technical knowledge and ability to communicate in plain English with non-technical stakeholders

Depending on how many applications we get, there might also be an extra stage before the video interview, for example a phone interview or a technical exercise.

In the event we receive a high volume of applications, we will conduct the initial sift against the lead criteria which is: Tell us about a time when you have helped a digital delivery team understand technical considerations (such as any of cloud hosting, security, scaling and resilience, integration, NFRs etc) when making product, platform or infrastructure decisions?

In the Civil Service, we use Success Profiles to evaluate your skills and ability. This gives us the best possible chance of finding the right person for the job, increases performance and improves diversity and inclusivity. We’ll be assessing your technical abilities, skills, experience and behaviours that are relevant to this role.

For this role we’ll be assessing you against the following Civil Service Behaviours:

• delivering at pace

We’ll also be assessing your experience and specialist technical skills against the following skills defined in the Government Digital and Data Capability Framework for the Senior Solutions Architect role:

• Making architectural decisions
• Problem definition and shaping
• Architecture communication
• Architect for the whole context
• Commercial perspective
• Stakeholder relationship management

Want to know more about who Government Digital and Data are? Click Here

To give candidate more understanding of this role, we are holding an open recruitment session on Tuesday 28th July from 12:00 - 13:00. We will run through a presentation about the role and the team, before hosting an Q&A Session. To join, please follow the link below.

Senior Solutions Architect - Open Recruitment Session , Meeting-Join , Microsoft Teams

Recruitment Timeline

Open Recruitment Session: 28th July 12:00 - 13:00

Sift completion: 10th August

Panel interviews: Starting from Week Commencing 17th August 2026

Candidates that do not pass the interview but have demonstrated an acceptable standard may be considered for similar roles at a lower grade.

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

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan and the Civil Service D&I Strategy.

Sponsorship

DSIT cannot offer Visa sponsorship to candidates through this campaign. DSIT holds a Visa sponsorship licence but this can only be used for certain roles and this campaign does not qualify.

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

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.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.The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment (opens in new window).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 : gdsrecruitment@dsit.gov.uk
• Email : gdsrecruitment@dsit.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : gdsrecruitment@dsit.gov.uk

Further information

If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with the Recruitment Principles and you wish to make a complaint, you should contact gds-complaints@dsit.gov.uk in the first instance.

If you are not satisfied with the response you receive you can contact the Civil Service Commission by email: info@csc.gov.uk Or in writing: Civil Service Commission, Room G/8 1 Horse Guards Road, London, SW1A 2HQ.