Lead Solution Architect

Job summary

Defra is the UK government department responsible for safeguarding our natural environment, supporting our world-leading food and farming industry, and sustaining a thriving rural economy. Our broad remit means we play a major role in people's day-to-day life, from the food we eat, and the air we breathe, to the water we drink.

Digital, Data, Technology and Security (DDTS) is the trusted team for digital across the entire Defra Group.

We have around 1000 colleagues across DDTS and our ambition is to make it easier and faster than ever for people to interact with Defra. If you are ready to drive innovation and push boundaries, we want to hear from you. Join us and together we will create a great place for living, and a green and healthy future for all.

The Delivery Architecture team is responsible for leading the delivery of solutions:

1. Analysing requirements, assessing options for delivery.
2. Imagining, envisioning what is possible. Collaborating with other architecture domains, subject matter experts & suppliers to produce a vision for the solution.
3. Assessing delivery options, to identify the ‘right’ components and delivery routes for a solution.
4. Defining the proposed solution by producing models, prototypes and documentation.
5. Engaging governance organisations/teams.
6. Supporting and guiding delivery, using internal/external teams.

Find out more about DDTS:

Defra digital, data and technology blog

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Job description

The Lead Solution Architect will work across multiple projects or teams on problems that require broad architectural thinking to ensure delivery of end to end solution architectures and implemented designs based on requirements, strategic drivers, best practices and guidance. These projects will be high profile and high value, spanning Defra bodies and partner organisations and being highly visible to the public. The Lead Solution Architect will operate within a pan government and industry aware context. Decisions made and guidance given by an architect operating at this level will be financially consequential and guide long term investment decisions in the order millions of pounds.

The Lead Solution Architect plays an active and often practical part in the realisation of the design to deliver the desired business outcomes and will be called upon as an expert to resolve conflicts with inter-dependencies in multiple initiative scenarios often arbitrating between organisations and suppliers. The role often requires oversight and direction of Solution Architects from suppliers, including assurance of their work.

The Lead Solution Architect is expected to cover the end-to-end solution to provide a fully rounded service i.e. the business, information, application and technology aspects of the solution with support from specialists in both business and technical domains. A key part of the role is working with specialist architects and other professions – also getting close to the delivery team and being a trusted advisor and decision maker.

Person specification

Key responsibilities:

• Design logical and physical components of solution architectures that will enable the delivery of the required business outcome and service.
• Assure the work of other colleagues and suppliers, challenging and escalating when necessary. Provide mentoring within teams and provide leadership by exemplifying architectural best practice to other architects.
• Creation of appropriate formal architecture products for (amongst other activities) product selection, options and impact assessment to validate or solution choices, enable traceability and provide corporate knowledge for ongoing support efforts.
• Coordinate the efforts of specialist colleagues (such as security and networks) to contribute to end to end service designs ensuring quality and coherence throughout the solution layers.
• Work with project managers and service owners to provide whole life costing for the components of the architecture in order to select best value approaches and inform the organisation as to the economy of their solutions estate.
• Work with commercial colleagues to provide input to tender materials and conduct supplier and product evaluation.
• Work with service and operations colleagues to define and implement service needs and ensure that sustainable and manageable services are delivered.
• Support technical and architectural requirements capture, design and assurance including injection of architectural stories into backlogs.
• Where appropriate, work as part of agile teams supporting appropriate architectural decision making.
• Identification and management of “technical debt” items including justification and exception seeking for initial adoption and exit plan for future remediation.
• Actively support and contribute to the domain lead aspects of the team function by providing specialist insight and hands-on experience into one or more application technology concerns.
• Gain knowledge of and communicate the needs of a specific business domain within a delivery group, supporting the Principal Architect and deputising for them when required.

Typically successful candidates will exhibit the following skills, experience and knowledge:

Skills

• Significant experience of complex IT programme architecture involving dependency management and multi-supplier deliveries in an applications or solutions architecture capacity.
• A practical understanding of architectural models of application and solution delivery and of delivery methodologies and ways of working.
• Strong hands-on experience and knowledge of at least one solutions stack or product ecosystem coupled with a broad understanding of the range of application technologies which may be selected from to deliver required capabilities.
• An understanding of the technical implications of delivering to both on premise infrastructure and cloud (or hybrid) environments and an understanding of the associated economics.
• A desire to prove, pilot and learn new technologies and keep up to date with industry best-practice, external disruptors and adapt accordingly.
• Demonstrate the ability to identify areas where specialist input is required and to coordinate the required resources and consider their advice and input constructively in the broader context of a defined solution.
• Higher education or industry certifications in topics such as Computing, Cloud (AWS/Azure) or other relevant technologies.

Experience and knowledge

• Sift and Experience of working in a multi-supplier environment, both designing aspects of solutions and assuring the work of others to ensure coherent designs supporting an end-to-end service.
• Experience of estimating and contributing to project planning, development of business cases, dependency a