Domain Architect

Job summary

Grade: C1
Total remuneration: £77,021-£95,767
Pay Supplement: The base salary for this role is £62,114-£77,232 This job qualifies for Digital, Data and Technology Annual Pay supplement 24% is included in the total remuneration above.
Pension: 28.97% (RoS contribution)
Annual leave: 42 days annual holiday
Duration: Permanent
Working Pattern: 35 hours per week. We are a flexible employer and will consider a variety of working patterns on a case-by-case basis. For example, compressed hours, term-time working or part-time working.
Location: Hybrid working model. Contractual base either at Meadowbank House, Edinburgh (EH8 7AU), or St Vincent Plaza, Glasgow (G2 5LD). You will be required to attend one of these locations as necessary for the role, including quarterly team days and other occasions driven by operational requirements.
Department: IT Development
Directorate: Digital, Data and Technology
Role Reports to: Chief Architect
Closing date: 13 September 2026 at 11.59
Number of vacancies: 1 (Additional offers may be made from this recruitment campaign should funding and workforce requirements allow)(RoS)

Registers of Scotland (RoS)
Join an award-winning organisation recognised for its technology and innovation. Registers of Scotland is a world-leading pioneer in land and property registration. Our full-stack teams design, architect, and build all our registration products in-house. We work to create digital solutions for the people of Scotland. You will get an opportunity to nurture your creativity and develop with us through access to the latest data, software engineering and product delivery techniques.

The Role

As a Domain Architect at Registers of Scotland (RoS), you will play a key role in shaping the technology that underpins critical public services. Providing architectural leadership across business and technology domains, you will help ensure our digital services are secure, scalable, resilient and aligned with organisational priorities. Working closely with product, engineering, service design and business teams, you will translate strategic goals into effective technical solutions, guiding decision-making across multiple projects and services. You will support the modernisation of our technology landscape, helping to reduce reliance on legacy systems and enabling the delivery of innovative, user-centred digital services. Alongside influencing technology strategy, you will champion architectural best practice, support colleagues through mentoring and collaboration, and ensure our technology investments deliver long-term value for customers, colleagues and the wider public sector.

Job description

On a typical day you will…
Architecture leadership and technical direction

• Define and maintain the architectural direction for one or more domains, ensuring solutions support Registers of Scotland’s strategic goals and service needs.
• Lead the technical design of systems and services across multiple teams, making sure designs are coherent, scalable and aligned with wider organisational architecture.
• Develop and maintain domain roadmaps that support business priorities, reduce legacy dependency and enable phased modernisation.
• Provide architectural guidance to delivery teams, helping them make sound technical decisions and solve complex design challenges.
• Identify opportunities to reuse platforms, patterns and components across teams to improve consistency, efficiency and long-term sustainability.

Assurance, governance and quality

• Ensure that solution designs meet architectural standards and non-functional requirements including security, accessibility, performance, resilience and maintainability.
• Contribute to architecture governance and design assurance processes, providing clear challenge, guidance and recommendations where needed.
• Ensure technical decisions are documented clearly, with rationale, risks, dependencies and trade-offs understood by relevant stakeholders.
• Support the organisation in making informed technology choices by balancing user needs, delivery constraints, technical risk and value for money.
• Promote secure by design and operationally sustainable architecture, ensuring solutions can be supported, monitored and evolved over time.

Collaboration, influence and capability building

• Work closely with product, engineering, service design, operations and business stakeholders to shape solutions that meet user and organisational needs.
• Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences, including senior stakeholders and governance groups.
• Build strong working relationships across teams and with external partners where needed to support joined up delivery and architecture alignment.
• Coach and mentor technical leads, engineers and other colleagues, helping to strengthen architecture capability across the organisation.
• Contribute to communities of practice, standards development and continuous improvement in architecture and engineering ways of working.

We use a broad range of technologies and do not expect any one candidate to bring experience in every area. We are interested in people with strong architecture capability and relevant depth in several of the following areas:

Our Tech stack

Languages: Java, Python, TypeScript
Frameworks: Spring Boot, Flask, React, Next.js
Platforms and infrastructure: AWS, Red Hat OpenShift, GitLab CI and CD, Jenkins, OpenShift Pipelines, AWS CDK
Architecture and delivery practices: cloud native services, containerised solutions, event-based architecture, infrastructure as code, continuous delivery
Geospatial technologies: PostGIS, GeoServer, OpenLayers, GeoPandas, QGIS

Person specification

Essential Criteria – Skills and Attributes for Success

Experience/Technical:
We will assess you against the following experience and technical skills during the application and assessment process:

• Significant experience in architecture or senior technical leadership roles, such as domain architecture, solution architecture, enterprise architecture or lead technical architecture.
• Experience leading architectural thinking across multiple teams, products or services in a complex digital environment.
• Experience defining technical strategy, target state architecture and roadmaps that support business priorities and delivery outcomes.
• Experience assuring solution designs and applying architectural governance in a practical and proportionate way.
• Experience working in agile, multidisciplinary teams delivering digital services in iterative ways.
• Strong experience engaging with senior technical and non-technical stakeholders, influencing decisions and building consensus.
• Experience identifying and managing architectural risks across areas such as security, resilience, integration and maintainability.
• Experience supporting organisational change through technology modernisation, service improvement or legacy replacement.
• Experience coaching, mentoring or developing other technical professionals and contributing to capability building.
• Desirable experience of working within gover