Lead Technical Architect

Job summary

Do you want work collaboratively designing modern IT architecture for some of the largest digital transformations in Europe?

Do you want to help support millions of our claimants by designing user-friendly digital services?

If so, this roles may be perfect for you!

We are looking for experienced Lead Technical Architects with a specialism in Application design and Artificial Intelligence (AI), who are confident working on products and services in a complex digital environment, where you’ll be supporting major initiatives within the AI & Innovation team.

You will collaborate with colleagues and stakeholders across DWP Digital to support the delivery of solutions, creating options and recommendations, and providing expert advice to drive technology choices.

The roles will include the design, oversight and architecture governance of IT solutions that support DWP customers.

The DWP’s Corporate Innovation Unit (CIU) is leading the way on the ambitious task of implementing AI and Continuous Improvement (CI) to support and help colleagues in the corporate centre to be more creative and efficient by optimising and improving internal business processes. By leveraging Microsoft Office 365 AI solutions, repetitive work will be made easier, freeing up colleagues to focus on higher value and more complex and interesting tasks. There is also a focus on developing agentic solutions using Microsoft Agent Builder and Microsoft Copilot Studio, with the ultimate aim of having a library of agentic solutions that can be plugged together to perform complex end-to-end business processes. If proved to be necessary bespoke, secure and controlled AI solutions may well be developed on commodity cloud AI managed services infrastructure, possibly leveraging Anthropic Claude Cowork.

This is an exciting time to join us. You’ll shape the future and support our mission to deliver exceptional products and services that work for everyone.

Job description

A Lead Technical Architect (Solutions) leads at the highest level and is responsible for making sure the strategy is agreed and followed.

At this role level, you will:

• Network and communicate with senior stakeholders across organisations.
• Proactively seek opportunities for digital transformation.
• Support multiple teams, finding and using best practice and emerging technologies.
• Inspire other architects and help them understand how to deliver the goals of the organisation.
• Be responsible for governance, solving complex and high risk issues or delivering architecture design.

Person specification

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

• Architecture design across on-prem, cloud and hybrid environments involving networking, security, presentation, middleware, database, and integration aspects.
• Architecture design informed through use of principles, patterns, technical radars, practices and standards.
• Architecture design working with project delivery teams within agile, waterfall and hybrid environments throughout the lifecycle - from concept to go-live.
• Translating business requirements into technical solutions with traceability that can be demonstrated to stakeholders.
• Architecture design through use of architecture modelling techniques and tools to devise and represent.
• AI enterprise products: Experience of assurance for enterprise AI productivity tooling. Enterprise products such as Copilot (including Agent Builder & Copilot Studio) and Claude Desktop. Best practice for using model harness such as Claude Code or Codex. Best practice for Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools within an large organisation.
• AI solution evaluation: Implement frameworks and approaches to evaluate model performance against business objectives, through the full lifecycle (including Business KPIs, Hallucination rates, Safety testing, Bias testing, Cost evaluation). Technology experience might include tools such as Promptfoo, Ragas & Langfuse.
• AI security: Governance, Compliance, Threats & mitigations : Experience of security governance and assurance for AI solutions, including data protection, privacy, model governance.

If you would like to learn more about the role, please contact [email removed]

Behaviours

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

• Leadership
• Working Together
• Changing and Improving

Technical skills

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

• Architecture communication (Expert)
• Architect for the whole context (Practitioner)
• Community collaboration (Practitioner)
• Making architectural decisions (Expert)
• Strategy design (Practitioner)
• Technical design throughout the life cycle (Expert)

Benefits

We also have a broad benefits package built around your work-life balance which includes:

• Working patterns to support work/life balance such as job sharing, term-time working, flexi-time and compressed hours.
• Generous annual leave – at least 25 days on entry, increasing up to 30 days over time (pro–rata for part time employees), plus 9 days public and privilege leave.
• Support for financial wellbeing, including interest-free season ticket loans for travel, a cycle to work scheme and an employee discount scheme.
• Health and wellbeing support including our Employee Assistance Programme for specialist advice and counselling and the opportunity to join HASSRA a first-class programme of competitions, activities and benefits for its members (subscription payable monthly).
• Family friendly policies including enhanced maternity and shared parental leave pay after 1 year’s continuous service.
• Funded learning and development to support progress in your role and career. This includes industry recognised qualifications and accreditations, coaching, mentoring and talent development programmes.
• An inclusive and diverse environment with opportunities to join professional and interpersonal networks including Women’s Network, National Race Network, National Disability Network (THRIVE) and many more.

Hybrid Working

This role may be suitable for hybrid working, which is where an employee works part of the week in their DWP office and part of the week from home. This is a voluntary, non-contractual arrangement and your office will be your contractual place of work.

If a hybrid working arrangement is suitable for the role and for you, you will normally be required to spend a minimum of 60% of your contracted working hours from your DWP office.

If you have a disability, caring responsibilities, or other circumstances that may affect your ability to meet the minimum office attendance requirement, please discuss this with us using the contact details in this advert.

Salary Information

The role is part of the Government Digital and Data profession and utilises an enhanced Government Digital and Data Pay Framework linked to capability which provides access to a Government Digital and Data allowance.

Pay for this role is £75,026 to £80,267, subject to candidate type. In addition to this, the role can attract a Government Digital and Data allowance of up to £21,657. Please see additional info below regarding candidate type. The value of allowance awarded will be based on an assessment of you