Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Lead Cloud Architect – AWS
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Bristol, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Reading, Warrington, York
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.
Find Out More About DDTS
- Defra digital, data and technology blog
- Defra Jobs
Job Description
We are looking for a highly skilled and motivated Lead AWS Cloud Architect to join the Cloud Centre of Excellence (CCoE) within Group Infrastructure and Operations (GIO) in Digital, Data and Technology Security (DDTS). If you are passionate about using cloud technologies to drive transformation at scale and want to shape how AWS is used across a large, complex organisation, this role offers the opportunity to operate at both strategic and delivery level.
The Lead AWS Cloud Architect plays a key role in defining, governing, and assuring how AWS is used across Defra. The role is responsible for setting standards, patterns, guardrails, and reference architectures for AWS adoption, ensuring solutions are secure, resilient, compliant, and cost-effective. Alongside this, the role works with programmes and delivery teams to shape, review, and assure technical designs, and to support the delivery of critical services. The post holder will also lead the creation of foundational artefacts, templates, and guidance that define the standard way Defra builds and operates workloads on AWS.
Person specification
Responsibilities
- Act as a senior member of the Cloud Centre of Excellence (CCoE), helping to define and govern how AWS is used across Defra.
- Own and evolve Defra’s AWS platform architecture, including landing zones, shared services, and core platform capabilities.
- Define, maintain, and publish architecture standards, patterns, guardrails, and reference architectures for AWS.
- Design and document internal CCoE platform services and capabilities, producing High-Level Designs (HLDs), Low-Level Designs (LLDs), and options papers for services such as landing zones, shared services, networking, security, and core platform components.
- Provide architectural assurance across programmes and projects, ensuring solutions align with Defra’s cloud standards and strategic direction.
- Attend and contribute to Cloud Design Review Boards, technical governance forums, and design authorities, providing constructive recommendations.
- Work with delivery teams to advise, guide, and unblock them on complex AWS architecture decisions.
- Present architecture patterns, platform designs, and standards to senior technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Skills And Experience
An AWS Architect in Defra’s CCoE must have deep expertise in AWS cloud infrastructure, security, and networking. They should be skilled in designing scalable, secure, and resilient AWS environments, with a strong understanding of multi-account governance, AWS Organisations, SCPs, and Landing Zone best practices.
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Key Areas Of Expertise Include
- Hybrid Networking and Connectivity: Experience with AWS Direct Connect, VPC Peering, PrivateLink, Transit Gateway, and designing secure, scalable hybrid and multi-account network architectures.
- AWS Well-Architected Framework: Experience applying the AWS Well Architected Framework to design and assess cloud architectures.
- AWS Compute Platforms: Strong experience designing and governing workloads using serverless and managed AWS compute services (such as Lambda, ECS and EC2). Experience with EKS is beneficial but not essential. Able to select the right service and ensure secure, scalable operations.
- AWS Data Platforms: Broad knowledge and experience designing AWS data platforms and architectures, spanning data storage, databases, ingestion and streaming patterns, with a strong understanding of security, lineage, and access controls at scale.
- AWS Security and Governance: Proficiency in IAM, KMS, GuardDuty, Security Hub, AWS Config and related services to define and enforce guardrails, compliance, and security standards.
- Architecture Governance: Experience working in an architecture practice to define standards, patterns, reference architectures, designs, and providing architectural assurance across programmes and portfolios.
Selection process
The Civil Service marks each element of the selection process on a merit basis. You can visit the gov.uk website for further information on the Civil Service rating scale.
Ensure you have tailored your CV and Personal Statement to the 'skills and experience' section of the job advert by providing examples on how you are suitable for the role using the STAR method.
Please ensure you demonstrate clearly, within your personal statement, how you meet these requirements, as the information you provide will form a key part when the panel is scoring your application.
For further information on STAR, you can check out our Hints and Tips document.
Application process
As Part Of The Application Process, You Will Be Assessed On Your Experience. This Will Be Evaluated By Looking At Your CV And Personal Statement, So Please Provide The Following And Ensure Your Experience Is Clearly Demonstrated
- A CV
- A 500-word Personal Statement: Referring to the 'skills and experience' sections of the job advert, please demonstrate how you are suitable for the role by providing relevant examples.
Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.
Sift
Sift will begin shortly after the advert closes.
Should there be a large number of applications, an initial sift will be conducted using your personal statement. Candidates who pass the initial sift may be progressed to a full sift, or progressed straight to assessment or interview.
Interview
If successful at sift, you will be invited to an interview where you will be assessed on the Behaviours and Technical Skills listed below.
Interview dates are to be confirmed. Please note that these may be subject to change.
Interviews will be held virtually on Microsoft Teams.
For further information on Success Profiles, you can visit the links below and watch our videos on DefraJobs.
Behaviours
- Changing and Improving
- Communicating and Influencing
- Delivering at Pace
Technical skills
- Architect for the whole context – practitioner
- Architecture communication (communicating between the technical and non-technical) – expert
- Community collaboration – practitioner
- Making architectural decisions – practitioner
- Strategy design – practitioner
- Technical design throughout the life cycle - expert
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Alongside your salary of £56,375, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs contributes £16,331 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).
- 25 days leave (rising to 30 days over 5 years) plus bank holidays.
- A Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 28.97%.
- A day off per year for the King's birthday.
- Access to a range of retail discounts (these include supermarket, tech, gym, holiday, phone and more).
- Flexible working options such as condensed hours, part-time and flexi time.
- 3 paid volunteering days per year.
- Funding for professional membership of a recognised professional body.
- Learning and development tailored to your role and budget for training or qualifications.
- A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity.
- Cycle to work scheme.
- Health cash plan to help you manage health costs for a reduced monthly fee.
- Access to the Employee Assistance Programme open 24 hours, 7 days a week, that provides support to you during any times of stress or difficulty.
- Free access to Headspace for wellbeing.
- Season ticket loan for public transport.
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.
For further information on the selection process for this role, please refer to the person specification section of the job advert.
Location
As part of the pre-employment process for this post, successful candidate(s) will be able to agree a contractual workplace from those locations listed in this advert. The agreed contractual workplace is then the substantive and permanent place of work for the successful candidate(s).
Where the location is ‘National’ the successful appointee should discuss and agree an appropriate contractual location in line with both Defra’s location policy and site capacity, prior to proceeding with pre-employment processes.
The agreed amount of time spent at a workplace for this post will reflect the requirement for Civil Servants to spend at least 60% of their working time in an organisation workplace with the option to work the remaining time flexibly from home. Working time spent at a workplace may include time spent at other organisational locations including field-based operational locations, together with supplier, customer or partner locations. This is a non-contractual agreement which is consistent with common Civil Service expectations.
Travel costs to non-contractual workplaces will be subject to departmental travel and subsistence
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