Methods Business and Digital Technology Limited

Methods is a £100M+ IT Services Consultancy who has partnered with a range of central government departments and agencies to transform the way the public sector operates in the UK. Established over 30 years ago and UK-based, we apply our skills in transformation, delivery, and collaboration from across the Methods Group, to create end-to-end business and technical solutions that are people-centred, safe, and designed for the future.

Our human touch sets us apart from other consultancies, system integrators and software houses - with people, technology, and data at the heart of who we are, we believe in creating value and sustainability through everything we do for our clients, staff, communities, and the planet.

We support our clients in the success of their projects while working collaboratively to share skill sets and solve problems. At Methods we have fun while working hard; we are not afraid of making mistakes and learning from them.

Predominantly focused on the public-sector, Methods is now building a significant private sector client portfolio.

Methods was acquired by the Alten Group in early 2022.

About the role

We are looking for an experienced Security Architect to join a major technology transformation programme and provide security architecture leadership across the full transformation lifecycle.

This is a key role responsible for defining and assuring the security architecture across identity, endpoints, Microsoft 365, applications, infrastructure, networks and migration activities.

You will work at the intersection of security, architecture and delivery, ensuring that appropriate security controls are embedded into both coexistence and target-state designs without creating unnecessary barriers to practical delivery.

The programme will involve significant technology change and will need to operate across existing environments while progressively introducing new services and capabilities. You will therefore play a critical role in ensuring that security is considered from the outset, rather than being treated as a final-stage assurance activity.

You will establish the security principles, patterns and control requirements that underpin the programme, assess threats and risks across current and future states, and provide independent assurance over technical designs and migration approaches.

The successful candidate will bring strong technical security expertise together with sound risk judgement. You will be comfortable challenging designs where necessary, but equally capable of finding pragmatic solutions that allow the programme to move forward while maintaining an appropriate level of security.

What you will do

As the Security Architect, you will provide security architecture leadership and assurance across the transformation programme.

You will:

• Establish and maintain the programme's security architecture principles, patterns, standards and control requirements.
• Define clear security design-assurance criteria and ensure that technical designs are assessed consistently against agreed requirements.
• Assess threats, risks, vulnerabilities and control gaps across the current, coexistence, transition and target states.
• Develop proportionate security controls that support secure coexistence between existing environments and new target services.
• Define and assure Zero Trust principles across identity, devices, applications, data and network access.
• Establish security patterns for identity protection, privileged access, least privilege, Conditional Access and administrative boundaries.
• Work closely with the identity and directory architecture function to ensure that authentication, access and administrative controls are appropriately designed and secured.
• Define security requirements for endpoint, email, Microsoft 365, data, application and network architectures.
• Establish appropriate requirements for security logging, monitoring, alerting, threat detection and incident response.
• Review technical architecture and solution designs, identifying security weaknesses, control gaps, dependencies and areas requiring further assurance.
• Assess migration strategies and cutover approaches from a security perspective, ensuring that risks associated with transition between environments are understood and controlled.
• Review proposed security exceptions and deviations from established standards, documenting the rationale, residual risk, compensating controls and required treatments.
• Maintain visibility of significant security risks and ensure that appropriate owners and mitigation plans are established.
• Work with technical teams to develop practical remediation and risk-treatment approaches rather than simply identifying problems.
• Ensure security requirements are incorporated into programme plans, technical designs, migration patterns, testing strategies and operational handover.
• Support security testing and assurance activities, including validation of security controls before major migrations or go-live decisions.
• Provide security input into operational readiness, ensuring that monitoring, alerting, incident response and support arrangements are in place before services transition into production.
• Align programme designs with organisational security policies, information-security standards, data-protection obligations and relevant regulatory or assurance requirements.
• Maintain appropriate security architecture documentation, including HLDs, security principles, control matrices, threat models, risk assessments, exception records and architecture decision records.
• Provide clear security recommendations and risk-based advice to programme leadership and senior stakeholders.
• Support continuous improvement of security controls as the transformation progresses and new risks, technologies and requirements emerge.