Government Digital Service
Senior Solutions Architect
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This role is available across our London, Bristol and Manchester locations
About the Government Digital Service (GDS)
The Government Digital Service (GDS) is the digital centre of government. We are responsible for setting, leading and delivering the vision for a modern digital government. Our priorities are to drive a modern digital government, by:
- joining up public sector services
- harnessing the power of AI for the public good
- strengthening and extending our digital and data public infrastructure
- elevating leadership and investing in talent
- funding for outcomes and procuring for growth and innovation
- committing to transparency and driving accountability
We are home to the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (I.AI), the world-leading GOV.UK and at the forefront of coordinating the UK’s geospatial strategy and activity. We lead the Government Digital and Data function and champion the work of digital teams across government.
We’re part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and employ more than 1,000 people all over the UK, with hubs in Manchester, London and Bristol.
The Government Digital Service is where talent translates into impact. From your first day, you’ll be working with some of the world’s most highly-skilled digital professionals, all contributing their knowledge to make change on a national scale.
Join us for rewarding work that makes a difference across the UK. You'll solve some of the nation’s highest-priority digital challenges, helping millions of people access services they need.
Job Description
The Spend Assurance team leads the assurance of digital delivery plans across central government. Before 1 April, its primary objective was to enforce compliance with government digital policy and standards through control gates and approvals on behalf of Ministers. Its focus has now shifted to helping the most important public sector services access the insight, assurance and support they need to make better decisions earlier and deliver more effectively across the digital lifecycle, ensuring citizens, businesses and staff experience better public services sooner.
The service focuses on:
- Supporting the Chief Secretary to the Treasury (CST) to make well-informed decisions on digital delivery by providing access to digital expertise through integrated assurance
- Working with departmental assurance colleagues to improve their approaches, enabling faster delivery while managing risk effectively
- Acting as a critical friend to digital teams, offering independent challenge to avoid groupthink and blind spots
- Maintaining a strategic understanding of delivery across organisations to support more effective performance conversations in Digital Business Reviews (DBRs)
- Generating and sharing insights from delivery activity across government
- Connecting teams undertaking similar work to spread knowledge and lessons
- Signposting delivery teams to the support and interventions they need to solve problems
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We assess digital delivery plans through four lenses:
- Alignment with strategic objectives: understanding how initiatives contribute to organisational and cross-government strategies, identifying tensions and trade-offs, and helping decision-makers strike the right balance
- Alignment with standards: understanding how standards and the Technology Code of Practice apply, and where trade-offs may be necessary to support successful delivery while continuing to meet legal requirements
- Avoiding duplication: identifying opportunities to reuse existing capability, components, patterns or knowledge to accelerate delivery, while managing the risks created by dependencies
- Meeting outcomes: understanding the intended change or result beyond outputs and assessing whether delivery plans provide a credible route to realising those outcomes early and incrementally
The service team is small, comprising 4 Senior Advisors and a Head of Spend Assurance, with 2 further advisor roles being recruited via this campaign. Given the scale and ambition of the team’s objectives, close collaboration with other teams is essential. We also use an “AI in Assurance” product that enables us to access useful insight more quickly.
In integrated assurance, we work as part of a multidisciplinary team alongside Commercial Business Partners in the Cabinet Office, Project Delivery Advisors in NISTA, and Spend leads in HM Treasury.
We also work closely with more than 100 assurers across government departments and arm’s-length bodies, bringing them together as a cross-government assurance community. This community acts as a force multiplier for the objectives across the public sector.
The Role
The Senior Solutions Architect will lead technical assurance of Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) delivery and spend across several central government organisations, acting as a trusted adviser to internal assurance functions, service owners, and programme and project leaders.
You will also advise senior leaders across the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), and His Majesty's Treasury (HMT), alongside the Government Commercial Function (GCF), and the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA), supporting oversight of DDaT delivery, procurement and spending plans and helping build confidence that they are technically sound, deliverable, aligned to strategic objectives, and represent value for money.
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A key aspect of the role is providing credible technical leadership across a complex portfolio of major programmes. You will engage confidently with senior technical and delivery stakeholders, shaping discussions on architecture, delivery approaches, and technical risk, and providing robust, evidence-based advice to support decision making.
You will also contribute to the continuous improvement of the cross-government DDaT assurance service, helping develop its approaches, tools and standards.
The UK's national security depends on advanced digital and data capabilities to meet evolving threats and increasing technological complexity. Depending on your work experience (including already holding the right level of security clearance, or a willingness and ability to successfully undertake vetting at joining) you may have an opportunity to assure digital delivery within the national security space.
Person Specification
We understand that every person will bring something different to the role and expect you to demonstrate the following skills:
- making and guiding architectural design decisions of medium risk and complexity, identifying and addressing architectural risks that affect multiple teams or domains, and using and contributing to architectural governance and assurance to manage technical risks at the appropriate level
- framing problems of medium complexity, complication or risk so that solutions can be created, and describing options for solving them so that appropriate delivery methods can be decided
- leading the communication of complicated, complex or risky architecture topics with technical and non-technical stakeholders, communicating with senior stakeholders across the organisation, adapting your message to your audience, and advocating on behalf of a team
- aligning your work with other architects and technical professionals, tracking emerging issues, strategies, roadmaps, patterns and technologies to assess opportunities and risks, and identifying how other teams contribute to delivering outcomes through change
- understanding commercial processes and the appropriate internal contacts within a government department, and understanding different sourcing strategies and when to apply them
- negotiating with and influencing stakeholders and managing relationships effectively, influencing decisions and removing blockers in challenging situations, and building long-term strategic relationships that support mutual needs and commitments while focusing on user needs
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