Lead Technical Architect - ONS - G7

The ONS operates a flexible hybrid working model across the UK, with colleagues linked to one of our contractual locations working between office and remote throughout the week. The locations for this role are Newport, Titchfield (Fareham), Manchester, Edinburgh, London, Darlington.

All colleagues are required to work from their contractually allocated site for at least 40% of their working time. Due to current capacity constraints there is currently an exception for colleagues based at the Darlington Economic Campus, and the Manchester office with office attendance being 20%, this is expected to move to 40% attendance in 2025-26 and 2027-28 for Darlington.

The induction process for the role will be conducted in person.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK’s largest producer of official statistics, covering a range of key economic, social and demographic topics. These include measuring changes in the value of the UK economy, estimating the size, geographic distribution, and characteristics of the population, and providing indicators of price inflation, employment, earnings, crime, and migration.

This role will work under the office of the chief architect being allocated to various work Digital services are engaged on as a technical architecture specialist for cloud, this role with have a primary focus of Google Cloud architectures.

ONS are committed to flexible ways of working that support a healthy work-life balance. ONS has already considered how this job could be right sized for applicants working flexibly and we are happy to explore options with you about working part time, in a job share or flexibly, in line with our hybrid working policies.

Job description

The Role

A lead technical architect works with multiple projects or teams on problems that require broad architectural thinking.

At this role level, you will:

be responsible for leading the technical design of systems and services, justifying and communicating design decisions
assure other services and system quality, ensuring the technical work fits into the broader strategy for government
explore the benefits of cross-government alignment
provide mentoring within teams
provide leadership to other architects

Responsibilities:

A lead technical architect works with multiple projects or teams on problems that require broad architectural thinking. You will be responsible for leading the technical design of systems and services and can justify and communicate their design decisions. 
You will assure other services and system quality, making sure the technical work fits into the broader strategy for government.
You will explore the benefits of cross-government alignment.
You will provide mentoring within teams and provide leadership to other architects.

Person specification

Essential Criteria:

Making architectural decisions.  The creation of technical designs based and grounded in a variety of information ensuring alignment with corporate and government strategy whilst delivering on user needs.
Technical design throughout the life cycle.  Designs need to evolve and grow as feedback is obtained throughout an agile lifecycle, the ability to iterate the designs to include this feedback directly impacts the successfuly delivery of services
Architecture communication.  Designs are of value only when they can be clearly communicated and understood, without this validation and delivery of designs to realise their full potential is compromised.
Architect for the whole context. Solving a problem in isolation of its impact a wider service or the organisation is of limited value, consistent approaches and understanding of the impact of the service being designed needs to be included and demonstrated.
Community collaboration.  Working within knowledgeable communities consisting of experienced people in different fields provides a fantastic resource to draw on for innovation and efficient reuse of solutions.  Contributing to and participating with these communities is important in maintaining their value and effectiveness.
Strategy design.  Understanding what the organisations strategy and vision are, contributing to them and informing the roadmap to achieving that strategy and vision means alignment of value and direction
Agile working.  Embracing the agile approach, ensuring a high level goal is understood but ensuring an iterative approach to achieving that goal ensures we are delivering business value early whilst building solid foundation services that can be enhanced in later phases.
Governance and assurance.  Embracing the value that governance and assurance adds to services means taking an active part in providing and not just following governance and assurance processes but delivering enhanced quality, consistency and security through their use.

Behaviours

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

Communicating and Influencing
Developing Self and Others
Seeing the Big Picture

Technical skills

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

Making architectural decisions
Technical design throughout the lifecycle
Architecture communication
Architect for the whole context