Lead Technical Architect (Applications) - Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency - G7

Swansea

Can you demonstrate a strong understanding of, and hands-on experience with, cloud technologies?

Have you worked in a lead or senior technical role within a dynamic and innovative environment?

Can you show the appetite and commitment required to help drive an organisation through a significant transformation?

If so, we'd love to hear from you!

Joining our department comes with many benefits, including:

• Employer pension contribution of 28.97% of your salary. Read more about Civil Service Pensions here
• 25 days annual leave, increasing by 1 day each year of service (up to a maximum of 30 days annual leave), plus 8 bank holidays a privilege day for the King's birthday
• Flexible working options where we encourage a great work-life balance.

Read more in the Benefits section below!

Find out more about what it's like working at DVLA roles: Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency - Department for Transport Careers

The DVLA deliver wide reaching digital services to the UK public and industry. We maintain the national record of vehicles and drivers which means we reach over 53 million people a year. If you have applied for a driving licence, changed vehicle, taxed your vehicle, or completed a vehicle enquiry you would have used one of our services.

You'll get to work alongside our business service designers and agile software development teams and use modern and exciting technologies. Right now, we're rebuilding our services on a cloud-first platform using Containers and Serverless technologies as well as modern CI/CD tooling, so it's a great time to join.

Your responsibilities will include, but aren't limited to:

• Leading the technical design of systems and services, justifying and communicating design decisions.
• Assuring other services and system quality, ensuring the technical work fits into the broader strategy for the agency and wider government.
• Exploring the benefits of cross-government alignment.
• Providing mentoring within teams.
• Providing leadership to other architects.
• Communicating the shared vision effectively to stakeholders of a technical and non-technical nature
• Getting to understand the code and embrace new techniques such as AI coding assistants and tooling that can be used to further the architecture community at the agency with wider industry best practice

You will have an Architectural / Engineering background having worked in an architect or engineering lead role delivering enterprise and cloud-based software systems.

You will also hold the following skills and experience:

• Knowledge of designing / building cloud native software on a platform such as AWS.
• Experience with data security principles and systems designed to protect sensitive data.
• Desire to create and maintain solution designs in an iterative and collaborative manner.
• Ability to think strategically about business, product and technical challenges.
• Excellent technical skills with the experience to be held accountable for technical aspects of delivering complex solutions, including end-to-end solution design, delivery governance, assurance and support for Engineers and Delivery Managers.
• Great interpersonal skills allowing you to work with technical and non-technical stakeholders alike.
• You will be able to drive discussions with senior leaders across the agency as well as having the technical background that will enable you to easily interact and give guidance to software developers, testers and engineers.

Great line management is important to us as an organisation, and we will equip and support line managers to develop the skills they need. We aim to empower line managers to create teams where people can flourish and deliver excellent outcomes for the public.

For further information on the role, please read the attached role profile. Please note that the role profile is for information purposes only - whilst all elements are relevant to the role, they may not all be assessed during the recruitment process. This job advert will detail exactly what will be assessed during the recruitment process.

Open Sessions: Would you like to find out more about the role, the team and what it's like to work in our department? If so, we are organising an open session where you can virtually 'meet the team' on Monday 17th August at 1.30pm. Sign up here:

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

• Leadership