MI5 is responsible for protecting the UK from threats to our National Security. In this age of unprecedented technological change, we are embarking on a transformation to ensure we keep our edge and continue to keep the country safe from a range of complex threats. We’re building a team to help drive our transformation across our organisation to ensure we are equipped for our mission now and in the future. We need people who are comfortable with uncertainty, curious about the future and able to adapt to keep us ahead.

Who we are

The Data Office is a new construct within the organisation and works directly to the Chief Data officer. The team was established to push forward an agenda which focusses on improving the organisations Data Fundamentals and establishes solid foundations for the organisations wide ranging digital transformation ambitions.

The Data Architect cadre are critical to delivering the ambitions of the data office, working across the business and at the heart of the digital transformation efforts.  We are working alongside partners in CTO, engineering and the product community to develop an architectural vision for the future, developing clear guardrails and principles to ensure engineering are able to develop solutions in an agile manner. We ultimately help to set the vision for the organisations use of data, through data design, to meet business needs.


Our teams

We work with teams from across the organisation as well as key partners. We are a multi-disciplinary team comprised of experts from across the business, alongside specialist architects and analysts.
As data architects we provide support and guidance to colleagues in the wider data office team, providing advice on the development of tools and processes such as Data Catalouging, Data profiling, Data Quality etc.  We are also seeking to establish a more robust mechanism for managing our data standards and the models in use across the business, with a focus on interroperability. The future architecture is seeking to embrace concepts such as microservices and queue based archicture and we are therefore heavily involved in shaping this vision. We have a strong graduate programme that places our more junior staff alongside experienced architects to support their development.

Who you are

We are looking for experienced Data Architects who can take a leading role within the Data Office team. We’re looking for people who;
•    work proactively to ensure the organisation designs architecture that considers data
•    can undertake data profiling and source system analysis. You can present clear insights to colleagues to support the end use of the data.
•    understand the concepts and principles of data modelling and can produce relevant data models across multiple subject areas. You know how to reverse-engineer data models from a live system. You understand industry recognised data modelling patterns and standards and know when to apply them. You can compare and align different data models
•    can develop and set data standards across multiple subject areas. You can act as the escalation point for breaches of data standards and make recommendations about how the organisation should resolve that breach
•    can design an appropriate metadata repository and present changes to existing metadata repositories. You understand a range of tools for storing and working with metadata. You can provide oversight and advice to more inexperienced members of the team
•    can design data architecture by dealing with problems that span different business areas. You can draw links between problems in order to reach common solutions. You can work across multiple subject areas, a single large or complicated subject area
•    can listen to the needs of technical and business stakeholders and interpret them. You can manage stakeholder expectations and be flexible. You know how to manage proactive and reactive communication. You can facilitate difficult discussions within the team or with diverse senior stakeholders

What you’ll do

•    design data models and metadata systems and interpret business needs
•    contribute to shaping the standards and ways of working for the data architecture community
•    work with technical architects to make sure that the organisation’s systems are designed in accordance with the appropriate data architecture
•    assist in defining, evolving and implementing the organisations data strategy
•    provide support and advice to other data architects who are undertaking the design of data models and support the management of data dictionaries.
•    provide support and guidance to the wider Data Office team, covering themes including Data Cataloguing, Data Profiling, Data Quality, Data Labelling etc.
•    Support the Chief Data Officer’s (CDO) team to develop an understanding of the data models in use across the  organisation.  This will involve working with other architects, developers and engineers to identify how entities, relationships and events are modelled in our key systems, and to understand how interfaces between these systems pass data between them.
•    Help the CDO team to develop mid-term priorities for data modelling, looking at, for example, data modelling and cataloguing in the Cloud, and data exchange between our partners.
•    Represent the CDO in governance processes, for example providing arbitration between conflicting priorities for data modelling and management.
•    Conduct reviews of data models (both those in use and proposed) to assess their suitability against the organisation’s guardrails for modelling

Benefits

    25 days annual leave and 10.5 public and privilege holidays
    Financial support for learning and development
    Interest free season ticket loan
    Excellent pension scheme
    Cycle to work scheme

Recruitment Process

The recruitment process for this role will be as follows:

    Initial application – this includes a number of standard eligibility questions to establish if you are eligible to apply for this role
    CV submission
    Panel interview