Solution Architect Ref. 2172

Stonewall Top Employer AwardSocial Mobility Foundation AwardDisability confident leaderThe Prince's Responsible BusinessThe Times Top 100

Technology Roles
London
Permanent
Full Time
£51,283 - £55,131 (plus allowance dependent on skills and experience)

MI6 exists to collect secret foreign intelligence that helps protect the UK’s security and prosperity.  This intelligence is gathered all over the world and reported to the Government - informing policies that counter threats to this country including weapons proliferation, terrorism and regional instability

Who we are
Architecture and technology is central to MI6 successful operations and intelligence delivery. There is a constant need to develop and maintain capabilities that provide us with mission advantage in an increasingly rapidly changing, technology and data driven world. MI6 is transforming itself into a digitally driven organisation operating within a wider digital UK and partner Intelligence Community.

We use agile and lean methodologies to innovate, deliver and upgrade products that are core to MI6’s operations, working across the full spectrum of agent operations, data analysis, covert action as well as corporate areas of the organisation. Our products are built using a variety of different technology architectures, giving architects access to a career where staff can move between teams to build experience in a wide number of areas or develop a deep specialism in a preferred one. Whether working on data analytics, knowledge systems, clandestine communications or technical operations capabilities, the nature of our work presents unique and fascinating architecture challenges, the likes of which you will never have seen before.

Our teams
We build products that provide capability across MI6. Our multi-disciplinary stripy capability centre teams are made up of architects & engineers who work alongside product owners, business analysts and delivery colleagues to ensure MI6 gets what it needs balancing tactical and strategic goals and objectives.

What you’ll do
Our Solution Architects lead the design and systems engineering approach for a specific area of our organisation, creating complex new products or working to continually improve the capabilities of our existing products.

You will:
-    Be the Design Authority for the product
-    Develop high-level designs, solution outlines, or key design decisions
-    Be responsible that the product meets its capability remit and that it is designed in accordance with cascaded principles and strategies (i.e. the right product has been designed in the right way) and is delivered within the resources allocated and enterprise level constraints
-    Provide evidence to support governance and assurance of product design, experiments and lifecycle choice.
-    Produce and maintain design documentation held in accordance with CTO guidelines and style, accessible and under configuration control
-    Tailor the Systems Engineering and architecture processes to address product risks
-    Conduct trade-offs and raise waivers as necessary
-    Develops and delivers the Product Systems Engineering Management Plan
-    Develop innovative solutions, testing hypothesises through experimentation.
-    Maintain a baseline understanding of the product (As-Is architecture and the value, health, cost basis, etc)
-    Develop, maintain and communicate the vision, target architecture and technology roadmap for the product
-    Risk management - Establish and manage product risks escalating those outside tolerance to the capability centre architect
-    Deliver the architecture and systems engineering elements of the product plan throughout its whole life
-    Support the Product Owner and be the lead on all systems engineering and architecture advice
-    Partner with the product manager and business lead (analyst / change representative) to deliver a balanced plan considering UX, cost, time and quality
-    Manages the architecture delivery plan as priorities and challenges change coherent with the capability centre plan
-    Sub-optimizes delivery of the product to maximize enterprise properties and performance

Who you are
You will have experience of the application of Solution Architecture and Systems Engineering to deliver solutions to customer problems.

The ideal candidate is likely to have:
-    Led significant elements of Product and System Delivery & Change
-    Have been a technical domain Subject Matter Expert
-    Worked as a Solution architect or part of a solution architecture team for complicated solutions
-    Experience of the application of Enterprise and Domains Architecture, influencing stakeholders and conducting trades across requirements and solution spaces.
-    Knowledge of multiple architecture and delivery frameworks and experience of embedding such tools and techniques.
-    Experience of working in multi-disciplinary teams.

Learning and development is central to our engineering ethos and we invest heavily in our people. As part of your MI6 career we will support you in broadening and deepening your technical and non-technical skills. We have access to a wide variety of classroom and online learning, as well as our own development programmes and schemes. We work with external bodies such as the Institute for Engineering and Technology and the British Computing Society to support and fund accreditation for our staff, which could be in a specific technical area or more broadly, such as becoming a Chartered Engineer.

Benefits
-    Pension
-    Interest-free Season Ticket loan
-    Cycle to Work scheme
-    Financial support for learning and development
-    Subsidised gym

This Program / Vacancy is closed to applications.