Lead Domain Architect Ref. 2170

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Technology Roles
London
Permanent
Full Time
£63,682 - £68,458

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
You will own the technology strategy and roadmap across a number of Technical or Business Capabilities, and will be aligned to directly support a Capability Centre (delivers IT change and business services to our operational teams). You will ensure the alignment of capability centres to the Enterprise Architecture and Strategy, and support the refinement of the Enterprise Strategy and artefacts from the perspective of your capability centre.

You will:
-    Be the Design Authority for a Capability Centre
-    Be responsible for overall systems architecture of the Capability Centre, blending business, technical, and data architecture perspectives
-    Integrate any domain partitions into a single whole
-    Manage trade-offs between business and technical requirements working with specialist experts.
-    Responsibility for ensuring the Capability Centre's product set meets the remit of Capability Centre and that they are designed in accordance with enterprise principles and strategies (i.e. the right products have been designed in the right way)
-    Develop Capability Centre principles and standards aligning, evolving any enterprise principle, and issues implementation guidance.
-    Prioritise development & work within the Capability Centre
-    Govern and assure all product designs, experiments and lifecycles
-    Ensure any architecture documentation is held in accordance with CTO guidelines and style, accessible and under configuration control
-    Build and support the skills and competency of any other Capability Centre Architects
-    Triage and sanctions exceptions/waivers escalating as necessary to the enterprise layer
-    Builds the Capability Centre Architecture roadmap and recommend prioritisation of work
-    Maintain an understanding of the relationship of the Capability Centres relation to the Business Capability Model
-    Maintain mapping of products/standards to individual capabilities
-    Maintain a baseline of the capability centre (As-Is architecture and the value, health, cost basis, etc)
-    Develop, maintain and communicate the vision, target architecture and technology roadmap for the capability centre together with design principles, patterns, guard rails, strategies etc.
-    Establish and manage intra-capability centre risks escalating those outside tolerance and inter-capability centre ones
-    Represents the Capability Centre at the CTO (Enterprise) Design Authority reporting to and responding to CTO tasking
-    Be the lead on all architecture matters including support to the Capability Centre Growth and Operations Boards
-    Establish an architecture plan that contains a balanced portfolio of investments considering explore vs exploit, risk, opportunities, threats, drive for greater efficiency (reducing costs, reducing skill levels, resources), automation, reduction of tech debt, removal of waivers, strategic and tactical business value, non-functional requirements (inc enterprise level properties) within the resource and funding allocated, treating x-capability centre and intra-capability centre priorities equally
-    Manages the architecture delivery plan and ensures coherence with other capability centre plans"

Who you are
You will have experience of the application of Solution Architecture and Systems Engineering across a range of products and systems. You will be able to apply Systems Thinking techniques and tools to understand and develop complex problems and solutions within changing and indistinct demand signals.

You will have a pragmatic and balanced approach understanding the constraints of working in an enterprise organisation, but the expertise, experience, and enthusiasm to continue to drive new capabilty into the organisation in the most effective way.

The ideal candidate is likely to have:
-    Led or managed significant Product and System Delivery & Change
-    Worked as a Solution architect, responsible for the design of sizeable solutions
-    Experience of the use and application of Enterprise Architecture, setting strategy, and influencing senior stakeholders in setting long-term goals.
-    Knowledge of multiple architecture and delivery frameworks and experience of embedding such tools and techniques.
-    Experience leading technical 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.