Address
Form of work
Salary- Real opportunity to make a difference in Public Sector organisation!
- Hybrid, package up to £78,400 incl RRA
About Our Client
The Government Property Agency is changing the way the Civil Service works and is at the forefront of the Government's transformation agenda; reshaping the relationship civil servants have with their place of work. The Agency is central to the delivery of key Government policies including moving 22,000 Civil Service roles out of London by 2030 and tackling climate change by contributing to the Net Zero agenda. To do this we are delivering a major change programme across the UK and consolidating our portfolio in order to save £1.4 Bn over 10 years.
Beyond the bricks and mortar, the GPA is about providing great workplaces for our people. Through programmes like Hubs, Whitehall Campus and Smart Working you will be in the vanguard of creating model working environments and promoting flexible working practices.
This is an ambitious and exciting task, for which we need innovative people, with strong commercial acumen, who are passionate about visualising and implementing customer needs. Launched as an Executive Agency of the Cabinet Office in 2018, we're a relatively new department and we are growing fast so we also need people who thrive in ambiguity, can adapt quickly to change and are comfortable stepping outside of their remit to drive outcomes.
Job Description
This is an exciting opportunity to work with other specialists in a dynamic, collaborative team. Our culture values transparency, constructive challenge and honest communication to harness our combined expertise in solving problems.
The role can be based in: Birmingham, Leeds, Nottingham, Bristol
In the GPA, Technical Architects own the high level Technical Architecture for GPA's property technology products. PropTech products and services cover networks, wifi, printing, shared AV, occupancy management and building access control. We're responsible for continuous improvement and developing new products that meet end user needs and enable interoperability across the government estate.
The GPA is seeking to fill the following roles to act as technical leaders for these products.
- Senior Technical Architect (generalist - This advert)
- Senior Technical Architect (specialist expertise - Networks - Separate advert)
We'd like to hear from candidates who can demonstrate broad experience across a range of roles and specific experience in their chosen area of expertise. Skills and experience of large IT infrastructure projects would be a distinct advantage for any applicant. Successful candidates will be self-organising, taking control of managing their own workload; working in multidisciplinary teams alongside, Product Managers, and Delivery Managers, User Researchers and Service Managers to ensure successful service delivery to the GPA's customers.
- Maturing and developing GPA's property technology products to help make the places where Civil servants do their jobs into Great places to work.
- Promoting and adopting appropriate use of architecture techniques to ensure that GPA's projects can keep pace with delivery demands.
- Bridging the gap between GPAs technology specialists and the user needs of the people and clients who work in government buildings
- Guiding governance and decision making for GPA's technology solutions
- Developing GPA's Technical Architecture across the suite of proptech products
- Tailoring the design process to best match the needs of GPA's projects
- Understanding the wider business and technology landscape to ensure that GPA develops optimised solutions for shared technology
- Working with colleagues across government to ensure that GPA's solutions better meet the needs of our clients and that our peers across government are ready to adopt these solutions.
We encourage applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that represents the communities and wider society that we serve. We pride ourselves on being an employer of choice. We champion diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a sense of belonging in a workplace where everyone feels valued.
The Successful Applicant
- Communication skills. You can listen to the needs of technical and business stakeholders and interpret them. You are skilled at proactive and reactive communication. (Relevant skill level: practitioner)
- Governance. You can evolve and define governance. You can take responsibility for collaborating and supporting other staff in wider governance. You know how to assure services delivered by Technical Architects across sets of services. (Relevant skill level: practitioner)
- Making and guiding decisions. You can make decisions characterised by managed levels of risk and complexity. You can recommend decisions as risk and complexity increase. You can resolve technical disputes between wider peers and indirect stakeholders, taking into account all views and opinions. (Relevant skill level: working)
- Strategy. You can apply strategy, using patterns, standards, policies, roadmaps and vision statements. You can challenge them and provide guidance. (Relevant skill level: working)
- Turning business problems into technical design. You can design systems characterised by medium levels of risk, impact, and business or technical complexity. You can work across multiple services or a single large or complicated service. (Relevant skill level: practitioner)
- Understanding the whole context. You understand trends and practices outside your team and how these will impact the work. You understand how your work fits into the broader strategy and historical context. You can consider the patterns and interactions on a larger scale. (Relevant skill level: working)
Candidates would be expected to work towards the British Computing Society Chartered Institute for IT accreditation. Attaining this qualification will attract an additional allowance on top of the basic salary.
- Must have: Architecture / Systems Engineering experience
- Ideally: experience in AWS
- Ideally: Experience in supplier management
Senior Technical Architect: essential skills, experience and knowledge required:
- Defining the strategy and being central to assuring services relating to wifi and other enterprise level business systems or applications in use
- Undertaking structured analysis of technical issues, translating this analysis into technical designs that describe a solution
- Consulted about design and providing design patterns
- Able to identify deeper issues that need fixing
- Able to look for opportunities to collaborate and reuse components, communicating with both technical and non-technical stakeholders
- Able to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders at all levels of hierarchy
- Experience working closely with Security and Information Assurance teams and an understanding of their contribution to delivering success solutions
- Comfortable working in multi disciplinary teams and collaborating with technical and non-technical staff in a geographically diverse workforce
- Organisational skills and ability to manage your own workload
- Experience with enterprise change control processes and ability to consult on change requests
What's on Offer
Alongside your salary of £51,700, GPA contributes £13,959 towards you being a member of the CS DBP Pension scheme.
*Please note, the package offered is from £51,700 - £57,700 + a Recruitment & Retention Allowance of £20,700 with is NON-PENSIONABLE*
Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides here:
https://www.civilservicepensionscheme.org.uk/joining-the-pension-scheme/benefits-of-the-pension-scheme/
- Learning and development tailored to your role
- An environment with flexible working options
- A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
- A Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%
- Generous annual leave
This vacancy is using Civil Service Success Profiles:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/success-profiles
These will assess your Behaviours, Strengths, Experience and Technical skills.
We encourage applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that represents the communities and wider society that we serve.
The Civil Service Code (https://civilservicecommission.independent.gov.uk/code/) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.
We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's
recruitment principles (https://civilservicecommission.independent.gov.uk/recruitment/recruitment-principles/)
The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.
The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme (RIS) to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.
This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/making-the-civil-service-a-great-place-to-work-for-veterans) initiative.
The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction.
Read more about prison leaver recruitment (https://www.civil-service-careers.gov.uk/prison-leaver-recruitment/)
Sift
The closing date is 5.2.24, the sift is due to take place by 7.2.24 but is subject to change.
Applicants successful at sift will be invited to interviews, due to take place week commencing 12.2.24 and will be a virtual interview.
This is subject to change dependent upon where most successful candidates are based.
