About the job

Job summary

At DLUHC, we’re working with policy teams to apply digital, user-centred thinking to big important problems, like planning, housing, and the relationship between central and local government. In some cases, we’ll build new digital services – in others we expect to discover from our users that digital isn’t the answer.   

Job description

We’re relatively early in our digital journey as a department and have relatively few legacy services. We use modern development practices, like pair programming, continuous integration and test-driven development. Teams are empowered to solve their own problems, but we’ve standardised our technology choices around the GDS Way, primarily building services in Ruby or Python in SQL on AWS. Our Energy Performance Certificate register service just passed its Live service assessment and we have several other new services in alpha or beta, all focused on meeting user needs with great technology.   

We’ve been in “start-up” mode for a few years, but we’re now ready to bring in some strong modern, technical leadership to help us move into a new phase.   
 

As a Lead Technical Architect, you’ll lead our software development teams, managing other Senior Developers and Technical Architects. You’ll lead on strategy and technology governance, making sure it’s agreed and followed, and provide advice on technology to help us deliver simple, safe and easy to use digital systems. You’ll share best practice and explain cross government architecture patterns. You’ll communicate with and influence all levels of responsibility, including director level.   

One of the first things you’ll help us with is our Data Collection as a Service (DaaS), which involves building a new service and migrating and re-building two existing services in Ruby on Rails on  Amazon Web Services (AWS).  The DaaS team are transforming how we collect and disseminate data and payments. We’re working with innovative suppliers right now, but over the next three years we aim to have an entirely civil servant team.   

Lead Technical Architect is both a technical and a management role. We work with in-house developers and architects (who you may line manage) and those recruited through a service contract. You may help us recruit these specialists and ensure that we’re building our capability and capacity to continually deliver and run good digital service.   We have previously used GOV.UK PaaS and are developing our migration and future hosting strategy, which you’ll be heavily involved in. 

As Lead Technical Architect, you will:  
  

• Lead the technology strategy for at least one complex digital service within DLUHC, identifying appropriate technology and approaches, deciding when software should be written  

• guide the ways in which our software teams work, providing technical leadership and coaching and mentor your team  

• promote knowledge sharing and adoption of good practice   

• lead on identifying common modules or microservices that should be shared by multiple teams, such as logging and monitoring  

• inform the technical design of systems and services and partner with our internal team, other Government Departments and external suppliers to help us build good digital services that meet the Government Service Standard  

• sit on the Technical Design Authority, influencing and governing architecture design not just for the digital services you lead on, but also the technology services that our people use day to day, such as laptops and networking  

• actively explore opportunities for cross-government alignment in order to realise benefits  

• advocate Agile delivery methods and supporting new and existing team members in their development of adopting Agile best practice  

• help support procurement activities and recruitment for other technical specialists   

Person specification

Key skills/criteria  

Successful candidates should be able to demonstrate the following skills and experience:  

• proficient in a wide range of modern technical systems, having worked in software development at a senior level before  

• understand software design principles and know what good looks like for a high-performing software development team and know how to get there  

• architecture experience with common public cloud platforms, Amazon Web Services, and related technologies, for example, elastic scaling, platform as a service and networking architecture in the cloud  

• ability to communicate with software teams and stakeholders up to director level, translating technical concepts for non-technical audience and advocating for good development practices  

• understanding of technical governance and how this works with wider governance to mitigate risks without slowing down delivery   

• understand and resolve technical disputes across varying levels of complexity and risk   

• be able to partner with business and technology stakeholders to translate business problems into technical designs  

• have experience in identifying and addressing wider technical implications relating to the broader business strategy  

• evidence of where you have created optimal designs through an iterative process (i.e. Agile), and where you have aligned user needs with the system requirements and organisational objectives  

• examples of working collaboratively both within your team and with other external partners to achieve collective goals successfully.  

It’s desirable that you have experience of or familiarity with:  

• Technology Code of Practice and the Digital Service Standard and how these apply to enterprise IT within an organisation and cross-government  

• security architecture for technology systems and services  

• UK government cybersecurity standards  

Behaviours

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

• Working Together

Benefits

• 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%

Things you need to know

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles, and will assess your Behaviours.

We are for everyone 

At DLUHC we value diversity and inclusion and actively encourage and welcome applications from everyone, including those that are underrepresented in our workforce. We promote equality of opportunity in all aspects of employment and a working environment free from discrimination, harassment, bullying and victimisation. 

We would strongly recommend that applicants get in touch with the vacancy manager to find out more information about this role. 

We are for everyone 

CV and Cover Letter Declaration 

We recruit based on your knowledge and skills, and not background, gender or ethnicity - this is called name blind recruitment. 

Please remove references to your: 

• name/title

• educational institutions

• age

• gender

• email address

• postal address

• phone number

• nationality/immigration status

You will need to merge your CV and covering letter into one document. When submitting your application Applied will ask you to upload a CV, when doing this you should upload your merged document of your CV and covering letter. 

Most of our campaigns utilise multiple assessors and so it is possible that your application would be viewed by different assessors. 

At sift, through your CV and covering letter we will be assessing:

Experience 

Technical Ability 

Your covering letter should be no more than 1 page referencing how you meet the criteria set out in the job description, including essential skills and experience levels

The interview will be of a blended nature consisting of experience, technical and behaviour based questions as listed in the advert. Candidates may be required to undergo a pair programming test as part of selection process if invited to interview, more details will be give at that stage.

In full the campaign will test the below Success Profile Elements: 

Experience: Yes - Experience questions will be based around the essential skills and criteria as listed in the job description 

Technical: Yes – Technical questions will be based around the essential skills and criteria as listed in the job description. 

Behaviours: Working Together 

DLUHC has implemented the DDaT capability framework for Group 1 roles. Applicants that are successful at the sift stage will be required to complete a capability assessment at interview.

DLUHC will honour completed capability assessments for this role from other Government Departments for existing Civil Servants. Please provide a copy of your capability assessment to the Hiring Manager when applying. If you have any queries on pay, please contact the Hiring Manager.

Salary is determined by performance at interview, within the range advertised. Each experience or technical skill is assessed between 1-3, representing working towards, at or above the job level requirements. You are awarded a proficiency level accordingly, and you will be given opportunities at least once a year to re assess your capability and progress through the pay scale within your grade. 

Candidates moving from another government department have the option to retain their current salary where the principle for implementation is there is no detriment where existing pay exceeds the indicative level. Where individuals are at a lower salary than their assessed level, they will receive an upward adjustment. 

Grade 6 Group 1 DDaT salary 

• The salary for this role will between £64,453 - £69,960 (National) depending on the proficiency level assessment. 

• For applicants in receipt of existing allowances, we will assess each case individually and aim to match the digital allowance implemented with no detriment.  

• For existing civil servants, the usual policy on level transfer and promotion will apply and is non-negotiable 

Benefits 

Transfers across the Civil Service on or after 4 October 2018: 

Any move to DLUHC from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax-Free Childcare. Determine your eligibility at https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk. 

For further information about the benefits available to DLUHC employees, please see the attached Candidate Pack. 

Location 

• Birmingham

• Bristol

• Cambridge

• Leeds

• Manchester

• Newcastle

• Nottingham

• Wolverhampton 

• Darlington* 

There may be opportunities for candidates to work flexibly depending on the business needs. This will be discussed with the vacancy manager on a case-by-case basis if you are successful for the role. 

*Please note: The Darlington Economic Campus is a pioneering new cross-government hub which will bring together people across departments and public organisations to play an active role in the most important economic issues of the day. The work of the Campus will make a real difference to people both across the UK and internationally. There will be substantial career opportunities and exciting prospects - a career at the Campus means you will be working at the heart of Government, with access to the benefits and fantastic opportunities offered by the civil service.  This role is based at DLUHC and we will be joined on the campus by: 

• HM Treasury  

• Department for International Trade 

• Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy  

• Office for National Statistics  

• Department for Education 

For further information on the DEC, please take a look at the attached DEC candidate pack. 

We will perform a sift to assess and score the evidence provided in the CV and covering letter. Applicants achieving the pass mark will be offered an interview on a rolling basis. We will be sifting and interviewing applicants as we go – so please don’t wait until the deadline to submit your application. All interviews are currently being held remotely via videocall. 

Reserve List 

In the event that we identify more appointable candidates than we currently have posts available, we will hold applicant details on a reserve list for a period of 6 months from which further appointments can be made. This may include roles at a lower grade. Candidates placed on a reserve list will be informed of this. Due to the length of time CTC checks can take, our HR Shared Services team will contact reserve list candidates for London based roles to commence CTC checks. Those candidates who do not wish to remain on the reserve list should contact recruitment@communities.gov.uk to be removed from the reserve list.

SC (Security Check): 

Important note 

Successful candidates for roles based in our 2 Marsham Street building must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is Security Check and the process can take up to 8 weeks to complete. 

Please note that successful candidates will need to pass the Security Check – this requires you to have been resident in the UK for the past 5 years. Please refer to the DLUHC Notes on Security Clearance section of our Candidate Pack for further information on Security Check (SC).  

Candidates should also note that with effect from 1st August 2018 the department will also check all applicants who are successful at interview, against the Internal Fraud Database (IFD) held by the Cabinet Office. In accordance with the Civil Service Internal Fraud Policy, any applicant who is included on the IFD will be refused employment by DLUHC. Please see the Candidate Pack for further information on the Internal Fraud Database. 

Fixed Term Details 

For external candidates– you will be offered a 23 months  fixed term appointment with a possibility of permanency.  

For existing civil servants – you will be offered a 23 months loan opportunity. Before applying for the role, you will need to seek approval from your parent department to take up a loan appointment should you be successful. 

For DLUHC employees  - you will retain your existing contract 

Before starting your application it’s very important to make sure that you are eligible to apply and meet the Civil Service nationality requirements. All candidates are expected to read the information provided in the DLUHC candidate pack regarding nationality requirements and rules 

Candidate Pack Information 

Please see attached Candidate pack for further information. 

Internal Fraud Database 

The Internal Fraud function of the Fraud, Error, Debt and Grants Function at the Cabinet Office processes details of civil servants who have been dismissed for committing internal fraud, or who would have been dismissed had they not resigned.The Cabinet Office receives the details from participating government organisations of civil servants who have been dismissed, or who would have been dismissed had they not resigned, for internal fraud. In instances such as this, civil servants are then banned for 5 years from further employment in the civil service. The Cabinet Office then processes this data and discloses a limited dataset back to DLUHC as a participating government organisations. DLUHC then carry out the pre employment checks so as to detect instances where known fraudsters are attempting to reapply for roles in the civil service. In this way, the policy is ensured and the repetition of internal fraud is prevented.  

For more information please see- Internal Fraud Register 

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Contact details:

Lindsey Dodd