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About Us

We are MI5, we protect the UK from threats to national security such as terrorism and espionage. We gather intelligence and work closely with the police and law enforcement to detect threats and work out ways to stop them.

The Role

Architecture and technology leadership is crucial to MI5's ability to move at pace and deliver the strategic technology change we need to stay ahead. We need technology leaders to help set and deliver our ambitious technology strategy.

We are moving into a product centred organisation and, as we evolve in this direction, we need senior technologists to help us develop our capabilities ensuring we are making best use of recent innovations in technology as well as pushing these barriers even further with our internal engineering teams.

We are looking for forward-leaning, experienced architects to join a successful team of engineers, architects, and product professionals, working within a dynamic and fast-moving environment.

Our Technical Architects are technical leaders able to bridge the gap between technical and non-technical stakeholders. They work very closely with product teams, delivering new and exciting capabilities on the ground, as well as working with senior mission stakeholders to make decisions on risk and technology strategy.

As a senior role, the successful candidate must have proven experience in a similar role and of the complete delivery lifecycle.

Our technical architects maintain both breadth of technical knowledge and one or more technical specialisms in depth. These technical specialisms may include application development, security, cloud technologies etc.

Key responsibilities include:

• Manage product and product group level architecture & technology risk.
• Setting strategic direction for our products and technologies and guiding decisions on the future of products, platforms, or services, as well as enabling the decommissioning of legacy ones.
• Work as part of a product group team, with engineers and senior stakeholders to ensure alignment of vision and act as a force multiplier to improving our speed of delivery whilst managing technical and compliance risk.
• Support our product teams in their technical decisions and designs by working closely with lead engineers and product managers.
• Maintaining coherence across our product landscape to ensure our systems work well together and we are getting the best return from our capability investments.

This role will be a blend of cross-team working, individual project work and may involve working with external partners.

About You

We are looking for passionate leaders in the technology world who are excited to take the initiative, be creative and drive business change.

• You have had a technical background e.g. data science, software engineering, security engineering etc.
• You have experience in problem definition and shaping including designing complex solutions and evaluating the merit of different technical/commercial options and approaches.
• You have worked with teams to ensure that their system architectures are robust, scalable, and secure, with appropriate system design and integration points/APIs, to deliver a high-quality user experience
• You will have experience developing technology roadmaps with empowered product teams and ensuring their delivery and that they meet the needs of the business.
• You will have strong communication skills to explain the impact of your work to the business and technical community, and the desire to work collaboratively by sharing ideas and experience across the wider architecture and engineering teams.
• Ability to produce high quality architectural artefacts to support communication
• You have a passion for continuous learning and take steps to ensure you can identify and seize opportunities presented by the changing technology landscape.

Evidence of experience in:

• Understanding distributed architectures and how to design underpinning platform services to support these
• Experience using modern cloud technologies and services e.g. AWS or Azure
• Using technical patterns such as SOA, APIs, Web Services (SOAP/RESTful), Micro Services, Data Lakehouse and Containerization.
• Experience coaching junior technologists
• Ability to produce quality architectural artefacts to support communication

It is beneficial for the candidate to have a background in maths, coding, software engineering or data science as this helps with credibility when working with technical staff on the ground.

Training and Development

Access to a personal training budget is available for books, e-learning and other training. Opportunities to attend technical conferences are also available.
The DDaT Career framework provide opportunities to identify training opportunities and if gaps can be filled by formal qualifications this can be arranged as part of your personal development plan.
Successful Applicants will have an introduction to the platform team as well as other stakeholder teams including the Head of Architecture and Head of profession for architecture.

Rewards and Benefits

You’ll receive a starting salary of London £69,388 - £74,193 / Manchester £67,662 - £72,248 plus other benefits including:

• 25 Days Annual Leave automatically rising to 30 days after 5 years' service, and an additional 10.5 days public and privilege holidays
• Opportunities to be recognised through our employee performance scheme
• Personal Learning Budget
• Interest-free season ticket loan
• Excellent pension scheme
• Cycle to work scheme
• Facilities such as a gym, restaurant and on-site coffee bars (at some locations)
• Paid parental and adoption leave.

Equal Opportunities

At MI5 diversity and inclusion are critical to our mission. To protect the UK, we need a truly diverse workforce that reflects the society we serve. This includes diversity in every sense of the word: those with different backgrounds, ages, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, ways of thinking and those with disabilities or neurodivergent conditions. We therefore welcome and encourage applications from everyone, including those from groups that are under-represented in our workforce such as women, those from an ethnic minority background, people with disabilities and those from low socio-economic backgrounds.

Find out more about our culture, working environment and diversity on our website:

https://www.mi5.gov.uk/careers/diversity

We’re Disability Confident

MI5 are proud to have achieved Leader status within the DWP’s Disability Confident scheme. This is aimed at encouraging employers to think differently about disability and take action to improve how they recruit, retain and develop disabled people. Being Disability Confident, we aim to offer a person-to-person interview to any candidate who self-identifies as disabled and meets the essential criteria for the role. This is our ‘Offer of Interview’ (OOI). To secure an interview for this vacancy, the essential criteria (in order of application process) are:

• Recent Experience in a software engineering (product delivery), infrastructure engineering or technical architecture role

What to Expect

Our recruitment process is fair, transparent, and based on merit. Here is a brief overview of each stage, in order:

• Application sift, looking at your motivation for the role and the organisation.
• Competency based interview with additional technical questions based on the role you are applying for.
• If successful, you will receive a conditional offer of employment, subject to vetting

Please note, you must successfully pass each stage of the process to progress to the next. Your application may take around 6 - 9 months to process including vetting, so we advise you continue any current employment until you have received your final job offer.

Before You Apply

To work at MI5, you need to be a British citizen or hold dual British nationality. You can read our full eligibility criteria here.

This role requires the highest security clearance, known as Developed Vetting (DV). It’s something everyone in the UK Intelligence Community undertakes. You can find out more about the vetting process here.

Please note we have a strict drugs policy, so once you start your application, you can’t take any recreational drugs and you’ll need to declare your previous drug usage at the relevant stage.

The role is based in London or Manchester, so you’ll need to live within a commutable distance. Please consider any financial implications and practicalities before submitting an application. A loan is available to support people relocating.

Please note, you should only launch your application from within the UK. If you are based overseas, you should wait until you visit the UK to launch an application. Applying from outside the UK will impact on our ability to progress your application. You should not discuss your application, other than with your partner or a close family member.

Right to Withdraw Statement:

Please be aware that we withhold the right to bring forward the closing date for this role from the original closing date once a certain number of applications have been received. Please be mindful of this and submit your application at your earliest convenience to avoid disappointment.