Head of Technical Architecture

HEAD OF TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE

Role Summary

£875-£900 per day

6 Month Contract

Locations: London (preferred), Bristol or Manchester

Working Pattern: Hybrid, typically 2 days per week onsite with flexibility available. Travel: Non-London candidates expected in London approximately once per quarter. Clearance: BPSS and SC eligible minimum. Successful candidate cannot commence until SC is held by DSIT/DCMS.

Team Size: 6-8 people with 4-6 direct reports.

Overview

This is a senior architecture leadership role supporting nationally significant AI-enabled digital products. The successful candidate will lead the technical architecture function across user-facing services and products, ensuring platforms are scalable, secure and capable of supporting delivery at national scale. The role combines architecture leadership, cloud strategy, team leadership and AI product delivery.

Hiring Manager Insight

The hiring manager was clear that this is not an Enterprise Architecture role. The strongest candidates will come from Technical Architecture or Solution Architecture backgrounds and will have a proven history of delivering products used by real customers or citizens.

Candidates must be able to demonstrate ownership of major releases, leadership of architecture teams and experience shipping digital products into production. Leadership capability is just as important as technical expertise.

Role Responsibilities

Lead architecture teams, define standards, mentor architects, provide technical leadership across AI-enabled products, support engineering and product teams, guide AWS architecture decisions and ensure secure-by-design principles are applied across delivery.

Key Responsibilities

Lead and develop a team of
Own technical architecture
Support major product
Guide AI product
Drive adoption of AWS and cloud-native
Engage senior
Promote secure and scalable design
Support agile delivery

What We Are Looking For

Essential: Technical or Solution Architecture leadership, AWS experience, product delivery experience, leadership of architects, major release ownership, user-facing digital products and agile delivery.

Desirable: AI product experience, AWS Bedrock, Secure by Design, CAF awareness, government digital experience, Computer Science qualifications and national-scale platforms.

Stakeholder Landscape

The successful candidate will work closely with architecture teams, engineering leaders, product managers, delivery managers, security teams, AI specialists and senior stakeholders across government.

Interview Process

Stage 1: 15-minute introductory discussion Stage 2: 90-minute formal panel interview

Candidates may be asked to deliver a short presentation of up to 5 minutes. No technical test is currently expected.

Summary

This role is best suited to a senior Technical Architecture leader who has built and shipped large-scale digital products, led architecture teams and operated within AWS environments.

The single biggest differentiator will be evidence of user-facing product delivery and ownership of major releases. Recruiters should avoid Enterprise Architecture-focused profiles unless they can demonstrate substantial recent Technical or Solution Architecture leadership experience