Hybrid working model – remote and on-site as required
Overview
Ministry of Justice is seeking an experienced Senior Technical Architect to support Legal Aid Agency on a temporary consultancy engagement. The role provides architectural leadership across digital services that enable both citizens and legal professionals to access and manage legal aid services.
You will work within multidisciplinary delivery teams and act as a senior technical partner, shaping architectural strategy, informing key technology decisions, and ensuring services are secure, scalable and aligned to government digital and technology standards. This position demands a strong blend of technical breadth, stakeholder engagement, and the ability to influence across organizational boundaries.
Role Purpose
The Senior Technical Architect will analyse the Legal Aid Agency’s technology landscape, identify opportunities for improvement, and define architectures that support long‑term digital transformation. You will collaborate closely with developers, SRE and security specialists, product managers, user researchers, designers and delivery managers to guide technical direction across multiple service lines.
This role requires clear communication, structured thinking and the ability to articulate technical concepts to both specialist and non‑specialist audiences. You will also support the development of the architecture community, providing guidance, mentorship and technical leadership across teams.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic Architecture & Technical Leadership
- Work with the Lead Technical Architect to define and maintain the long‑term architectural roadmap for the Legal Aid Agency’s digital systems.
- Ensure product and delivery teams follow strategic architectural principles, integration patterns and technology direction.
- Maintain a holistic view of the end‑to‑end service ecosystem, identifying technical dependencies, risks and opportunities for improvement.
Stakeholder Engagement & Communication
- Explain complex architectural concepts in clear terms to senior stakeholders, enabling informed decision‑making.
- Facilitate alignment between technical and business leaders, balancing strategic direction with delivery needs.
- Represent architecture in governance forums, supporting prioritisation, risk discussions and assurance reviews.
Design, Analysis & Governance
- Create high‑quality architectural artefacts including diagrams, data flows, integrations, future‑state designs and migration pathways.
- Evaluate technology options and assess impacts across infrastructure, data, security and operational areas.
- Contribute to architectural patterns, principles and standards to support consistency across the digital directorate.
Technical Oversight & Support
- Provide expert oversight to ensure services are robust, secure, scalable and maintainable.
- Mentor and coach architects, tech leads and senior engineers, supporting capability development.
- Assist with recruitment and community‑of‑practice initiatives within the architecture and engineering functions.
Culture & Ways of Working
- Promote open dialogue, collaborative problem solving and continuous learning within the Legal Aid Agency’s technical community.
- Champion inclusive working practices and support efforts to grow diversity across engineering roles.
Candidate Requirements
Essential Skills & Experience
- Significant experience as a technical or solution architect in complex digital or enterprise environments.
- Strong software engineering foundation, with practical knowledge of modern application architectures such as microservices, APIs and distributed systems.
- Proven ability to design and document architectures using visual modelling techniques such as C4, UML and data flow diagrams.
- Hands‑on experience with at least one major cloud provider, ideally AWS, including Infrastructure as Code, platform services, networking and security controls.
- Deep understanding of secure and resilient system design, including authentication patterns, threat modelling, performance considerations and observability.
- Familiarity with Ruby, Python or Java and modern development practices such as CI/CD, TDD and containerisation.
- Experience guiding technology decisions, evaluating options and influencing senior stakeholders.
- Strong understanding of data modelling, integration approaches, API design, messaging patterns and interoperability challenges.
- Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex topics and build consensus across diverse groups.
- Ability to work across the full delivery lifecycle, from discovery through implementation and service transition.
Desirable Skills & Experience
- Experience with enterprise ERP platforms such as Oracle E‑Business Suite.
- Knowledge of UK government digital service standards, architecture frameworks and assurance processes.
- Understanding of Domain‑Driven Design or event‑driven architectural approaches.
- Exposure to SRE, platform engineering or infrastructure architecture disciplines.
- Experience contributing to architectural communities of practice or governance forums.
- Prior consultancy experience working across multiple product teams or client environments.
Personal Attributes
- Strong systems thinking and analytical capability, with the ability to understand complex environments quickly.
- Comfortable operating in ambiguous or fast‑changing environments while maintaining architectural clarity.
- Collaborative, empathetic and committed to building trust with stakeholders at all levels.
- Dedicated to continuous learning, technical curiosity and staying current with emerging technologies.
- Pragmatic and outcome‑focused, balancing long‑term architectural quality with short‑term delivery constraints.
Technical Environment
- The assignment covers a diverse mix of modern cloud‑native services and legacy enterprise platforms. Exposure to modern languages and frameworks including Ruby, Java and Python; AWS cloud services, Infrastructure as Code, platform‑as‑a‑service tooling; engineering practices such as DDD, TDD, CI/CD, automated testing and Git workflows; multi‑tier platform strategies including centralised data and business logic layers; Enterprise Oracle software including ERP components; mac‑based development environments and public GitHub repositories.
Additional employment information
Compensation information is accurate as of the date of this posting. Cognizant reserves the right to modify this information at any time, subject to applicable law.
Applicants may be required to attend interviews in person or by video conference. In addition, candidates may be required to present their current state or government‑issued ID during each interview.
Cognizant is an equal opportunity employer. Your application and candidacy will not be considered based on race, colour, sex, religion, creed, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, veteran status or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.
If you have a disability that requires reasonable accommodation to search for a job opening or submit an application, please email dearesden(at)cognizant.com for roles based in the Americas or pjones(at)cognizant.com for roles based in India.
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