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General information

Posting ID
DBS03
Type of employment
Permanent
Organisation
Disclosure & Barring Service
Salary Banding MIN
£ 60380
Location
Liverpool
Salary Banding MAX
£ 64882
Workplace Type
Remote

Description & Requirements

26.36 G7 Lead Technical Architect

Disclosure & Barring Service

Apply before 10:00 am on Monday 23rd March 2026

Reference number

451717

Salary

£60,380 - £64,882
A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

Job grade

Grade 7

Contract type

Permanent

Type of role

Architecture and Data

Location

This role is available on a remote, hybrid, or office basis.

Initially, all DBS employees' contracts are office-based at one of our two sites (Liverpool and Darlington). Employees can apply for remote or hybrid work from day one. If approved, the arrangement will start after six months for transfers from Home Office or after completing probation for new joiners. Requests will be considered based on business needs and role requirements. Informal hybrid working arrangements are also available from day one, subject to business needs and role requirements and will be discussed further following any job offer.

About the job

Job summary

As a Lead Technical Architect operating within the solution space and owning the technology/applications domain you have an important role to support the business deliver successful outcomes.

DBS operates a complex technical and commercial environment with the challenge of aged legacy systems, hybrid hosting and multiple suppliers and is on a transformation journey over the course of the next two years to transition from these legacy services to modular, proprietary SaaS and cloud-based solutions, which includes the migration to new Case Management, CRM, Matching, Security Services e.g. SOCaaS, Document Management, Digital Evidence Management, Redaction, Bundling and other supporting technologies or services including those presented internally and externally to suppliers or citizens where data and information is at the heart of everything we do. In addition to this, the Lead Technical Architect will support the technology directorate and other Architects in keeping abreast of new emerging technologies that support this transformation, working closely with business, commercial and other counterparts across the organisation.

The Lead Technical Architect will support the Chief Architect and other Lead Architects as part this journey as well as managing change within the extant legacy systems and ensuring that the vision aligns to and facilitates the delivery of the DBS Business Strategy, deploying all necessary tools and techniques accordingly, as well as identifying and articulating technology led transformation opportunities. The Lead Technical Architect works with service, delivery teams, projects, planners and designers to take an early view of how they can identify and implement the best solutions to deliver business change and achieve Departmental objectives.  This solution implementation will be aligned to the architecture vision and principles, and the Lead Technical Architect will be comfortable working within agile and waterfall methodologies as well as navigating hybrid scenarios across the two disciplines.

At this level the Technical Architect will typically lead a project strand (including parallel streams), a medium size project delivery area or the technical discipline of the development capability within an agile product and service delivery team.

Job description

The key responsibilities of the Lead Technical Architect are to:

  • Provide technical leadership in a multi-team environment and using varied solution development lifecycles.
  • Challenge entrenched practices
  • Define clearly as-is and to-be architectures proportionate to the requirements of the team and environment.
  • Be responsible for leading the technical design of systems and services, justifying and communicating design decisions
  • Assure other services and system quality, ensuring the technical work fits into the broader strategy for government
  • Explore the benefits of cross-government alignment where feasible
  • Support the development of architectural patterns and roadmaps specific to the projects or services being worked on
  • Contribute to reference architecture models and repository.
  • Provide effective impact assessment of change proposals.
  • Ensure projects and programmes are compliant with strategy and architecture.
  • Assess and communicate the value of the project/programme architecture.

In delivering these responsibilities you will be expected to:

  • Build effective relations and engagement with senior management.
  • Provide or oversee the provision of effective technical advice to multiple teams ensuring that solutions adhere to accepted architectural principles.
  • Articulate to a professional standard complex technical idea in clear, informative and accessible language, tailored as necessary for the intended audience.
  • Utilise appropriate methods, techniques and tools for planning, organising, resourcing, directing, co-ordinating and monitoring ongoing activities. 

Person specification

  • Proven experience in developing and implementing technical architecture and design strategies in a multi supplier environment.
  • Experience of designing, Integrating and managing scalable, secure and efficient architectures for SaaS applications
  • Experience of working in large transformation programmes, specifically moving from legacy technology to leading edge solutions
  • Experience across physical and cloud-based architectures and across multiple operating system platforms.
  • Experience of application deployments in Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure as well as DevOps-type environments
  • Experience of the creation and maintenance of secure architectures, designs and plans encompassing the securing of data at rest and in transit, access controls (RBAC) and multi-factor authentication (MFA)
  • Proven ability to undertake detailed analysis of technical designs and provide the business with assurance of supplier designs and proposals.
  • Capable of leading VFM challenges of technical proposals and manage technical interdependencies within a project/programme.
  • Experience of supporting Architecture Teams or the Chief Architect in the delivery of the architecture vision and IT strategy.
  • Experience of CI/CD pipelines and testing

Essential Experience

  • Significant experience of working autonomously within or in support of an Architectural discipline
  • A proven track record of using IS and IT for commercial benefit.
  • Experience of using standard industry Enterprise Architecture frameworks.
  • Experience of working in agile teams supporting rapid solution delivery in cloud-based environments.
  • Experience of using architecture repository and architecture modeling tools to ensure the control and benefit maximization of infrastructure architecture.
  • Experience of delivering secure and robust solutions, contributing effectively to all security accreditation activities.

Desirable Experience

  • A good understanding of industry best practice in the use of IS/IT enabled business change.
  • A sound knowledge and application of architecture in a government or regulated environment.
  • Previous experience or background of working within, or on, secure UK based contracts
  • Background in Agile or Hybrid development lifecycles
  • Demonstrable experience of using industry standard modelling techniques e.g. ArchiMate 2.0 or EA Sparx

Other Role Requirements

  • UK based for at least 5 years and able to meet the minimum criteria to apply for, or obtain Government Security Check (SC) clearance required to perform the role.
  • You should also be willing to undergo Non‑Police Personnel Vetting (NPPV) Level 3, as NPPV3 clearance may be required when in post.

Desirable Qualification

  • TOGAF 9/10 

Behaviours

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

  • Changing and Improving
  • Communicating and Influencing
  • Leadership
  • Making Effective Decisions
  • Seeing the Big Picture
  • Working Together

Technical skills

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

  • SFIA 9 - Strategy & Architecture Skills

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £60,380, Disclosure & Barring Service contributes £17,492 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

The DBS offers a number of excellent benefits for its employees. These can include:

  • Generous annual leave entitlement
  • Excellent maternity, paternity and adoption schemes (after a qualifying period)
  • Commitment to the health and wellbeing of our employees
  • Employee Assistance Programme
  • Flexible working opportunities
  • Eyecare voucher scheme
  • Occupational Health Service including referrals for counselling and physiotherapy
  • 24/7 Counselling and Wellbeing Service
  • A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%


The DBS vision and purpose is to make people safer by being a visible, trusted and influential organisation, providing an outstanding quality of service to all our customers and partners, where our people understand the important safeguarding contributions they make and feel proud to work here. To do this, the DBS is committed to being an employer that is able to attract, develop, retain and engage diverse talent that is representative of the communities we serve, and to be an organisation providing outstanding service to all our existing and new customers, who are diverse and have a range of different needs. We want all our staff to be able to bring their ‘whole self’ to work.

Further Information:

To view the DBS Recruitment and On-boarding Privacy Notice, please click the link below:

DBS Recruitment and On-boarding Privacy Notice - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.

To apply for this role, please provide a CV along with a personal statement of no more than 500 words, outlining how your skills, experience and qualifications meet the requirements of the role, including all essential and desirable criteria.

For all candidates who are successful at the initial sifting stage, you will be invited to interview. 

The aim of the panel interview will be to assess your ability to demonstrate the following behaviours:

  • Changing and Improving
  • Communicating and Influencing
  • Leadership
  • Making Effective Decisions
  • Seeing the Big Picture
  • Working Together

Additionally, you will be assessed against these Technical Skills during the interview process:

SFIA 9 - Strategy & Architecture Skills
Strategy & Planning
•    Consultancy (CNSL) – 6
•    Specialist Advice (TECH) – 6
•    Solution Architecture (ARCH) – 6
•    Formal Research (RSCH) – 5
•    Emerging Technology Monitoring (EMRG) – 6
•    Sustainability (SUST) - 5

Security & Privacy
•    Information Security (SCTY) – 4
•    Information Assurance (INAS) – 4 

Governance & Risk
•    Governance (GOVN) - 5
•    AI & Ethics (AIDE) - 4

The following timetable outlines indicative dates. Please note, these dates may be subject to change without prior notice.

Advert closing date: Monday, 23rd March 2026 at 10:00am

The initial candidate sift is due to take place week commencing 06/04/2026

Interviews are due to take place week commencing 20/04/2026

Interviews will be held via Microsoft Teams.

Whilst we will endeavour to provide some flexibility with regards to dates wherever possible, it is unlikely that we will be able to offer an alternative date once an appointment has been scheduled.

 

**SC clearance level is a requirement for this role.**

You must meet the security requirements before you can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check.

For meaningful checks to be carried out, you will need to have lived in the UK for a sufficient period of time, to enable appropriate checks to be carried out and produce a result which provides the required level of assurance. Whilst a lack of UK residency in itself is not necessarily a bar to a security clearance, and expectation of UK residency for SC Clearance level is 5 years. Failure to meet the residency requirements needed for the role may result in the withdrawal of provisional jobs offers. 


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

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.
Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).
People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

  • UK nationals
  • nationals of the Republic of Ireland
  • nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
  • nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
  • nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
  • individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
  • Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service
Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) 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 (opens in a new window).
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.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

  • Name :Alan Yates
  • Email :alan.yates@weareams.com

Recruitment team

  • Email :psrpermapplications@weareams.com


Apply