Senior Technical Architect in London

The Ministry of Justice is seeking an experienced Senior Technical Architect to support the 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.

Role Purpose

The Senior Technical Architect will analyze 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.

Key Responsibilities

• 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.
• 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 prioritization, risk discussions, and assurance reviews.
• Create high‑quality architectural artifacts 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.
• 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.
• 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 (e.g., microservices, APIs, 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 containerization.
• 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 (e.g., 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 some of the following areas would be beneficial:

• 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 centralized data and business logic layers.
• Enterprise Oracle software including ERP components.
• Mac‑based development environments and public GitHub repositories.

Our Values

We are committed to a culture built on purpose, transparency, collaboration, and respect. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and support an inclusive environment where people can thrive. Cognizant is an equal opportunity employer. Your application and candidacy will not be considered based on race, color, 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.