Enterprise Architect Ref. 3658 in Cheltenham

Salary and Benefits £71,889 to £80,079 comprising a basic salary of £68,745 and a concessionary payment of £3,144. The exact salary offered within this range will depend on your skills and experience. An additional Skills Payment is available once your skills level is confirmed, £3,822 for Level 1 or £8,190 for Level 2. Once in role, there may also be opportunities to qualify for further allowances and additional skills‑related payments.

Flexible Working We recognise the importance of a healthy work‑life balance and offer a range of working patterns, including full‑time, part‑time and compressed hours. Home/hybrid working may be possible depending on business needs, but it is limited due to the nature of our work. We also support flexible start and finish times to help you manage your personal and professional commitments.

About us GCHQ is an intelligence, cyber and security agency with a mission to keep the UK safe. We use cutting‑edge technology, ingenuity and partnerships to identify, analyse and disrupt threats. Working with our intelligence partners, we protect the UK from terrorism, cyber‑attacks and espionage. At GCHQ, you’ll do varied and fascinating work in a supportive and inclusive environment that puts the emphasis on teamwork.

The Role As an Enterprise Architect, you’ll lead and support other Architects in shaping, and embedding GCHQ’s enterprise architecture. With responsibility for a defined remit of one or more departments, you’ll work across teams to design and guide architectures, influence decision‑making and manage risk. You’ll be a trusted advisor, communicating complex architectural topics to a wide range of stakeholders. And as you work on our cutting‑edge, unique technology, you’ll have the opportunity to apply your skills to interesting challenges and grow your career in a purposeful way. Working on a complex portfolio of solutions, you’ll design and maintain artefacts for programmes and services within your departments, balancing organisational priorities and practical delivery. You’ll work with senior colleagues to ensure alignment with our long‑term strategic goals, user needs and industry best practice. Once you’re in the role, you’ll also take on line‑management responsibilities for a small team, using your experience to support them in their work and careers. You’ll collaborate with delivery teams, engineers and business colleagues, and work extensively with senior leaders, external partners and industry bodies to shape shared direction and manage dependencies. Occasional travel to sites across the UK will be required to enable close working with colleagues from across the organisation.

About You You’ll have practical experience working as an Enterprise Architect, including leading teams or line‑managing others. We’re interested in your support for our shared mission, the practical experience you’ve gained in the field and how you’ve contributed to architectural work across technology, data, digital or business‑change initiatives. You will be required to provide mentoring to less‑senior colleagues. You’ll have confidence in your understanding of architecture standards and frameworks (such as ArchiMate, TOGAF, Zachman and MODAF), as well as principles and governance models. You will bring expertise in translating organisational goals into actionable architectural strategies. You’ll have experience leading design initiatives, proactively identifying risks and constraints, and optimising environments across technology, data and processes to deliver impactful solutions. This means you’ll be well‑equipped with the skills needed to take on complex, high‑level projects that require trade‑offs, strategic decision‑making and active management of organisational impact. Your communication skills will be key as you work with senior stakeholders from technical and non‑technical backgrounds, explaining decisions and technical concepts in a way that suits different audiences. You’ll be collaborative and adept at influencing and negotiating, and comfortable working across different teams. As your priorities shift depending on business needs, you’ll also need to be adaptable and able to manage your own time effectively.

Training and Development We’re proud to offer an inclusive and supportive working environment, and as an organisation that values and nurtures our colleagues, both professionally and personally, we’re dedicated to helping you fulfil your potential. When you join, you’ll receive a full induction into GCHQ so you can learn more about who we are, what we do and where your role fits in. Once you’re in post, you’ll receive formal and on‑the‑job training, along with all the support you need to thrive. We encourage continuous professional development and are committed to giving you the space and capacity to develop, innovate and experiment. Typically, we expect 20 % of your time to be dedicated to developing yourself and supporting others. We value your ability to learn and adapt to new challenges, so we’ll invest in your skills and in the way you prefer to learn, from books, study, courses and conferences to stretching work supported by your team. You’ll be encouraged to drive and shape your own personal development, and you’ll have access to learning and development opportunities tailored to your role. We’ll cover the cost and provide the time and support you need to gain professional qualifications and certifications. From day one, you’ll have access to mentors and subject‑matter experts. We’ll help you create a structured development and career plan that’s right for you.

Rewards and Benefits 25 days’ annual leave automatically rising to 30 days after 5 years’ service, and an additional 10.5 days of public and privilege holidays Opportunities to be recognised through our employee performance scheme An interest‑free season ticket loan (travel and parking) A 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 GCHQ 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 neuro‑divergent conditions. We therefore welcome and encourage applications from everyone, including those from groups that are under‑represented in our workforce such as women, people with an ethnic minority background, people with disabilities and those from low socio‑economic backgrounds. GCHQ is proud to have achieved Leader status within the Department for Work and Pensions’ 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 fair and proportionate number of person‑to‑person interviews 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:

• Experience leading and guiding architecture design by translating organisational strategy and business and user needs into architectures and artefacts that are adopted across teams, and align with enterprise standards
• Experience making and guiding architectural decisions involving managed levels of risk and complexity, balancing trade‑offs (for example, cost, risk scalability or maintainability) and using governance and standards to enable sustainable delivery
• Ability to influence and align multiple teams and senior stakeholders by communicating complex architectural concepts and building agreement around shared architectural direction

Essential Requirements British citizenship or dual British nationality Highest security clearance (Developed Vetting) Will be required to travel occasionally across the UK Must be able to live within a commutable distance of Cheltenham (relocation not offered)