Senior Technical Architect - Birmingham

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Here in HMRC's Chief Digital & Information Group (CDIO) we're increasingly delivering in-house through our growing network of digital delivery centres - hi-tech, innovative facilities across the UK. We are a small, agile team within our Chief Technology and Design Office that focus on Technical Innovation. Our objective isn't necessarily what we can change tomorrow, but the longer-term improvement of the UK tax system. We work to understand and solve problems, proposing innovative solutions through continuous exploration.

As a key member of our multidisciplinary Innovation Team, you'll work alongside User Researchers, Analysts, Designers, Product Managers, Software Developers, Architects, policy, innovation and technology specialists. As a team, you'll develop innovative approaches for digital products that are part of end-to-end services across HMRC and government.

This is an exciting opportunity to make real changes for HMRC and our customers through innovation and to join our Architecture community supporting a large-scale dynamic transformation that has profound impact both on customers and our staff. Proactive and reactive to changing opportunities, you'll have the skill to interpret and react to small, medium and large-scale challenges, and the vision to identify potential and future opportunities.

By using emerging technology, data, and considering user needs, you'll develop innovative concepts and solutions, supporting Innovation colleagues with technical and architecture expertise. You'll test the art of the possible by designing proof of concepts to test solutions for future services, working with internal groups, third parties, external suppliers and academia to develop concepts and MVPs. You'll run proof of value exercises to support concepts by demonstrating customer and HMRC impact. You'll contribute to business cases and make compelling recommendations for future direction, delivering these to senior partners to influence policy and strategy.

You will be an expert Technical Architect, able to investigate, design and develop solutions to technology challenges in a fast-paced, collaborative, multidisciplinary Innovation Team.

You will:

• Rapidly develop an understanding of technologies in use and the overall architecture strategy.
• Work closely with Innovation scrum teams, business partners and IT colleagues to design innovative but appropriate solutions that demonstrate that new technology and approaches can deliver improvements, ensuring operational delivery and that they fit with strategic end-to-end functional design.
• Be flexible and self-motivated, have a keen eye for detail and a solid focus on quality.
• Have a good track record in delivering customer-focused technology change and be able to articulate technical detail to non-technical people, so it is understood.
• Be credible, influential and a team-player. A confident communicator with good interpersonal skills.
• Be comfortable working creatively in a "fail fast" manner on inception and discovery projects, where scope and concept are not clearly defined or understood and without relying on defined process or established requirements.

We are looking for a Senior Technical Architect who has experience of:

• Leading technical discussions between internal teams and external stakeholders, clearly communicating concepts and driving continuous improvement.
• Evaluating products/tools and providing enterprise appropriate recommendations.
• Developing an understanding of user needs, to design user-centred technical service propositions.
• Identifying business problems and recommending technical solutions and designs.
• Undertaking structural analysis of technical issues, translating this analysis into technical designs that describe a solution.
• Building collaborative relationships with partners across teams and services.
• Articulating technical requirements and implications compellingly to technical and non-technical colleagues, senior leaders, business partners and customers.
• Working with innovators to design aspirational concepts for future services and processes.
• Mentoring colleagues.

Essential Criteria:

• Governing high and low-level designs with full lifecycle management, from requirements management to supporting the operations teams with service introduction.
• Effective communication with colleagues, business partners, customers and senior leaders.
• You are skilled at proactive and reactive communication.
• Bridging the gap between the technical and non-technical with the ability to translate technical concepts, so they are understood by all.
• Technical governance and delivering the assurance of a service.
• Making and guiding effective decisions, explaining clearly how the decision has been reached.
• Applying strategy for technology that meets business and customer needs with the ability to create, refine and challenge standards, policies, roadmaps and vision statements.
• Working with business and technology partners to translate business problems into technical designs.
• You can work across multiple services or a single large or complicated service.
• Understanding trends and practices outside your team and organisation, their potential impact and how they can fit into broader strategy.
• Looking beyond the immediate technical problem and identifying wider implications, understanding the broad context.
• Cloud computing knowledge and experience designing and implementing (e.g. AWS/Azure/Google or Hybrid) based.

Desirable Criteria:

• Software development and technical architecture.
• Knowledge of innovative and emerging technologies (e.g. Artificial Intelligence, Geospatial and Synthetic Data, Cryptocurrencies, Open Banking etc.)
• Agile methodologies and principles.

HMRC operates both Flexible and Hybrid Working policies, allowing you to balance your work and personal commitments. We welcome applications from those who need to work a more flexible arrangement and will agree to requests where possible, considering our operational and customer service needs.

We offer a generous leave allowance, starting at 25 days and increasing by a day for every year of qualifying service up to a maximum of 30 days.

To find out more about HMRC benefits and find out what it's really like to work for HMRC, hear from our insiders or visit Thinking of joining the Civil Service.