Lead Technical Architect in Manchester

Based within the Cloud & Engineering Practice, the Lead Technical Architect role is accountable for driving the growth of our architecture capability while supporting client deliveries and providing technical assurance to our engineering teams. We’re looking for technical leaders who can work closely with client stakeholders and our delivery teams to help shape, design and deliver predominantly cloud-based architectures. They will also provide architecture oversight and help clients to develop and evolve their technical strategy. People in this role primarily work consultatively and are expected to build relationships with clients across our industry verticals, ranging from Central Government to Health and Local Government. Identification of growth opportunities for existing accounts and new clients is also a key responsibility.

Outcomes

• Taking responsibility for understanding client requirements and communicating between technical teams and the business.
• Align your team’s work with department and government technology strategy, participating in strategic technical decisions and challenging previous decisions where needed.
• Be responsible for technical design and development of public services of various sizes, how they interact with their surroundings (including other projects, teams and organisations), and how they evolve over time.
• Be responsible for ensuring non-functional requirements are identified and delivered, particularly relating to security and operability in the cloud.
• Challenge entrenched practices and influence decision makers, and look for deeper underlying problems to solve, and larger opportunities for digital transformation.
• Facilitate workshops and other collaborative activities leveraging lean and agile techniques with both your team and the client to ensure the service architecture meets user needs and enables business goals.
• Provide technical leadership to our delivery teams and strategic architectural advice to clients.

Responsible for driving growth:

• Shape and deliver opportunities on client accounts by providing expert engagement as a trusted technical leader.
• Provide pre-sales support on bids by calling on technical experience to confidently address stated client needs.
• Shaping and drafting responses and supporting proposal presentations to existing or new clients to help add value and credibility and maximise successful bid outcomes.
• Provide thought leadership through supporting marketing initiatives, writing blog posts, speaking at events, etc.
• Working with and in account teams to build strong client relationships and find additional growth opportunities.

Responsible for providing support to Made Tech colleagues:

• Leading and championing the practice across Made Tech through community of practice involvement and by coaching and mentoring more junior team members.
• Presenting learnings to the Software Engineering Community of Practice.
• Supporting and briefing our client partners to help them better understand our technical propositions with the goal of identifying additional opportunities.
• Line management of more junior colleagues to support their development, pursuit of career goals and management of their overall performance.
• Help build and maintain a diverse, inclusive culture across the development community, growing awareness, inclusivity, and balance.

Responsible for assuring the quality of technical deliveries:

• When not actively working with clients, being available to delivery teams to provide architecture support and guidance.
• Reviewing architecture quality at various checkpoints throughout a delivery’s lifecycle.

Principles

• Prioritise a positive employee experience: we invest in ensuring we maintain a positive employee experience.
• Align to commercial goals: we understand and align improvements to the commercial goals of the business.
• Value close collaboration: we collaborate and work with colleagues across the business in a positive and supportive way.
• Take a pragmatic approach: we appreciate that as a rapidly growing business we sometimes need to make uncomfortable tradeoffs.

Job Benefits

• 30 days Holiday – we offer 30 days of paid annual leave.
• Flexible Working Hours – we are flexible with what hours you work.
• Flexible Parental Leave – we offer flexible parental leave options.
• Remote Working – we offer part-time remote working for all our staff.
• Paid counselling – we offer paid counselling as well as financial and legal advice.

An increasing number of our customers are specifying a minimum of SC (security check) clearance in order to work on their projects. As a result, we’re looking for all successful candidates for this role to have eligibility. Eligibility for SC requires 5 years’ continuous UK residency and 5 years’ employment history (or back to full-time education). Please note that if at any point during the interview process it is apparent that you may not be eligible for SC, we won’t be able to progress your application and we will contact you to let you know why.