Associate Enterprise Architect

Salary and benefits

Salary: £55,758 to £63,948 comprising a basic salary of £53,000 and a concessionary payment of £2,758. 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. While most of our work is carried out on-site due to its sensitive nature, occasional homeworking may be possible depending on business requirements. We also support flexible start and finish times to help you manage your personal and professional commitments.

About GCHQ

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.

Role overview

As an Associate Enterprise Architect, you’ll have support from senior architects in developing and delivering GCHQ’s enterprise architecture. The nature of our work means our technology must be cutting-edge and is often unique to our one-of-a-kind mission. The opportunity for learning in this role is extensive, with lots of interesting challenges and plenty of development opportunities on offer. Mentored by one of our Enterprise Architects, you’ll collaborate with delivery teams and stakeholders throughout the organisation, applying best practice and emerging approaches while growing your own skills. Every day, you’ll play an important part in helping teams deliver mission-critical work as you contribute to designs and documentation and provide analysis. Working with technical and business teams, you’ll also collaborate to align solutions to their needs and our organisational strategies.

You’ll have practical experience working as an Associate Enterprise Architect. We’re most interested in your support for our shared mission and how you’ve contributed to architectural work across technology, data, digital or business change initiatives. Whether that’s supporting designs, analysing impacts or documenting architectures, you’ll have gained valuable practical experience. Architectural standards, principles, and governance are familiar territory for you, and you've worked with at least one modern architecture framework/standard (such as ArchiMate, TOGAF, Zachman, or MODAF).

Responsibilities

• Analyse requirements, shape solutions at the appropriate level of detail, and clearly articulate risks and trade-offs to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Collaborate with delivery teams and stakeholders to align solutions with organisational strategies.
• Contribute to designs, documentation and analysis to support mission-critical work.
• Provide practical architectural support across technology, data, digital or business change initiatives.
• Ensure adherence to architectural standards, principles and governance.

Qualifications

• Practical experience as an Associate Enterprise Architect or in similar architectural roles.
• Experience with at least one modern architecture framework/standard (e.g., ArchiMate, TOGAF, Zachman, MODAF).
• Strong communication and problem-solving skills; ability to explain requirements, risks and trade-offs to diverse audiences.
• Ability to collaborate, adapt to changing priorities, and manage time effectively.

Development and training

Full induction to GCHQ and formal and on-the-job training, with support to thrive and grow. Typically around 20% of time devoted to personal development and supporting others. Access to mentors and subject matter experts; development plans aligned with individual goals.

Diversity and eligibility

At GCHQ, diversity and inclusion are critical to our mission. We welcome applications from people with diverse backgrounds, ages, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, ways of thinking and those with disabilities or neurodivergent conditions.

Eligibility to apply: You must be a British Citizen. If you hold dual nationality, one component is British, you will still be considered. Applicants should normally have been resident in the UK for seven of the last ten years. There is no upper age limit. You can apply at 17; if successful, start date cannot be prior to your 18th birthday.

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