Senior Technical Architect

Student Loans Company•Darlington, SC

5d•£61,950 - £72,952•Hybrid

About The Position

As a Senior Technical Architect within SLC’s Architecture team, you’ll help shape and govern the organisation’s technical direction. You’ll define and refine architectures and designs that support major change programmes, ensuring they align with SLC’s principles, strategies, and enterprise roadmap. This includes working across a diverse application estate from Commercial Off the Shelf Solutions through to micro service-based platforms both on prem and on cloud. You will also contribute to the development of technical roadmaps, lead design assurance activities, and promote innovation by exploring new technologies and approaches. Collaboration is central to the role—you’ll work closely with business and technical colleagues, communicate architectural designs to varied audiences, and support technical teams in their development.

Requirements

Ability to make architecture decisions while solving high risk architecture issues, assuring services against broader government standards, and managing architectural risks.
Confident translating complex technical concepts into non-technical language for senior stakeholders and presenting at various forums.
Ability to work collaboratively in a group or team and actively network with others while using your initiative to identify problems or issues in the team dynamic and rectify them.
Capacity to advocate or influence innovation initiatives and gain buy-in through collaboration with engineering, product and business teams.
Evidence-based decision-making skills e.g. translation of PoC findings into actionable recommendations.
Providing risk assessment and mitigation.
Ability to assess maturity, risk, interoperability and sustainability of technologies while understanding and communicating complexity and architecture fit.
A self‑starting approach with the ability to work autonomously and collaboratively.
Advanced proficiency in conceptual, logical, physical and semantic data modelling for operational and analytical systems.
Experience in design and delivery of data pipelines using enterprise integration patterns and tooling from on-prem and cloud data sources to enterprise data warehouse and data lakehouse architecture.
Experience working with software delivery partners in a multi-vendor environment, including pre-contract engagement, preparation of invitations to tender and tender evaluation.
Experience and knowledge of design & delivery of data services from at least one of public cloud providers e.g. AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud.
Experience of architecture design assurance and presentation at technical assurance board and architecture review board for information and approval.

Responsibilities

Shape and govern the organisation’s technical direction.
Define and refine architectures and designs that support major change programmes, ensuring they align with SLC’s principles, strategies, and enterprise roadmap.
Work across a diverse application estate from Commercial Off the Shelf Solutions through to micro service-based platforms both on prem and on cloud.
Contribute to the development of technical roadmaps.
Lead design assurance activities.
Promote innovation by exploring new technologies and approaches.
Work closely with business and technical colleagues.
Communicate architectural designs to varied audiences.
Support technical teams in their development.

Benefits

A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%
28 days annual leave plus 8 public holidays
Option to buy/sell annual leave
Flexi-time and enhanced flexible working options available
Life insurance cover for 4 x annual salary
Enhanced company sick pay and family leave including maternity, paternity and adoption
Contributory lifestyle benefit options including discounts at hundreds of retailers
Cycle to work scheme
Access to the Civil Service Sports and Leisure Club for discounted gym memberships
Optional dental insurance scheme