Solutions Architect

Salary: £80,875 - £89,475, dependent on skills and experience. This full salary range reflects the London pay level for roles aligned to the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework (GDDPCF), formerly the Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) Capability Framework, and includes the consolidated skills-related payments available within this framework. Additional allowances may also be available once in role.

Flexible Working: We support full-time, part time, compressed, and flexible working hours. We’re committed to offering remote working across our organisation; however, our ability to do so depends on role requirements and business needs. Home working is not possible.

We’re MI6, also known as the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). Our mission is to protect the security and economic wellbeing of the UK from overseas threats such as regional instability, terrorism, and cyber-attacks. Working across the globe and in close partnership with MI5 and GCHQ, we help the Government to counter these threats through the provision of secret intelligence. A role in MI6 will see you providing vital support to this work within a supportive and encouraging environment that puts the emphasis on teamwork.

Architecture and technology are core to MI6’s successful operations and intelligence delivery. There is a constant need to develop and maintain capabilities that provide us with mission advantage in a rapidly changing, technology- and data-driven world. We use agile and lean methodologies to innovate, deliver, and upgrade products. Whether you work on data analytics, knowledge systems, operational communications, or technical operations capabilities, the nature of our work presents unique and fascinating architecture challenges that you are unlikely to have encountered before.

We develop products that provide capability across MI6. Our multi-disciplinary teams are made up of architects & engineers who work alongside product owners, business analysts, and delivery colleagues to ensure MI6 gets what it needs by balancing tactical and strategic goals. As a Solution Architect, you’ll lead the design and systems-engineering approach for a specific area of our organisation—creating new products and continually improving the capabilities of our existing ones.

You’ll be part of a community responsible for design authority. Working with the Product Manager and Business Lead, you’ll help to deliver a plan that considers user experience, cost, risk, time, and quality, while balancing product evolution with the immediacy of business need. In this role, you’ll also deliver the architecture and systems-engineering elements of the product plan throughout its whole life cycle.

This will include:

• Understanding the business problem and shaping the solution, while tailoring systems-engineering and architecture processes to address product risks in the context of scale and complexity.
• Developing, maintaining and communicating the product’s vision, architecture, and technology roadmap, including producing high-level designs, solution outlines, and key design decisions.
• Managing technology risk and overseeing design evolution as the product develops, ensuring decisions remain aligned to business needs.
• Supporting integration with other products and overseeing release to service, ensuring coherence across the wider product ecosystem.

Ideally, you’ll have led significant elements of product and system delivery and change. Experience as a technical domain subject‑matter expert is important, as is having worked as a Solution Architect or as part of a solution architecture team on complex solutions. A solid background in applying enterprise and domain architecture, influencing stakeholders, and conducting trade‑offs across requirements and solution spaces is essential.

Knowledge of multiple architecture and delivery frameworks, along with experience of embedding these tools and techniques, is also expected.

Well‑developed soft skills are key to supporting communication and decision‑making, including curiosity, teamwork, and problem‑solving. Being an effective communicator and influencer, with…