Associate Solutions Architect

Location

Cheltenham, United Kingdom

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 home working may be possible depending on business requirements. We also support flexible start and finish times to help you balance your personal and professional commitments.

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, MI5 and MI6, 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.

As one of our Associate Solutions Architects, you’ll help design and deliver technology solutions across GCHQ. Our work is unique, often cutting‑edge, and designed to support our highly specialised national security mission. Guided by an experienced Solutions Architect, you’ll shape designs, produce architectural artefacts, and be part of the teams that deliver the solutions. You’ll play a key role in ensuring our solutions remain robust, scalable and cost‑effective.

A big part of the job is understanding business needs and helping to define solutions that take technical constraints, delivery plans, risks and complexity into account. With support from your line manager and mentor, you’ll answer questions, clarify designs, and adapt solutions as requirements change. Occasional travel to sites across the UK will be required so you can work closely with colleagues across the organisation.

You don’t need a degree or any specific qualifications to apply for this role; we’re interested in your experience and your motivation to support our shared mission. A foundational understanding of solution architecture is important, along with experience contributing to the design and delivery of digital or technology solutions. Experience with at least one modern framework, such as TOGAF, NIST and ITIL, is also valuable, typically gained in roles like software engineering, infrastructure engineering, Dev Ops.

As you’ll be involved in projects from day one, an understanding of how business needs, technology choices and delivery constraints shape solution design will be required. You’ll operate independently on moderately complex problems while contributing to broader work led by more senior architects, responsible for delivering architectural design and direction for a specific solution or defined area of delivery. Effective communication skills, combined with a broad technical foundation, will help you to explain design decisions to both technical and non‑technical audiences.

Being collaborative, comfortable working across teams and confident in influencing and negotiation will help in finding solutions that work for everyone.

We’re proud to offer an inclusive and supportive working environment, and as an organisation that values and nurtures our colleagues, both professionally and personally, we’re dedicated to helping you fulfil your potential. On joining, you’ll have a full induction into GCHQ, so you can learn more about who we are, what we do, and where your role fits in. You’ll receive formal and on‑the‑job training and all the support you need to thrive  encourage continuous professional development and are dedicated to allowing you the space and capacity to develop, innovate and experiment.

We typically expect 20% of your time to be spent on developing yourself and supporting others.

From day one, you’ll have access to mentors and subject matter experts. We’ll help you create a structured development and career plan that’s right for you.

You’ll receive a starting salary of £53,496 to £61,686, plus other benefits including:

• 25 days’ annual leave, rising automatically to 30 days after 5 years' service, plus an additional 10.5 days of public and privilege holidays
• op…