Senior Technical Architect

Job content

SALARY £49,800 - £75,600Top of range includes up to £15k DDaT allowance (non-pensionable) based on experience

• Pension: Excellent Civil Service pension with an incredible 27.9% Employers Contribution
• Working: Hybrid, with typically 2 days a month in the office. We are open to discussing any location in the UK and any working pattern. If you are right for us, and we are right for you, we will do our best to make it work
• Holidays: Enhanced 35 days annual leave including 8 public holidays
• Apply: Closing date 8th August 2022
  

WHO ARE WE?

Student Loans Company is a non-profit making Government-owned organisation to provide loans and grants to students in universities and colleges in the UK. Since 1989, we have enabled our customers to invest in their futures by delivering secure, accurate and efficient assessment, payment and repayment services.

SLC is one of HM Government (HMG)s key strategic delivery partners and DfEs largest partner organisation by headcount. HMG relies on the company to assesstwo millionapplications for student finance each year and manage a loan book worth£177.9bn. Last year, we financed a record number of new and returning students in England and Wales; we paid over £21 billion in tuition fees, maintenance loans and targeted support grants to students or to their universities and colleges.

To deliver these vital services, SLC currently has over 3,000 employees and offices across Scotland (Glasgow and Hillington), England (Darlington), and Wales (Llandudno Junction).

What Youll Do

SLC have a number of opportunities within our Technology Group (TG) for Senior Technical Architects to design, develop, implement and maintain a holistic view of the organisation’s Enterprise Architecture strategy, processes, information and technology.

As part of a highly collaborative and supportive team of 20, these roles will play a pivotal part in our wider TG strategy by creating and refining Architectures and designs for application solutions that address customer & business needs and are in line with SLC’s Architectural principles. In addition, the successful candidates will undertake design assurance on key projects ensuring that changes to the architecture take account of relevant goals, principles, practices, strategies, roadmaps & policies.

Furthermore, successful candidates will have the ability to influence in a technology driven environment with strategic projects that include Business Transformation and Technology uplift. SLC continues to invest in significant policy and strategy change programmes that will update and modernise key parts of the architecture.

SLC’s strategic technology programme will offer exposure to modernising online high-volume customer experiences across multiple channels, developing API-lead shared service architecture, migrating monolithic systems to modular applications and improving data quality, availability and analytics.

What Youll Bring

• Demonstrable, in-depth experience of Enterprise Architecture frameworks, patterns and technical architectural design of complex solutions.
• Effective stakeholder management and influencing skills are essential, with proven experience in successfully working across multiple workstreams.
• Excellent communication and analytical skills with experience writing and collaborating in the production of design documentation.
• Degree level education with a solid all-round knowledge of IT and its use within a business environment
• Engaging and effective team contributor within a complex matrix management process.
  

KEY RESPONSIBILITES

Technical:Communicate and execute SLC’s Data solutions. Engage in Discovery & Inceptions, and promote presentations, demos, proof of concepts, requirements scoping, proposal creation and engagement delivery in the Data space. Promote innovation, and develop technical solutions that explore and leverage Warehousing, Big Data, Cloud tools and others, in line with SLCs Architectural principles, and to demonstrate their applicability in an SLC context. Drive the implementation of transformative data strategies, process improvements, and analytical frameworks to solve complex issues in customer engagement, personal data, financial management, fraud management, campaign management, etc. for SLC’s business areas. Work closely with Data Delivery teams to ensure a quality product. Be an active member of technical forums and design clinics, working collaboratively to promote the Data Architecture roadmap of SLC.

Stakeholder Engagement: As a Data subject matter expert, work collaboratively with business and technical colleagues to support projects involving data within the context of a wider programme of work. To communicate the Data Architectural designs to multiple audiences at all levels, including senior executives. To facilitate and assist with the planning, estimation and prioritisation of new proposals in the Data areas. To support programme-level decision-making and prioritisation of work, ensuring that sound data architectural design is a key influencing factor.

Leadership:To represent and act as an ambassador for SLCs Data Architecture vision to internal and external stakeholders. To provide leadership for technical colleagues, supporting them in their personal development and career aspirations.

Governance/Assurance: To undertake design assurance on key projects ensuring that changes to the Data architecture take account of relevant goals, principles, practices, strategies, roadmaps, policies and standards, while assessing the impact that the changes will have on other projects. To provide and lead document review activities.

Benefits

You can expect more from a career with SLC. We support colleagues to unlock their potential through our Career Pathways development programme and offer an excellent benefit and rewards package that includes:

• Option to buy/sell annual leave
• Flexitime and 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, and an optional dental insurance scheme
  

HIRING PROCESS

Shortlisted candidates may be invited to a 30-minute informal chat with the hiring manager over MS Teams. This will be your opportunity to ask about the role and see if you like us and what the role involves.

Following this, you will be invited to a more formal, competency/scenario-based interview which will last between 60 90 minutes. This may also involve a small presentation, where full details will be provided on the day, there is nothing for you to prepare before.

We are working to be an inclusive employer and we encourage people from all backgrounds, ways of thinking and working to apply for our roles. Everyone brings different perspectives and experiences; you don’t have to meet all the requirements listed to apply for this role. If you need any adjustments to make this role work for you let us know and well see how we can accommodate them