Are you ready to shape how the Ministry of Defence (MOD) is designed and is operated, directly enabling the defence of the UK? The MOD is seeking an exceptional and experienced Principal Architect to lead the enterprise architecture for one of MOD’s top strategic priorities; Corporate Services Modernisation.

Corporate Services are critically important for the 250,000 people working across Defence to do their day-to-day jobs. For example, every time the department procures military equipment, personnel receive their monthly pay or request their vacation, they are using Corporate Services. As part of the wider government Shared Services Strategy, MOD has established the Corporate Services Modernization (CSM) portfolio to drive Human Resources, Commercial and Finance policy, process, organizational, data and systems transformation.

The CSM Principal Enterprise Architect is a critical role within the MOD Head Office CSM portfolio team.  A principal enterprise architect leads at the highest level and is responsible for ensuring strategy is developed, agreed and followed.

This role would lead, define and manage MOD’s Corporate Services enterprise architecture (across initially HR, Finance and Commercial).  The post holder will directly support the Portfolio’s Senior Responsible Officer and the CSM Director, and work across multiple CSM Programs. Key responsibilities would include:

• Lead Corporate Service business design and ensure technical solutions support the business architecture. This will involve working closely with a virtual/federated team of business and technical leads across functions, our Shared Services center (Defence Business Services), Defence Digital and with a CSM Delivery Partner to deliver key enterprise artefacts for example: cross-cutting scope and requirements, capability gap analyses, functional reference model and business process design
• Own MOD’s overarching and integrated CSM enterprise architecture and acting as the primary point of contact for MOD’s senior leaders, the portfolio and programme teams.
• Lead the Design Authority governance to drive cross functional decision making, ensuring the needs of all functions, wider defence and government are fully understood and actioned as appropriate. This would include setting the agenda, bringing in subject matter experts, engaging senior leaders to guide decision making; working in close collaboration with CSM’s Technical Design Authority governance.
• Capture and analyze stakeholder perspectives and management information to agree enterprise level goals and requirements, identifying any coherence problems / opportunities and ensuring alignment with CSM portfolio and MOD strategic outcomes.
• Set the standards for defining architecture, including goals, requirements, and processes to the required levels of detail (aligned and compliant with MOD and cross-government standards, informed by industry best practice)
• Lead engagement across the CSM Enterprise Architecture community. This would involve collaborating with Functional design leads to ensure CSM capability scope includes all relevant current business ways of working and enhancements required to meet portfolio goals.
• Influence how business change is designed and delivered to ensure architecture is embedded successfully and CSM benefits are fully realized.

Behaviors

We’ll assess you against these behaviors during the selection process:

Technical skills

We’ll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process: