Responsibilities:
Act as a senior member of the Cloud Centre of Excellence (CCoE), helping to define and govern how AWS is used across Defra.
Own and evolve Defras AWS platform architecture, including landing zones, shared services, and core platform capabilities.
Define, maintain, and publish architecture standards, patterns, guardrails, and reference architectures for AWS.
Design and document internal CCoE platform services and capabilities, producing High-Level Designs (HLDs), Low-Level Designs (LLDs), and options papers for services such as landing zones, shared services, networking, security, and core platform components.
Provide architectural assurance across programmes and projects, ensuring solutions align with Defras cloud standards and strategic direction.
Attend and contribute to Cloud Design Review Boards, technical governance forums, and design authorities, providing constructive recommendations.
Work with delivery teams to advise, guide, and unblock them on complex AWS architecture decisions.
Present architecture patterns, platform designs, and standards to senior technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Skills and experience:
An AWS Architect in Defras CCoE must have deep expertise in AWS cloud infrastructure, security, and networking. They should be skilled in designing scalable, secure, and resilient AWS environments, with a strong understanding of multi-account governance, AWS Organisations, SCPs, and Landing Zone best practices.
Key areas of expertise include:
Hybrid Networking and Connectivity: Experience with AWS Direct Connect, VPC Peering, PrivateLink, Transit Gateway, and designing secure, scalable hybrid and multi-account network architectures.
AWS Well-Architected Framework: Experience applying the AWS Well Architected Framework to design and assess cloud architectures.
AWS Compute Platforms: Strong experience designing and governing workloads using serverless and managed AWS compute services (such as Lambda, ECS and EC2). Experience with EKS is beneficial but not essential. Able to select the right service and ensure secure, scalable operations.
AWS Data Platforms: Broad knowledge and experience designing AWS data platforms and architectures, spanning data storage, databases, ingestion and streaming patterns, with a strong understanding of security, lineage, and access controls at scale.
AWS Security and Governance: Proficiency in IAM, KMS, GuardDuty, Security Hub, AWS Config and related services to define and enforce guardrails, compliance, and security standards.
Architecture Governance: Experience working in an architecture practice to define standards, patterns, reference architectures, designs, and providing architectural assurance across programmes and portfolios.
Selection process
The Civil Service marks each element of the selection process on a merit basis. You can visit the gov.uk website for further information on the Civil Service rating scale.
Ensure you have tailored your CV and Personal Statement to the 'skills and experience' section of the job advert by providing examples on how you are suitable for the role using the STAR method.
Please ensure you demonstrate clearly, within your personal statement, how you meet these requirements, as the information you provide will form a key part when the panel is scoring your application.
For further information on STAR, you can check out our Hints and Tips document.
Application process
As part of the application process, you will be assessed on your experience. This will be evaluated by looking at your CV and personal statement, so please provide the following and ensure your experience is clearly demonstrated:
A CV
A 500-word Personal Statement: Referring to the 'skills and experience' sections of the job advert, please demonstrate how you are suitable for the role by providing relevant examples.
Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.
Sift
Sift will begin shortly after the advert closes.
Should there be a large number of applications, an initial sift will be conducted using your personal statement. Candidates who pass the initial sift may be progressed to a full sift, or progressed straight to assessment or interview.
Interview
If successful at sift, you will be invited to an interview where you will be assessed on the Behaviours and Technical Skills listed below.
Interview dates are to be confirmed. Please note that these may be subject to change.
Interviews will be held virtually on Microsoft Teams.
For further information on Success Profiles, you can visit the links below and watch our videos on DefraJobs.
Behaviours
Experience
Technical Skills
