Lead Service Architect

Salary: £58,000 - 98,000 per year

Requirements:

• Significant experience designing, assuring and improving complex technology services within large organisations.
• Demonstrable experience working with strategic suppliers and commercial partners to design, govern and improve complex technology services.
• Experience establishing and embedding standards, frameworks and governance processes.
• Ability to influence senior stakeholders and drive organisational change without direct management authority.
• Strong understanding of service design, service transition, service operations and continual improvement.
• Experience developing, governing or improving service portfolios, service catalogues or service taxonomies.
• Experience balancing user needs, organisational priorities and operational requirements.
• Ability to provide assurance, challenge and strategic direction across multiple services, programmes or portfolios.
• Excellent communication, stakeholder engagement and relationship-building skills.
• Willingness to be assessed against the requirements for Security Check clearance.
• Successful candidates must meet the required security checks, including a basic or equivalent criminal record check and baseline personnel security standard checks.

Responsibilities:

• Provide professional leadership for Service Architecture across Technology Services, setting standards and promoting good practice.
• Establish and maintain a Service Architecture community of practice, and coach and mentor Service Architects.
• Define and maintain the Service Architecture strategy and roadmap, aligning approaches with strategic priorities and government and industry best practice.
• Lead the development, governance and continual improvement of the Technology Services service portfolio and service catalogue.
• Establish consistent approaches to service definition, ownership, structure and supporting architecture artefacts.
• Create and maintain Service Architecture standards, frameworks, templates, methods and guidance, and lead adoption of supporting tools.
• Provide assurance and expert challenge for complex, high-risk or strategically important services and initiatives.
• Lead governance relating to service architecture, service design and operational readiness, identifying and managing strategic risks.
• Build relationships across architecture, engineering, product, delivery, service management and operational communities, and influence senior stakeholders.
• Support investment, procurement and transformation activity, promoting end-to-end service thinking across the service lifecycle.

Technologies:

• Architect
• Support
• Security
• Web

More:

We are recruiting a permanent, full-time, part-time or flexible Lead Service Architect for our Justice Digital, Data and Science organisation, within the collaborative Technology Services Delivery team. The role is based nationally and follows a hybrid working model, balancing remote work with time in a local office. The salary is £71,381–£80,419 nationally or £75,674–£85,257 in London, depending on location and circumstances. We offer flexible working, a Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%, 25 days of annual leave rising to 30 days after five years, public holidays and a privilege day. Our development support includes 10% of working time for learning and development, a £1,000 learning budget and access to conferences, accreditation, vocational programmes and e-learning. We also offer enhanced parental leave policies and an inclusive working culture. We welcome applicants from diverse backgrounds and are committed to fair and open recruitment.

last updated 39 week of 2026