Job summary
Enterprise Architect
Did 2022 get you thinking about what mattered in your work life? Did you start thinking about making a move? Looking for your new organisation and opportunity to make a difference as an Enterprise Architect?
Welcome to the NHS Business Services Authority - we might be exactly what you are looking for.
As the NHS Business Services Authority, we provide critical central services to NHS organisations, NHS contractors, patients and the public.
Our drive to make things easier for our customers has seen us increase the digitisation of our services and we're using new technology to deliver efficiencies and improve the customer experience. We gather data and use it to help the NHS make more informed and effective decisions, as well as reduce fraud, error, and waste. We also see an opportunity to contribute to the wider health agenda in terms of prevention and health inequalities.
What do we offer?
- 27 days leave (increasing with length of service) plus 8 bank holidays
- Flexible working (we are happy to discuss options such as compressed hours)
- Flexi time
- Hybrid working model (we are currently working largely remotely)
- Career development
- Active wellbeing and inclusion networks
- Excellent pension
- NHS Car lease scheme
- Access to a wide range of benefits and high street discounts!
Main duties of the job
- Taking a holistic approach to design, develop a re-use approach and ownership across the BSA for Technology, architectural standards, project or programme IT architecture, leading a team of multi-disciplined architects; you will be responsible for NHSBSA governance forums, IT solutions designed for significant areas of the business.
- Define clearly "as-is" and "to-be" architectures and document the solution architectures for the business service, its integration in the overall Enterprise Architecture. Preparation of technical artifacts for submission into GDS assessments; and business cases, both internal and external.
- Undertake and lead on investigative analysis, facilitate scoping and priority setting of large or highly complex changes, providing optionsappraisals and recommendations, to feed into business cases providing accurate cost estimation, and selecting the most appropriate means to communicate information.
- Concentrated work tackling uncertain and highly complex business problems, translating designs both logical and physical tosupport user friendly processes and systems, and communication of this across business areas.
- Provide hands-on leadership of a multidisciplinary scrum team and interdisciplinary team of architects.
- Taking a leading role to identify and share good practices, through leading and directing relevant communities of practice to drive adoption of design standards, trends and patterns.
About us
At the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) we deliver a range of essential national services to NHS organisations and contractors, patients and the public.
You may already be using some of our services. Do you have a prescription pre-payment certificate? Perhaps you found this vacancy through NHS Jobs? We're behind these, and much more.
Being one of the UK's Best Big Companies to work for, our values are to be Collaborative, Adventurous, Reliable and Energetic. We CARE about what we do and support each other in achieving our objectives.
Our people are the heart of our organisation. We strive to ensure they feel trusted, valued and empowered. We're passionate about nurturing and developing people. When you join us, we want you to grow, and we offer many opportunities for you to do that.
We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds. With wellbeing and inclusion central to our ethos, our BAME, Disability and Neurodiversity, LGBTQ+, Armed Forces and Women's networks help our colleagues to be their authentic selves at work.
At the NHSBSA we value and respect the diversity of our colleagues and are committed to being a flexible employer. We are proud to offer flexible working opportunities. Whether you're interested in hybrid working, working from home, flexible hours or job sharing, apply today and we can discuss available options with you at the interview stage.
We are the NHS delivering for the NHS.
Job description
Job responsibilities
You will be joining an Architect Practice made up of different disciplines of Architecture, including three fellow Enterprise Architects. Your role is critical to maintaining the momentum we are establishing in bringing coherence to translating and shaping strategy through effective architectural design. In addition, the opportunity for developing and maturing the Architect Practice and our virtual team approach, will motivate and hopefully excite. We recognise great relationship building, leadership and strategic capability as a core part of what makes you a professional Architect and very necessary for what we are looking for. The Architect Practice sits as part of the Technology Governance and wider Digital Data and Technology Directorate, where our accountability, on behalf of the business, sits with the DDaT Director.
In this role you accountable for:
- Take a holistic approach to design, develop a re-use approach as much as possible and have ownership across the BSA for Technology architectural standards, project or programme IT architecture, leading a team of multidisciplined architects; you will be responsible for NHSBSA governance forums, IT solutions designed for significant areas of the business.
- Define clearly as-is and to-be architectures and clearly document the solution architectures for the business service and its integration in the overall Enterprise Architecture. Preparation of technical artifacts for submission into GDS assessments; and business cases, both internal and external.
- Undertake and lead on investigative analysis, facilitate scoping and priority setting of large or highly complex changes, providing options appraisals and recommendations, to feed into business cases providing accurate cost estimation, and selecting the most appropriate means to communicate information.
- Set direction on the introduction and application of specific standards, tools, techniques and methods to meet requirements ensuring consistency across the community of Technical Analysts is fully aligned to organisational approaches, designs, standards and metrics.
- Full responsibility for multiple systems and services across the organisation, monitoring the development of new and emerging tools, technologies and products to assess potential value and identifying opportunities to enhance capabilities, products and services within the organisation.
Staff Management
- Responsible and accountable for management of staff, staff development, recruitment, resources, delivery and financial elements, applying a matrix management approach with staff within professional disciplines across multidisciplinary teams;
- Enabling the performance of others, including objectives setting fully aligned to departmental and organisational objectives and goals, and the development and motivation of staff to achieve them, including implementing and conducting appraisals and 1-1s to manage performance.
- Planning, formulating and organising a broad range of highly complex plans, adjusting the strategic direction and adjusting those plans and then cascade to the team. Develop the architectural teams resource and training plans and set standards expected in workforce management. Identify and collate training needs and a blended approach to meeting these needs that supports the continual professional development of a highly skilled workforce.
- Receive and act upon, and where possible resolve a range of escalations including staffing, disciplinary, resourcing business and technical, to secure satisfactory outcomes. Where unable to resolve, providing sufficient detail, escalate to the appropriate levels within the organisations, within agreed policies, procedures and processes
- Seeking, providing and taking feedback to support and encourage teams and individuals to develop thinking and independently work through issues, to reach solutions-based outcomes. Taking full accountability for the approach and decision-making practices within area, including providing positive challenge to ideas and solutions.
Knowledge Management
- Frequent individual concentrated work on highly complex and uncertain business problems, leading on the strategic oversight of any new research initiatives, legislation, working practices, policies, procedures, contracts and systems and keeping abreast of technological advances.
- Taking ownership for decision making within own area and where needed developing a solution iteratively as required, in conjunction with agreed procedures.
Financial Management
- Budget holder for the architecture team in accordance with NHSBSAs policies, standing orders, financial regulations and legislative requirements.
Develop proposals for future investment including both technology refresh and project- based change; preparing necessary estimates, mandates and business cases within the technology department and providing estimates for such led by other departments.
Policy and Service Development
- Full responsibility for policy development and implementation across the Technology team and cascade across the entire organisation.
Relationship Management
- Identify and develop partnership working opportunities, and relationships both within the organisation, with its stakeholders, and to liaise with other Government, Non-Government organisations, statutory agencies and public and private sector organisations to develop collaborative approaches which can deliver value to the organisation.
- Participate in the evaluation, benchmarking, specification and procurement of hardware, software and services, ensuring sensitive handling of commercial and financial information, whilst ensuring compliance with Government policy for use of SMEs, Information Security, NHS Confidentiality and Data Protection legislation.
Information Management
- Full responsibility for multiple systems and services across the organisation, the approval and implementation of processes to review, analyse, monitor and report on a number of areas including agreed service levels, KPI's and standards within team. Reviewing the performances of teams and projects in delivery of services against defined service levels, checking for trends that may trigger reduced performance and investigating where performance is below the agreed thresholds. Ensure that in managing performance a holistic approach is taken and that consideration is given to people, process, changes in demand and tools.
Delivery Management
- Input into workforce planning, ensuring required operational commitments are fully met, business change is estimated, prioritised, and delivered, resourcing issues are identified, mitigated and managed to deliver business value.
- Leading, managing and engaging teams to deliver multiple strands of work such as continuous improvement, project related work, and operational tasks, both within the organisation and across external bodies.
- Leading on strategic procurement of hardware and software for various areas of the organisation, including selecting suppliers, accountability for delivery of quality outputs, meeting delivery timescales. Giving full consideration to cost, specification, maintenance and support to ensure the overall needs of the business are met from an ICT perspective, and that they are aligned with the business and ICT strategic directions
Job description
Job responsibilities
You will be joining an Architect Practice made up of different disciplines of Architecture, including three fellow Enterprise Architects. Your role is critical to maintaining the momentum we are establishing in bringing coherence to translating and shaping strategy through effective architectural design. In addition, the opportunity for developing and maturing the Architect Practice and our virtual team approach, will motivate and hopefully excite. We recognise great relationship building, leadership and strategic capability as a core part of what makes you a professional Architect and very necessary for what we are looking for. The Architect Practice sits as part of the Technology Governance and wider Digital Data and Technology Directorate, where our accountability, on behalf of the business, sits with the DDaT Director.
In this role you accountable for:
- Take a holistic approach to design, develop a re-use approach as much as possible and have ownership across the BSA for Technology architectural standards, project or programme IT architecture, leading a team of multidisciplined architects; you will be responsible for NHSBSA governance forums, IT solutions designed for significant areas of the business.
- Define clearly as-is and to-be architectures and clearly document the solution architectures for the business service and its integration in the overall Enterprise Architecture. Preparation of technical artifacts for submission into GDS assessments; and business cases, both internal and external.
- Undertake and lead on investigative analysis, facilitate scoping and priority setting of large or highly complex changes, providing options appraisals and recommendations, to feed into business cases providing accurate cost estimation, and selecting the most appropriate means to communicate information.
- Set direction on the introduction and application of specific standards, tools, techniques and methods to meet requirements ensuring consistency across the community of Technical Analysts is fully aligned to organisational approaches, designs, standards and metrics.
- Full responsibility for multiple systems and services across the organisation, monitoring the development of new and emerging tools, technologies and products to assess potential value and identifying opportunities to enhance capabilities, products and services within the organisation.
Staff Management
- Responsible and accountable for management of staff, staff development, recruitment, resources, delivery and financial elements, applying a matrix management approach with staff within professional disciplines across multidisciplinary teams;
- Enabling the performance of others, including objectives setting fully aligned to departmental and organisational objectives and goals, and the development and motivation of staff to achieve them, including implementing and conducting appraisals and 1-1s to manage performance.
- Planning, formulating and organising a broad range of highly complex plans, adjusting the strategic direction and adjusting those plans and then cascade to the team. Develop the architectural teams resource and training plans and set standards expected in workforce management. Identify and collate training needs and a blended approach to meeting these needs that supports the continual professional development of a highly skilled workforce.
- Receive and act upon, and where possible resolve a range of escalations including staffing, disciplinary, resourcing business and technical, to secure satisfactory outcomes. Where unable to resolve, providing sufficient detail, escalate to the appropriate levels within the organisations, within agreed policies, procedures and processes
- Seeking, providing and taking feedback to support and encourage teams and individuals to develop thinking and independently work through issues, to reach solutions-based outcomes. Taking full accountability for the approach and decision-making practices within area, including providing positive challenge to ideas and solutions.
Knowledge Management
- Frequent individual concentrated work on highly complex and uncertain business problems, leading on the strategic oversight of any new research initiatives, legislation, working practices, policies, procedures, contracts and systems and keeping abreast of technological advances.
- Taking ownership for decision making within own area and where needed developing a solution iteratively as required, in conjunction with agreed procedures.
Financial Management
- Budget holder for the architecture team in accordance with NHSBSAs policies, standing orders, financial regulations and legislative requirements.
Develop proposals for future investment including both technology refresh and project- based change; preparing necessary estimates, mandates and business cases within the technology department and providing estimates for such led by other departments.
Policy and Service Development
- Full responsibility for policy development and implementation across the Technology team and cascade across the entire organisation.
Relationship Management
- Identify and develop partnership working opportunities, and relationships both within the organisation, with its stakeholders, and to liaise with other Government, Non-Government organisations, statutory agencies and public and private sector organisations to develop collaborative approaches which can deliver value to the organisation.
- Participate in the evaluation, benchmarking, specification and procurement of hardware, software and services, ensuring sensitive handling of commercial and financial information, whilst ensuring compliance with Government policy for use of SMEs, Information Security, NHS Confidentiality and Data Protection legislation.
Information Management
- Full responsibility for multiple systems and services across the organisation, the approval and implementation of processes to review, analyse, monitor and report on a number of areas including agreed service levels, KPI's and standards within team. Reviewing the performances of teams and projects in delivery of services against defined service levels, checking for trends that may trigger reduced performance and investigating where performance is below the agreed thresholds. Ensure that in managing performance a holistic approach is taken and that consideration is given to people, process, changes in demand and tools.
Delivery Management
- Input into workforce planning, ensuring required operational commitments are fully met, business change is estimated, prioritised, and delivered, resourcing issues are identified, mitigated and managed to deliver business value.
- Leading, managing and engaging teams to deliver multiple strands of work such as continuous improvement, project related work, and operational tasks, both within the organisation and across external bodies.
- Leading on strategic procurement of hardware and software for various areas of the organisation, including selecting suppliers, accountability for delivery of quality outputs, meeting delivery timescales. Giving full consideration to cost, specification, maintenance and support to ensure the overall needs of the business are met from an ICT perspective, and that they are aligned with the business and ICT strategic directions
Person Specification
Qualifications
Essential
- An IT related degree or equivalent plus significant demonstrable experience in two of the following: o IT Architecture (digital and service) o System Design o Business and Technical Analysis o Management of a significant ICT implementation
- Significant demonstrable experience over a number of years in at least three of the following: o IT Architecture o System and Service Design o Business and Technical Analysis o Management of a significant ICT implementation
Desirable
- TOGAF certification or equivalent, or willing to work towards this certification
- Experience of working in an agile environment and experience with agile methodologies such as Scrum and Kanban
- ITIL or SIAM Certification
- Undertaken GDS Assessor training
Specialist Skills/Knowledge
Essential
- Business change, rationalisation and transformation and implementation of strategic approaches, plans, activities and solutions.
- Evaluation, interpretation, translation and communication of complex data/information from multiple sources and requirements to inform decision making.
- Design of cost effective and scalable enterprise solutions, from development through to implementation in a multi-supplier environment.
- Provide business assurance of supplier's designs and proposals.
- A range of skills and specialism across a diverse and detailed technical knowledge, covering web applications and services, information, infrastructure, cloud and managed service architectures.
- Planning and organisational skills across a broad range of activities to support the delivery of project planning and resource management.
- Communicating and negotiating with external bodies, suppliers and organisations to reach satisfactory outcomes for the NHSBSA.
Desirable
- A variety of approaches to hosted solutions and data centres including co-Location (and integration into Service Management models)
- Working to GDS Principles and having participated in GDS assessments
Experience
Essential
- On-going professional development
- Leading and managing staff to deliver organisational goals and objectives
- Engaging and building relationships with a range of stakeholders to support delivery of business outcomes
- Creatively interpreting strategy and translate emerging trends and technologies to deliver innovative solutions which might impact or benefit the organisation including: o Cloud technology; o Mobile devices and apps; o Collaborative working tools
- Devising comprehensive architecture for enterprise scale, high-volume digital services and initiatives that deliver capacity, performance and system availability improvements that ensure business targets are met or exceeded.
- Devising architectural standards and designs, iteratively to meet the needs of the organisational approaches and in line with GDS standards.
- Dealing with a number of strands of work in tandem, coupled with prolonged periods requiring high levels of concentration to provide high quality outputs, including the development of technical solution artifacts for inclusion in Business Cases, to be used both internally and externally to the NHSBSA.
- Providing full solutions design for complex systems and services, including developing and implementing solution and enterprise and application architecture in a multi supplier environment.
- Managing budgets to maintain effective cost analysis and projection.
- Engaging and communicating with a range of stakeholders, up to and including board level.
Desirable
- Analysing digital / web services in a fast-paced environment
- Open source and cloud technologies and their sourcing.
- Experience of migrating services across different Data Centre locations and legacy application consolidation
- Solution and service design and delivery within an Agile development environment.
- Conforming to financial standards within a commercial environment.
Person Specification
Qualifications
Essential
- An IT related degree or equivalent plus significant demonstrable experience in two of the following: o IT Architecture (digital and service) o System Design o Business and Technical Analysis o Management of a significant ICT implementation
- Significant demonstrable experience over a number of years in at least three of the following: o IT Architecture o System and Service Design o Business and Technical Analysis o Management of a significant ICT implementation
Desirable
- TOGAF certification or equivalent, or willing to work towards this certification
- Experience of working in an agile environment and experience with agile methodologies such as Scrum and Kanban
- ITIL or SIAM Certification
- Undertaken GDS Assessor training
Specialist Skills/Knowledge
Essential
- Business change, rationalisation and transformation and implementation of strategic approaches, plans, activities and solutions.
- Evaluation, interpretation, translation and communication of complex data/information from multiple sources and requirements to inform decision making.
- Design of cost effective and scalable enterprise solutions, from development through to implementation in a multi-supplier environment.
- Provide business assurance of supplier's designs and proposals.
- A range of skills and specialism across a diverse and detailed technical knowledge, covering web applications and services, information, infrastructure, cloud and managed service architectures.
- Planning and organisational skills across a broad range of activities to support the delivery of project planning and resource management.
- Communicating and negotiating with external bodies, suppliers and organisations to reach satisfactory outcomes for the NHSBSA.
Desirable
- A variety of approaches to hosted solutions and data centres including co-Location (and integration into Service Management models)
- Working to GDS Principles and having participated in GDS assessments
Experience
Essential
- On-going professional development
- Leading and managing staff to deliver organisational goals and objectives
- Engaging and building relationships with a range of stakeholders to support delivery of business outcomes
- Creatively interpreting strategy and translate emerging trends and technologies to deliver innovative solutions which might impact or benefit the organisation including: o Cloud technology; o Mobile devices and apps; o Collaborative working tools
- Devising comprehensive architecture for enterprise scale, high-volume digital services and initiatives that deliver capacity, performance and system availability improvements that ensure business targets are met or exceeded.
- Devising architectural standards and designs, iteratively to meet the needs of the organisational approaches and in line with GDS standards.
- Dealing with a number of strands of work in tandem, coupled with prolonged periods requiring high levels of concentration to provide high quality outputs, including the development of technical solution artifacts for inclusion in Business Cases, to be used both internally and externally to the NHSBSA.
- Providing full solutions design for complex systems and services, including developing and implementing solution and enterprise and application architecture in a multi supplier environment.
- Managing budgets to maintain effective cost analysis and projection.
- Engaging and communicating with a range of stakeholders, up to and including board level.
Desirable
- Analysing digital / web services in a fast-paced environment
- Open source and cloud technologies and their sourcing.
- Experience of migrating services across different Data Centre locations and legacy application consolidation
- Solution and service design and delivery within an Agile development environment.
- Conforming to financial standards within a commercial environment.
Additional information
Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).
From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).
