The ONS operates a flexible hybrid working model across the UK, with colleagues linked to one of our contractual locations working between office and remote throughout the week. The locations for this role are Newport and Titchfield (Fareham).
All colleagues are required to work from their contractually allocated site for at least 40% of their working time.
The induction process for the role will be conducted in person.
Job Summary
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK’s largest producer of official statistics, covering a range of key economic, social and demographic topics. These include measuring changes in the value of the UK economy, estimating the size, geographic distribution and characteristics of the population, and providing indicators of price inflation, employment, earnings, crime and migration.
This is an exciting opportunity to take on the role of Principal Solution Architect as the Head of Function (HoF) for the Solution Architecture community within Digital Services (DS) at ONS.
In this leadership role, you will work closely with fellow Heads of Function across Digital Services to guide and evolve the Solution Architecture profession. Your focus will be on aligning the community with the organisation’s strategic goals and enabling the successful delivery of key objectives.
You will provide technical leadership and coordination, ensuring robust governance and assurance processes are in place and effectively implemented. As Head of Function, you will champion a culture of collaboration, knowledge sharing, and continuous professional development within the Solution Architecture community.
Our team thrives on agile principles and a strong user-centred approach. You will play a key role in embedding agile practices into our architectural frameworks, ensuring they remain responsive, iterative, and aligned with user needs.
Job Description
The Principal Solution Architect - Head of Function (HoF) plays a pivotal strategic role within Digital Services at ONS. As Head of Function for the Solution Architecture community, you will lead the development and delivery of architectural vision across either a major programme, a portfolio of solution architecture initiatives, or a single, highly complex and mission-critical business domain.
You will be responsible for driving architectural coherence, ensuring alignment with organisational strategy, and enabling high-quality delivery across the enterprise.
As Principal Solution Architect, You Will:
- Lead and inspire teams of solution architects, providing mentorship and strategic direction.
- Oversee multiple architecture projects or programmes, ensuring consistency and alignment with business goals.
- Build and maintain strong relationships with senior stakeholders across diverse business and technical areas, both within ONS and with external partners.
- Identify and champion opportunities for innovation and improvement across the organisation and its partner ecosystem.
- Collaborate with technology partners to influence and inform their strategic road maps.
- Shape the future of business and digital capabilities, contributing to the overall direction of enterprise architecture.
- Foster a culture of excellence, inspiring architects to deliver solutions that meet organisational objectives.
Responsibilities
- Develop an overarching reference architecture which considers all of the key components required to implements the ONS enterprise architecture.
- Advocate the use of best practice, new technology or technical solutions across the organisation and to stakeholders at all levels.
- Provide architectural leadership to co-ordinate solution architecture development across multiple projects or initiatives, assessing alignment to user needs and organisational strategy and providing direction to resolve gaps or issues.
- Develop and maintain the architecture standards and framework required to appropriately document the ONS solution architecture at both an enterprise and solution level.
- Contribute to the technical design authority to ensure solution architectures are appropriately governed, assured and implemented.
- Undertake information gathering and scene setting meetings with other government departments, evaluate architectural proposals from external suppliers, and make implementation recommendations to senior stakeholders.
- Supporting members of development teams in breaking down complex problems and identifying steps towards solutions.
- Participate in the ONS architecture community to refine and develop the ONS Architecture Playbook.
- Working with the community to develop and uphold quality and standards of the practitioners within the profession and the principles and policies of the profession.
- Ensure appropriate architectural governance and assurance activities (inc. escalation) are agreed and actioned (for example, budget and planning).
- Lead, work with, direct and influence the work of teams of multi-disciplinary individuals and ensure that they work together to deliver successful outcomes for both IT and the business, along with key architectural objectives.
- Line management and staff development of Government Digital and Data Professionals within the community.
- Stakeholder management - including engaging with external stakeholders.
The Principal Solution Architect - Head of Function (HoF) plays a pivotal strategic role within Digital Services at ONS. As Head of Function for the Solution Architecture community, you will lead the development and delivery of architectural vision across either a major programme, a portfolio of solution architecture initiatives, or a single, highly complex and mission-critical business domain.
You will be responsible for driving architectural coherence, ensuring alignment with organisational strategy, and enabling high-quality delivery across the enterprise.
Responsibilities
- Develop an overarching reference architecture which considers all of the key components required to implements the ONS enterprise architecture.
- Advocate the use of best practice, new technology or technical solutions across the organisation and to stakeholders at all levels.
- Provide architectural leadership to co-ordinate solution architecture development across multiple projects or initiatives, assessing alignment to user needs and organisational strategy and providing direction to resolve gaps or issues.
- Develop and maintain the architecture standards and framework required to appropriately document the ONS solution architecture at both an enterprise and solution level.
- Contribute to the technical design authority to ensure solution architectures are appropriately governed, assured and implemented.
- Undertake information gathering and scene setting meetings with other government departments, evaluate architectural proposals from external suppliers, and make implementation recommendations to senior stakeholders.
- Supporting members of development teams in breaking down complex problems and identifying steps towards solutions.
- Participate in the ONS architecture community to refine and develop the ONS Architecture Playbook.
- Working with the community to develop and uphold quality and standards of the practitioners within the profession and the principles and policies of the profession.
- Ensure appropriate architectural governance and assurance activities (inc. escalation) are agreed and actioned (for example, budget and planning).
- Lead, work with, direct and influence the work of teams of multi-disciplinary individuals and ensure that they work together to deliver successful outcomes for both IT and the business, along with key architectural objectives.
- Line management and staff development of Government Digital and Data Professionals within the community.
- Stakeholder management - including engaging with external stakeholders.
Person specification
Essential Criteria:
- Making architectural decisions (Expert) - Make and guide architectural design decisions characterised by high levels of risk and complexity, identify and address architectural risks across the organisation or wider government, lead and evolve architectural governance and assurance and present architectural governance as part of wider governance, for example, legal or commercial.
- Technical design throughout the life cycle (Expert) - Create technical designs that address needs which are high risk, could have large impact, and are of a high complexity, lead and guide others in creating technical designs that achieve organisational objectives and use feedback to optimise and refine standards for technical designs throughout the life cycle
- Architecture communication (Expert) - Communicate with technical and non-technical stakeholders at all levels, and across organisations, using architecture communication techniques , mediate between people in difficult architectural discussions, gain support from business and technical stakeholders for architectural initiatives with high levels of risk, impact and complexity, coach and support others in architecture communication.
- Architect for the whole context (Expert) - Assess how trends in society and industry practices might impact the organisation, work with people outside and inside of your organisation to inform policies, strategies and standards, anticipate changes to policy and build resilience through your architectural work and coach others in identifying important trends.
- Commercial perspective (Working) - Understand commercial processes and the appropriate internal contacts within a government department and understand different sourcing strategies and when to apply them.
- Strategy design (Expert) - Define and connect strategies or visions across the organisation or wider government, enable the implementation of strategies or visions across the organization or wider government, for example, by advocating for resources and removing blockers.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Communicating and Influencing
- Developing Self and Others
- Changing and Improving
Technical skills
We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- Making architectural decisions
- Technical design throughout the lifecycle
- Architecture communication
- Architect for the whole context
Alongside your salary of £70,335, Office for National Statistics contributes £20,376 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
The Office for National Statistics is part of the Civil Service, and as such we share a number of key benefits with other departments, whilst also having our own unique offerings to support our valued colleagues across the organisation.
Whether you are hearing about us for the first time or already know a bit about our organisation, we hope that our careers site will give you a great insight into the benefits and facilities available to our colleagues, and our fantastic working culture.
Inclusion & Accessibility
At ONS we are always looking to attract the very best people from the widest possible talent pool, and we are proud to be an inclusive, equal opportunities employer. As a Disability Confident Leader we’re committed to ensuring that all candidates are treated fairly throughout the recruitment process.
As part of our application process, you will be prompted to provide details of any reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process that you need. If you would like to discuss any reasonable adjustments before applying, please contact the recruitment team in the first instance.
If you would like an accessible version of any of the attachments or recruitment documents below or linked to in this advert, please contact the recruitment team who will be happy to assist.
Selection process details
This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.
Security Clearance
For ONS the requirement for SC clearance is to have been present in the UK for 3 consecutive years immediately prior to applying and the department will consider eligibility by exception on a case-by-case basis. You will be asked to provide information regarding your UK residency during your application, and failure to provide this will result in your application being rejected.
If you are unsure that you meet the eligibility above, please read the information available on Gov.uk on this link or contact the recruitment email on the advert before applying to discuss, as failure to meet the residency requirements will result in your security clearance application being rejected and any offer of employment being withdrawn.
At the point of SC application, you will need to provide or give access to the following evidence:
- Departmental or company records (personnel files, staff reports, sick leave reports and security records)
- UK criminal records covering both spent and unspent criminal records
- Your credit and financial history with a credit reference agency
- Security Services records
We may also reach out to you mid-campaign to confirm eligibility for this role.
Application Support
Artificial intelligence (AI) software such as ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot and Gemini are powerful tools that can create and review text in ways that mimic what people can do. These tools can help you enhance your application and prepare for the process, but it is essential you use them appropriately.
They must also not be used to provide misleading or false information at any stage of the application journey.
It is also important to understand that while AI can help you prepare for an interview, you must not use it to produce responses during an interview.
For full guidance in relation to the use of AI through the recruitment process, please click here.
Application Process
Number of Stages: 2 stage process
Stage 1: Application
Stage 2: Interview
Stage 1 – Application
The assessment process at the application stage will be based on your work history, skills, experience, CV, and personal statement. It is important that your application is tailored to highlight the skills, knowledge, and experience relevant to the role.
A personal statement is required at application stage, it will state the maximum word count allowed (1000 words), which should not be exceeded. Where it is a requirement to make a personal statement, you should provide evidence for each essential skill criterion listed in the person specification. As these criteria are scored, it is advisable to give clear examples for each one, including the impact of your actions, ideally utilising the STAR technique (Situation, Task, Action, Result).
Please note that Success Profiles Behaviour examples are not required at this stage of the application process.
In instances where a high number of applications are received, the sift pass mark may be adjusted, and candidates will be invited to interview based on merit order, i.e., those with the highest scores.
Stage 2 – Interview
If invited to interview, you will be assessed using techniques aligned with the Civil Service Success Profiles framework, covering all behaviours listed in the job advert and any required technical skills.
Interviews may be in person or via Microsoft Teams.
A presentation may be required at interview.
A reserve list may be held for a period up to 12 months from which further appointments may be made.
The Sift will be conducted from 21/08/2025
Interviews will be conducted from 08/09/2025
For the full terms and conditions of the post, please see attachment.
Please note that all campaigns may be subject to withdrawal at any stage if the internal resource position changes.
This role is eligible for Government Digital and Data (GDD) Capability and Pay Framework. If you are successful at interview, your salary is directly linked to your capability outcome. Your capability is determined by the scores achieved during the Technical section of the interview. Full feedback will be provided to you at the point of offer.
All successful candidates are required to undertake an annual capability assessment, pay will vary depending on the outcome, for example, if you achieve a lower capability outcome your pay will decrease, if you achieve a higher capability outcome your pay will increase. Failure to complete the annual assessment means you will be moved to ONS pay terms and conditions and your pay will be adjusted.
All existing allowances will not be considered when calculating starting salary, starting salary is directly linked to capability outcomes only. Note, this also applies to existing Civil Servants (including ONS colleagues) moving to the GDD Capability and Pay Framework
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.
Security
Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.
Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).
People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.
Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.
Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).
People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.
Nationality requirements
This Job Is Broadly Open To The Following Groups:
- UK nationals
- nationals of the Republic of Ireland
- nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
- nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
- nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
- individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
- Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service
Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)
Working for the Civil Service
The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.
We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).
The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.
The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.
The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.
We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).
The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.
The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.
Diversity and Inclusion
The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).
This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.
Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.
Contact point for applicants
Job Contact :
Recruitment team
Further information
If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with the Recruitment Principles and you wish to make a complaint, in the first instance, you should contact
[email protected]. If you are not satisfied with the response you receive from the Department, you can contact the Civil Service Commission
