Job details

The Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Department for International Development (DfID) merged on 1 September 2020 to form the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO).

The FCDO pursues our national interests and projects the UK as a force for good in the world. We promote the interests of British citizens, safeguard the UK's security, defend our values, reduce poverty and tackle global challenges with our international partners.

This role requires working with a broad spectrum of ‘Device’ technologies and commodity digital hardware products.

Working in a fast-paced and dynamic delivery environment, the ideal candidate will have:

• Experience and knowledge of detailed technical hardware evaluation and physical model selection across a range of common commodity PC, laptop, mobile, printers, monitors and peripherals such as docking stations and USB hubs
• Working knowledge and practical delivery experience of using Mobile Device Management (MDM) / Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) platforms
• Experience undertaking security assessments of physical hardware, with an understanding of sophisticated threats at the hardware, firmware and OS levels.

SC Clearance is an essential requirement for this role, as a minimum you must be eligible and willing to undergo these checks.

As a Technical Architect (Devices), your main responsibilities will be: 

• Provision of technical design and architecture services into the Strategy & Architecture team.
• Delivering high quality end-to-end technical architecture designs from conceptual level through to detailed low-level designs. This will be undertaken using RSO’s templates, Microsoft Visio, Jira, and Confluence.
• Turning complex business problems into technical design and mediate between stakeholders at all levels. Bridging the gap between the technical and non-technical.
• Designing defence-in-depth security controls throughout solutions, and working with RSO’s Security Group and NCSC to make sure that the Buyer’s IT service accreditation is maintained.
• Delivering designs across a subset of products and initiatives. This will include some products with limited maturity where the architect will be expected to create the initial target architecture and proposed technical components.
• Delivering and presenting high-quality presentations and supporting documentation to the RSO Technical Design Authority. Justifying design decisions and technology choices characterised by high levels of risk, impact and complexity.
• Responding clearly and concisely to fair challenge and review by architects from RSO, Cabinet Office and NCSC. Taking on board feedback and working collaboratively with the wider team to successfully deliver approved designs that can be implemented.
• Working with Product Managers, Delivery Managers and Engineers to produce accurate plans for the delivery and ongoing maintenance and support of products and services. This includes but is not limited to solution technology costs, ongoing licencing, technical resource requirements, and total cost of ownership.
• Taking account of the enhanced security posture and significant threats to the Buyer’s IT service and ensuring that designs justify this. Understanding the implications of design choices in highly secure micro-segmented and zero-trust architectures.
• Providing assessments of design/technology options as part of design choices, clearly describing the criteria used, options analysis and final recommendation.

You will have:

SC Clearance is an essential requirement for this role, as a minimum you must be eligible and willing to undergo these checks.

• Mobile Device Management solutions, Unified Endpoint Management solutions (preferably on-premise deployments)
• Common device specifications such as IPMI (or equivalent), and physical components such as Baseboard Management Controllers, USB hubs and controllers, Storage (data) controllers
• Design patterns for Out Of Band and Lights-Out management
• Day-to-day working in Microsoft Visio, Atlassian Jira / Confluence, Standard Microsoft Office applications (PowerPoint, Word, Excel)
• Broad understanding of a wide range of industry standard IT technologies across Business, Data, Application, Technology, Security architecture domains
• Deep understanding of fundamental technology component building blocks, enabling the architect to operate with both COTS and novel, bespoke technology products alike (from APIs, containerisation, and microservices, to cross-domain security solutions).

If this role sounds like something that you would be interested in, please click the link to apply or get in touch with rebecca.nolan@publicsectorresourcing.co.uk

Disability confident

As a member of the disability confident scheme, FCDO guarantees to interview all candidates who have a disability and who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of candidates who have a disability who meet all the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group.

If you qualify for the above, please notify us on PSRapplications@publicsectorresourcing.co.uk.

We will be in touch to discuss your suitability and arrange your Guaranteed Interview.

Should you require reasonable adjustments at any point during the recruitment process or if there is a more accessible way for us to communicate, please do let me know.

In applying for this role, you acknowledge the following, this role falls in scope of the Off Payroll Working in the Public Sector legislation. Any rates of payment quoted will reflect the gross rate per day for the assignment and will be subject to appropriate taxes and statutory costs. As such the payment to the intermediary and your income resulting from this contract will be different.

Please be aware that this role can only be worked within the UK and not Overseas.