Domain Architect

Job description

Grade: C1 Total remuneration: £77,021-£95,767 Pay Supplement:The base salary for this role is £62,114-£77,232 This job qualifies for Digital, Data and Technology Annual Pay supplement 24% is included in the total remuneration above. Pension: 28.97% (RoS contribution) Annual leave: 42 days annual holiday Duration: Permanent Working Pattern: 35 hours per week. We are a flexible employer and will consider a variety of working patterns on a case-by-case basis. For example, compressed hours, term-time working or part-time working. Location: Hybrid working model. Contractual base either at Meadowbank House, Edinburgh (EH8 7AU), or St Vincent Plaza, Glasgow (G2 5LD). You will be required to attend one of these locations as necessary for the role, including quarterly team days and other occasions driven by operational requirements. Department: IT Development Directorate: Digital, Data and Technology Role Reports to: Chief Architect Closing date: 13 September 2026 at 11.59 Number of vacancies: 1 (Additional offers may be made from this recruitment campaign should funding and workforce requirements allow)(RoS)

Registers of Scotland (RoS)Join an award-winning organisation recognised for its technology and innovation. Registers of Scotland is a world-leading pioneer in land and property registration. Our full-stack teams design, architect, and build all our registration products in-house. We work to create digital solutions for the people of Scotland. You will get an opportunity to nurture your creativity and develop with us through access to the latest data, software engineering and product delivery techniques. This job is for you if you want...
Work with purpose: working for the people of Scotland to set the bar for land and property registration worldwide. Flexible and hybrid working: depending on the role and team requirements, work when and where it's best for you and your stakeholders. Benefits: enjoy pay progression, pension contributions of up to 28.97%, up to a year's parental leave, and 42 days annual holiday Investment in professional development: we invest in all our people so that they have the right skills to be productive and confident in their job. Diversity and Inclusion: We are an 'Investor in People' and a 'Disability Confident' employer. We are inclusive, stronger together, and committed to putting our people first. Positive work culture: RoS is an agile, digital organisation using leading-edge technology.Colleagues understand their role in achieving our strategy and have the autonomy to deliver.
To learn more about RoS and what we offer visit our careers pages or watch this short video.

Hear from our colleagues about their experience of working within our Digital, Data and Technology teams on our website.

The Role

As a Domain Architect at Registers of Scotland (RoS), you will play a key role in shaping the technology that underpins critical public services. Providing architectural leadership across business and technology domains, you will help ensure our digital services are secure, scalable, resilient and aligned with organisational priorities. Working closely with product, engineering, service design and business teams, you will translate strategic goals into effective technical solutions, guiding decision-making across multiple projects and services. You will support the modernisation of our technology landscape, helping to reduce reliance on legacy systems and enabling the delivery of innovative, user-centred digital services. Alongside influencing technology strategy, you will champion architectural best practice, support colleagues through mentoring and collaboration, and ensure our technology investments deliver long-term value for customers, colleagues and the wider public sector.

On a typical day you will...
Architecture leadership and technical direction

• Define and maintain the architectural direction for one or more domains, ensuring solutions support Registers of Scotland's strategic goals and service needs.
• Lead the technical design of systems and services across multiple teams, making sure designs are coherent, scalable and aligned with wider organisational architecture.
• Develop and maintain domain roadmaps that support business priorities, reduce legacy dependency and enable phased modernisation.
• Provide architectural guidance to delivery teams, helping them make sound technical decisions and solve complex design challenges.
• Identify opportunities to reuse platforms, patterns and components across teams to improve consistency, efficiency and long-term sustainability.

Assurance, governance and quality

• Ensure that solution designs meet architectural standards and non-functional requirements including security, accessibility, performance, resilience and maintainability.
• Contribute to architecture governance and design assurance processes, providing clear challenge, guidance and recommendations where needed.
• Ensure technical decisions are documented clearly, with rationale, risks, dependencies and trade-offs understood by relevant stakeholders.
• Support the organisation in making informed technology choices by balancing user needs, delivery constraints, technical risk and value for money.
• Promote secure by design and operationally sustainable architecture, ensuring solutions can be supported, monitored and evolved over time.

Collaboration, influence and capability building

• Work closely with product, engineering, service design, operations and business stakeholders to shape solutions that meet user and organisational needs.
• Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences, including senior stakeholders and governance groups.
• Build strong working relationships across teams and with external partners where needed to support joined up delivery and architecture alignment.
• Coach and mentor technical leads, engineers and other colleagues, helping to strengthen architecture capability across the organisation.
• Contribute to communities of practice, standards development and continuous improvement in architecture and engineering ways of working.

We use a broad range of technologies and do not expect any one candidate to bring experience in every area. We are interested in people with strong architecture capability and relevant depth in several of the following areas:

Our Tech stack
Languages: Java, Python, TypeScript
Frameworks: Spring Boot, Flask, React, Next.js
Platforms and infrastructure: AWS, Red Hat OpenShift, GitLab CI and CD, Jenkins, OpenShift Pipelines, AWS CDK
Architecture and delivery practices: cloud native services, containerised solutions, event-based architecture, infrastructure as code, continuous delivery
Geospatial technologies: PostGIS, GeoServer, OpenLayers, GeoPandas, QGIS

Essential Criteria - Skills and Attributes for Success

Experience/Technical:
We will assess you against the following experience and technical skills during the application and assessment process:

• Significant experience in architecture or senior technical leadership roles, such as domain architecture, solution architecture, enterprise architecture or lead technical architecture.
• Experience leading architectural thinking across multiple teams, products or services in a complex digital environment.
• Experience defining technical strategy, target state architecture and roadmaps that support business priorities and delivery outcomes.
• Experience assuring solution designs and applying architectural governance in a practical and proportionate way.
• Experience working in agile, multidisciplinary teams delivering digital services in iterative ways.
• Strong experience engaging with senior technical and non-technical stakeholders, influencing decisions and building consensus.
• Experience identifying and managing architectural risks across areas such as security, resilience, integration and maintainability.
• Experience supporting organisational change through technology modernisation, service improvement or legacy replacement.
• Experience coaching, mentoring or developing other technical professionals and contributing to capability building.
• Desirable experience of working within government, public sector or other regulated environments, with awareness of digital and service standards.

Behaviours/Competencies

At assessment will be scored against the below behaviours:

Communicating and Influencing

• You will communicate architectural vision, strategy and technical decisions clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences, adapting style and level of detail to secure understanding and confidence.
• You will influence senior stakeholders, delivery teams and partners to build alignment around technical direction, priorities and design choices across multiple teams or services.
• You will handle challenge constructively and with credibility, using clear reasoning and strong communication to build consensus on complex or high impact architecture matters.

Leadership

• You will provide visible technical leadership across the domain, setting clear direction, promoting good architecture practice and giving others confidence in the way forward.
• You will create an inclusive and collaborative environment in which architects, engineers and delivery teams can contribute, challenge and develop high quality solutions together.
• You will coach and develop others, strengthening architecture capability, encouraging consistency in decision making and contributing to a strong cross organisational technical community.

Seeing the Big Picture

• You will understand the wider organisational, service and technology context, and ensure architectural direction supports Registers of Scotland's strategic priorities and long-term outcomes.
• You will anticipate how emerging risks, dependencies, legacy constraints and external developments may affect the domain, and use this insight to shape roadmaps and future state design.
• You will balance immediate delivery needs with wider organisational value, ensuring technical decisions contribute to sustainable services, public value and business transformation.

Making Effective Decisions

• You will make sound architectural decisions using evidence, experience and judgement, taking account of risks, trade-offs, costs, benefits and the impact on users and services.
• You will provide clear recommendations on complex technical options, even where there is ambiguity or competing priorities, and ensure decisions are proportionate, defensible and well explained.
• You will apply governance and assurance effectively, challenging designs where needed and guiding teams towards decisions that are secure, resilient, maintainable and aligned with standards.

Stage one - Application Process

To apply, click on 'Apply now' and complete the online application form.

You will need to submit:

• A CV outlining your career history and how you meet the technical/experience criteria (max 4 pages).
• A Statement of Suitability (maximum 500 words) explaining how you meet the Leadership behaviour and the technical skills, knowledge and experience required for the role. Please use the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) in your examples.
• Your CV and Supporting statement should be submitted as a single MS Word file.

Please note:

If we receive a high volume of applications, we may complete an initial sift on Technical and Experience Criteria

We reserve the right to invite candidates to participate in a telephone interview prior to being further assessed.

Applications that are not accompanied by CVs will not be scored or statements over 500 words will not be considered.

We would strongly recommend that your statement is written in theSTAR format(Situation, Task, Action & Result) and suggest preparing your answers using software such as MS Word or Google Docs, and then uploading the file.

We strongly advise you review our policy on responsible use of AI in the application process. RoS may contact you for a pre-screening call to verify your responses.

Applications and appointments are subject to a strict merit-based assessment process, in line with the Civil Service Recruitment Principles.

Stage two - assessment
If successful at application stage, you will be invited to an in-person interview which will include the following:

• Behaviour based interview
• Pre-prepared Presentation
• Technical Code Review (completed on day)

Behaviour based interview questions will begiven to candidates 15 minutes before the start of the interview to allowcandidates to prepare in advance. You will be able to take short notes with youinto the interview from your preparation.

Guidance on Interview Notes

• You are welcome to bring notes with you to the interview
• Notes can be either handwritten or typed
• Notes should consist of brief prompts, such as key words or bullet points, to help you structure your responses rather than complete answers
• The interview is a conversation, and we are interested in hearing about your experiences in your own words

Information on Success Profiles

For further information on success profiles, visit our Success Profiles.

Recruitment timeline

Advert Close:13 September Sift:Week commencing 14 September Candidate Notification:Week commencing 21 September Interviews:Week commencing 28 September

Feedback
Feedback will only be provided if you progress to interview stage.

Reserve List
In the event that further posts are required, a reserve list of successful candidates will be kept for up to 12 months.

Nationality and immigration status (EXTERNAL JOBS ONLY!)
In general, only nationals from the following countries (and associations of countries) are eligible for employment in the Civil Service: the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, and the Commonwealth. EU nationals (with settled or pre-settled status), certain EEA nationals, Swiss and Turkish nationals are also eligible for employment. Detailed provisions on determining eligibility on the grounds of nationality and, where relevant, immigration status can be reviewed here.

Security
Successful candidates must undergo a Basic Level 1 Disclosure check.
Individuals working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard checks.

Diversityand inclusion

Asa proud member of the Disability Confident Scheme, we welcome applications fromdisabled candidates. We're not as diverse as we'd like yet,and we're working on it. We especially welcome applications fromunderrepresented groups - people who are disabled, minoritised ethnic groups,and younger people (16-24 years of age). To learn more, pleasesee our EDI strategy.

Aspart of the application process, we would like to invite youto please complete our diversity monitoring form. This information is notshared with recruitment panels but will allow us to further improve ourprocesses to increase diversity.
Reasonableadjustments

Wewant everyone to have the chance to perform at their best. If you need anyadjustments (for example, extra time, a hearing loop, materials in largefont) in any part of our recruitment process, please get intouch via [email protected]. We will discuss adjustmentsindividually with any candidates who request these.

Findout more about reasonable adjustments on this page

Further information
For further information relating to RoS, including:
• Additional details on pay & benefits
• The Civil Service Code
• Complaints process
• Use of AI in the application/recruitment process,

Please view our additional information page online
If you have any questions, please contact [email protected]