Principal Solution Architect - Public Sector

Anson McCade is partnering with a leading UK digital transformation consultancy to hire a Principal Architect for its public sector practice. The work is large-scale, high-profile digital services that are used by millions of citizens. The role You'll be the senior technical lead across complex public sector programmes. You'll shape architectural direction, assure delivery across multiple teams and suppliers, and act as a trusted advisor to senior customer stakeholders up to CIO and CTO level. You'll also lead and develop a small team of architects and engineers. Alongside account leadership, you'll help identify new opportunities and shape credible technical solutions for bids. What you'll be doing

• Setting architectural principles, standards and strategic direction with senior government stakeholders
• Providing technical leadership and assurance across multi-team, multi-supplier programmes
• Designing secure, resilient and scalable services across cloud, integration, data and legacy modernisation
• Advising on modern technologies, including AI and agentic approaches, and how to adopt them responsibly
• Contributing to bids, proposals and account strategy
• Line managing, coaching and mentoring architects and engineers What you'll bring
• Extensive public sector experience, ideally in UK Government or large public service organisations
• A track record of leading architecture for complex digital services and transformation programmes
• Strong knowledge of the GDS Service Standard, the Technology Code of Practice, accessibility requirements and secure-by-design principles
• Hands-on cloud experience with AWS and/or Azure, including cloud-native, containerised and SaaS/PaaS architectures
• Knowledge of APIs, event-driven architecture, data platforms and modernising legacy systems
• An engineering background, with the credibility to lead and challenge software teams
• Confidence with C-level stakeholders, and the ability to explain complex designs simply
• Commercial awareness, including bid experience, cost and risk trade-offs, and total cost of ownership
• Experience managing and developing technical people Nice to have
• Experience of GDS service assessments or design authority functions
• Central government programme experience
• SC clearance, or eligibility to obtain it
• Experience creating reusable patterns, accelerators or reference architectures