Job Description:

Data Solution Architect

Location: Telford (Mostly Remote)
Travel: Monthly travel required for 2-day team events. Locations may include Telford, Birmingham, Manchester, or London.
Duration: 6 Months
Clearance Required: BPSS

Rate: £656 per day Inside IR35

Overview

We are seeking an experienced Data Solution Architect to lead technical discovery activities supporting the future evolution of HMRC's One Income Tax Service (OneITS). This role will assess the feasibility of acquiring, integrating, governing, and presenting third-party and government data within future OneITS products.

The successful candidate will provide architectural leadership throughout discovery, helping to identify opportunities, constraints, risks, and dependencies associated with customer data pre-population capabilities. The role will ensure alignment with OneITS strategic objectives, the Making Tax Digital (MTD) roadmap, Government Digital Blueprint principles, and HMRC enterprise architecture standards.

Key Responsibilities

Discovery & Technical Assessment

• Lead the technical discovery of agreed third-party and government data sources, assessing suitability, availability, quality, and integration feasibility.
• Define and document current-state and future-state architectural patterns for data acquisition, storage, management, and consumption.
• Identify technical risks, dependencies, assumptions, and constraints associated with data pre-population capabilities.
• Collaborate with policy, security, legal, and operational stakeholders to ensure all relevant considerations are incorporated into discovery findings.
• Support the development of evidence-based recommendations to inform future Alpha investment decisions.

Architecture & Integration Strategy

• Assess integration approaches including APIs, data-sharing arrangements, event-driven architectures, and batch processing models.
• Define target-state architecture principles aligned to OneITS strategic direction and enterprise reuse opportunities.
• Evaluate approaches for identity resolution, data matching, reconciliation, and confidence scoring across multiple data sources.
• Identify opportunities to establish reusable capabilities that support multiple income types and future services.
• Ensure alignment with existing HMRC platforms, strategic capabilities, and future architecture roadmaps.

Security, Privacy & Governance

• Work with security and governance teams to identify requirements relating to data protection, consent management, privacy, and regulatory compliance.
• Support DPIA, security assessments, and information governance activities where required.
• Assess architectural impacts of customer consent models and third-party data management.
• Provide guidance on data ownership, stewardship, and governance responsibilities across participating organisations.

Service & User-Centred Design Collaboration

• Partner with Service Designers and User Researchers to ensure architectural decisions are driven by user needs.
• Support exploration of customer interaction models relating to viewing, validating, correcting, and authorising pre-populated information.
• Contribute to service design activities by identifying architectural opportunities, constraints, and dependencies.
• Ensure proposed solutions support seamless customer journeys and future OneITS service ambitions.

Roadmap, Options & Recommendations

• Produce high-level architecture artefacts, integration patterns, and technical assessments.
• Support the development of discovery roadmaps, options appraisals, and recommendations.
• Provide architectural input into future Alpha scope definition and delivery planning.
• Present findings, options, and recommendations to senior HMRC and Capgemini stakeholders.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Proven experience as a Solution Architect within large-scale public sector or enterprise transformation programmes.
• Strong understanding of integration architecture, APIs, cloud-native solutions, and modern data platforms.
• Experience designing and assessing data acquisition, data management, and interoperability solutions.
• Strong knowledge of security, privacy, and governance considerations relating to sensitive customer data.
• Experience producing architecture artefacts, technical assessments, and options appraisals.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience working within Agile, product-led, and multidisciplinary delivery environments.
• Strong stakeholder management, facilitation, and influencing skills.

Desirable Skills

• Experience working with HMRC services, tax platforms, or wider government digital services.
• Understanding of OneITS strategic objectives and Modernising Tax Delivery initiatives.
• Experience with identity resolution, data matching, reconciliation, and master data management approaches.
• Knowledge of Government Digital Service (GDS) standards and Government Digital Blueprint principles.
• Experience working with third-party data providers, data-sharing arrangements, or regulated data ecosystems.
• Familiarity with event-driven architecture and enterprise integration patterns.
• Experience supporting Discovery and Alpha phases within government programmes.