Associate Enterprise Architect

Location: Cheltenham
Salary: £55,758 to £63,948 comprising a basic salary of £53,000 and a concessionary payment of £2,758. The exact salary offered within this range will depend on your skills and experience. An additional Skills Payment is available once your skills level is confirmed, £3,822 for Level 1 or £8,190 for Level 2. Once in role, there may also be opportunities to qualify for further allowances and additional skills-related payments.

Flexible working: We recognise the importance of a healthy work-life balance and offer a range of working patterns, including full-time, part-time, and compressed hours. While most of our work is carried out on-site due to its sensitive nature, occasional homeworking may be possible depending on business requirements. We also support flexible start and finish times to help you manage your personal and professional commitments.

Find out more about flexible working on our website.

GCHQ is an intelligence, cyber and security agency with a mission to keep the UK safe. We use cutting-edge technology, ingenuity and partnerships to identify, analyse and disrupt threats. Working with our intelligence partners, we protect the UK from terrorism, cyber-attacks and espionage. At GCHQ, you’ll do varied and fascinating work in a supportive and inclusive environment that puts the emphasis on teamwork.

As an Associate Enterprise Architect, you’ll have support from senior architects in developing and delivering GCHQ’s enterprise architecture. The nature of our work means our technology must be cutting-edge and is often unique to our one-of-a-kind mission. The opportunity for learning in this role is extensive, with lots of interesting challenges and plenty of development opportunities on offer.

Mentored by one of our Enterprise Architects, you’ll collaborate with delivery teams and stakeholders throughout the organisation, applying best practice and emerging approaches while growing your own skills. Every day, you’ll play an important part in helping teams deliver mission-critical work as you contribute to designs and documentation and provide analysis. Working with technical and business teams, you’ll also collaborate to align solutions to their needs and our organisational strategies.

You’ll have practical experience working as an Associate Enterprise Architect. We’re most interested in your support for our shared mission and how you’ve contributed to architectural work across technology, data, digital or business change initiatives. Whether that’s supporting designs, analysing impacts or documenting architectures, you’ll have gained valuable practical experience.

Architectural standards, principles, and governance are familiar territory for you, and you've worked with at least one modern architecture framework/standard (such as  ArchiMate, TOGAF, Zachman, or MODAF).

Communication and problem-solving skills are vital in this role. You can analyse requirements, shape solutions at the appropriate level of detail, and clearly articulate risks and trade-offs to both technical and non-technical audiences. You can also collaborate, adapt as priorities shift, and manage your time effectively.

When you join us, you’ll have a full induction to GCHQ so you can understand who we are and what we do. Once in your role, you’ll receive formal and on-the-job training, along with all the support you need to thrive. We’re committed to continuous professional development and will provide the space for you to grow, innovate and experiment. Typically, around 20% of your time will be dedicated to developing yourself and supporting others.

We know that development is personal, so we’ll invest in yours in a way that works for you.  Whether you learn best through books, courses, conferences or stretch assignments, we’ll make  sure you have the resources you need. We’ll cover the cost of professional qualifications and give you the time and support required to achieve them. From your first day, you’ll have access to mentors and subject matter experts, and together we’ll build a work structured development plan that aligns with your goals and helps you grow with confidence

At GCHQ, diversity and inclusion are critical to our mission. To protect the UK, we need a truly diverse workforce that reflects the society we serve. This includes diversity in every sense of the word: people with different backgrounds, ages, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, ways of thinking and those with disabilities or neurodivergent conditions. We therefore welcome and encourage applications from everyone, including groups that are under-represented in our workforce, such as women, people  from an ethnic minority background, people with disabilities and those from low socio-economic backgrounds. Find out more about our culture, working environment and diversity on our website.

To find out more and apply, please visit our website.

To be eligible to apply, you must be a British Citizen. If you hold dual nationality, of which one component is British, you will still  be considered. Candidates must normally have been resident in the UK for seven out of the last ten years. This is particularly important if you were born outside the UK. We welcome applications from candidates of all ages, and there is no upper age limit. You can apply at 17; if successful, you will not be offered a start date prior to your 18th birthday. Full eligibility details can be found on our website.