Associate Enterprise Architect Ref. 3657

Job Description

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.

About us

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.

The role
As one of our Associate Enterprise Architects, you’ll work with support from senior architects to develop and deliver GCHQ’s enterprise architecture. By translating organisational goals into actionable architectural strategies, you’ll lead design initiatives, proactively identify risks and constraints, and optimise environments across technology, data, and processes to deliver impactful solutions. The nature of our work means our technology must be cutting edge and is often unique to our one-of-a-kind mission. So, 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 then collaborate to align solutions to their needs and our organisational strategies.

You’ll work with other architects, engineers, project managers and delivery leads across GCHQ. And sometimes, with support, you’ll liaise with external suppliers and partners. Please note that occasional travel will be required to sites across the UK to enable you to work closely with colleagues from all areas of the organisation.

About you
You’ll have practical experience working as an Associate Enterprise Architect, and 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 practical experience in the field.

Your working knowledge of enterprise architecture comes from real delivery environments, where decisions are shaped by organisational goals, constraints and trade-offs. Working with or deputising for senior architects in these environments has helped you build confidence in forming and explaining architectural viewpoints. And your curiosity means you’re eager to learn more.

Architectural standards, principles, and governance are familiar territory for you, and you've worked with at least one modern architecture framework/Standard (like ArchiMate TOGAF, Zachman or MODAF) to guide your work.

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

Training and development
We’re proud to offer an inclusive and supportive working environment, and as an organisation that values and nurtures our colleagues, both professionally and personally, we’re dedicated to helping you fulfil your potential.

When you join, you’ll receive a full induction into GCHQ so you can learn more about who we are, what we do, and where your role fits in. Once you’re in post, you’ll receive formal and on- the-job training, along with all the support you need to thrive. We encourage continuous professional development and are committed to giving you the space and capacity to develop, innovate, and experiment. Typically, we expect 20% of your time to be dedicated to developing yourself and supporting others.

We value your ability to learn and adapt to new challenges, so we’ll invest in your skills and in the way you prefer to learn, from books, study, courses, and conferences to stretching work supported by your team. You’ll be encouraged to drive and shape your own personal development, and you’ll have access to learning and development opportunities tailored to your role. We’ll cover the cost and provide the time and support you need to gain professional qualifications and certifications.

From day one, you’ll have access to mentors and subject matter experts. We’ll help you create a structured development and career plan that’s right for you.

Rewards and benefits
You’ll receive a starting salary of £55,758 to £63,948, including a concessionary payment of £2,658. The final amount depends on your skills and experience, plus other benefits including:

• 25 days’ annual leave automatically rising to 30 days after 5 years' service, and an additional 10.5 days of public and privilege holidays
• opportunities to be recognised through our employee performance scheme
• an interest-free season ticket loan (travel and parking)
• an excellent pension scheme
• a cycle to work scheme
• facilities such as a gym, restaurant, and on-site coffee bars (at some locations)
• paid parental and adoption leave

Equal opportunities

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: those 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 those from groups that are under-represented in our workforce such as women, those 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.

We’re Disability Confident
GCHQ is proud to have achieved Leader status within the Department for Work and Pensions’ Disability Confident scheme. This is aimed at encouraging employers to think differently about disability and take action to improve how they recruit, retain and develop disabled people. Being Disability Confident, we aim to offer a fair and proportionate number of person-to-person interviews to any candidate who self-identifies as disabled and meets the essential criteria for the role. This is our ‘Offer of Interview’ (OOI). To secure an interview for this vacancy, the essential criteria (in order of application process) are:

• meet the eligibility criteria: complete an initial application form, including pre-screening questions, to ensure you meet our eligibility criteria.
• experience contributing to the development and maintenance of architecture designs and artifacts by interpreting business and user needs and applying enterprise architecture standards and direction with guidance.
• experience supporting architectural decision‑making by identifying risks, constraints, and trade‑offs (for example cost, scalability, or maintainability), and working within agreed governance and standards to enable delivery.
• ability to work collaboratively with technical and non‑technical stakeholders across teams, clearly communicating architectural concepts and supporting alignment with agreed solutions.

There is a wide range of extra support available throughout the recruitment process to enable you to do your best, see our website for information on reasonable adjustments we can offer.

What to expect

Our recruitment process is fair, transparent, and based on merit. Here is a brief overview of each stage, in order:

1. application sift
2. virtual interview (assessing your technical skills and the organisational competencies)
3. if successful, you’ll receive a conditional offer of employment

Please note, you must successfully pass each stage of the process to progress to the next. Your application may take around 6 to 9 months to process including vetting, so we advise you continue any current employment until you have received your final job offer.

Before you apply

To work at GCHQ, you need to be a British citizen or hold dual British nationality. Read about our eligibility criteria.

This role requires the highest security clearance, known as Developed Vetting (DV). It’s something everyone in the UK Intelligence Community undertakes. Find out more about the vetting process.

Please note we have a strict drugs policy, so once you start your application, you can’t take any recreational drugs and you’ll need to declare your previous drug usage at the relevant stage.

Before you apply, we advise you to consider setting up a separate email address for your contact with us, to ensure your personal and application correspondence remain separate. Try to avoid having identifying features in your email address, such as your first and/or surname and date of birth. This is good practice and will help you manage your application with us more securely.

The role is based in Cheltenham so you’ll need to live within a commutable distance. Please consider any financial implications and practicalities before submitting an application, as we do not offer relocation costs.

We offer reasonable reimbursement of travel costs for candidates attending in-person appointments during the recruitment and vetting process. Full details will be provided with your interview or assessment invitation.

Reimbursement is discretionary and will only be made in line with the Candidate Expenses Policy, as amended from time to time. Candidates must book their own travel, using the most economical option, and provide original hardcopy receipts for reimbursement.

Please note, you should only launch your application from within the UK. If you are based overseas, you should wait until you visit the UK to launch an application. Applying from outside the UK will impact on our ability to progress your application. You should not discuss your application, other than with your partner or a close family member.

Right to withdraw statement:

Please be aware we reserve the right to bring forward the closing date for this role from the original closing date once a certain number of applications have been received. Please be mindful of this and submit your application at your earliest convenience to avoid disappointment.