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Business Architect

Hybrid in with colleagues linked to one of our contractual locations working between office and remote throughout the week. The locations for this role are Newport and Titchfield·Added today (last checked 21 Oct)

Office for National Statistics (ONS)

4 open roles

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Overview

Salary: £56,861 - £66,704 a year
About £3,630 - £4,100 a month after tax.
Work mode: Hybrid, with colleagues linked to one of our contractual locations working between office and remote throughout the week. The locations for this role are Newport and Titchfield
Closing date: Apply by Wednesday 11 November
Pension: 28.97% employer pension

The role

Apply before 11:55 pm on Wednesday 11th November 2026

Details

Reference number

486221

Salary

£56,861 - £66,704

A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

GBP

Job grade

Grade 7

Contract type

Permanent

Business area

Census Delivery & Operations

Type of role

Digital
Strategy

Working pattern

Flexible working, Full-time, Job share, Part-time, Compressed hours

Number of jobs available

Location

The ONS operates a flexible hybrid working model across the UK, with colleagues linked to one of our contractual locations working between office and remote throughout the week. The locations for this role are Newport and Titchfield (Fareham).

Due to workforce controls you can only select Manchester, London, Darlington, Edinburgh and Belfast if you are an existing ONS/UKSA employee contracted to that location. If you are not contracted at one of these sites, these options are not available to you.

Applicants who select a location they are not eligible for will be removed from the recruitment process and will not be considered for alternative locations.

All colleagues are required to work from their contractually allocated site for at least 40% of their working time.

The induction process for the role will be conducted in person.

About the job

Job summary

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK's largest producer of official statistics, covering a range of key economic, social and demographic topics. These include measuring changes in the value of the UK economy, estimating the size, geographic distribution and characteristics of the population, and providing indicators of price inflation, employment, earnings, crime and migration.

We are recruiting for an experienced Business Architects to support the Census 2031.

Census 2031 represents our most ambitious data collection project yet, a once in a decade opportunity to capture a complete picture of everyone living in England and Wales. Building on the digital success of 2021, we're pioneering new ways to reach every household and community, ensuring no one is left uncounted. This vital work will provide the foundation for policy decisions, resource allocation, and community planning for the next decade.

Job description

The Census Design team is helping shape the future of one of the UK's largest and most significant public service programmes. Census provides vital data that informs decision-making across government, public services and society.

Working within a multidisciplinary team of business analysts, architects, service designers and delivery professionals, you will help define the strategic direction for Census 2031 and future census initiatives. The team brings together business needs, operational requirements and future opportunities to design sustainable, effective services.

This role offers the opportunity to work across a wide range of strategic challenges, influencing business objectives, future operating models and long-term organisational change. You will collaborate with senior stakeholders across ONS and government to help shape and deliver a nationally significant programme that impacts millions of people.

As a Business Architect, you will lead business architecture across programme, translating strategic objectives into effective business design and delivery. Working with senior leaders, you will shape transformation initiatives, support decision-making and provide expert guidance on complex business challenges and solutions.

Professional membership of the Business Architecture Guild, or a willingness to work towards membership, is desirable.

Responsibilities

• Support executive level work and management of the business architecture practice.
• Guide others in using appropriate business architectural tools and methods.
• Understand and apply business architectural principles, techniques, and tools to business scenarios.
• Create business architecture artefacts, including abstract representations of the organisation, knowing when to apply them.
• Develop standard and scalable models to collect, aggregate, or disaggregate complex information.

Person specification

Essential Criteria

Business architecture (Practitioner) - Apply and develop business architecture frameworks, principles and techniques in your organisation. Advise and guide the organisation to inform the implementation of its strategy. Share the value of business architecture with the organisation. Make decisions characterised by medium levels of risk and complexity and recommend decisions as risk and complexity increase. Build consensus between services or independent stakeholders.
Methods and Tools (Practitioner) - Build capability in methods and tools, ensuring they are adopted consistently and used effectively.
Stakeholder relationship management (Practitioner) - Work with the team to develop and maintain an understanding of stakeholders. Work with the team to develop and implement stakeholder communications strategies. Identify and resolve issues, influence stakeholders and manage relationships effectively. Build long-term strategic relationships and communicate clearly and regularly with stakeholders
Strategic design and Business Change (Practitioner) - Demonstrate a good understanding of business issues, events and activities, and their short to long term impact. Support defining principles, patterns, standards, policies, roadmaps and vision statements. Effectively focus on outcomes rather than solutions. Help to develop, maintain or update strategy in response to feedback and findings.
Strategic thinking (Practitioner) - Define strategies and policies, providing guidance to others on working in the strategic context. Evaluate current strategies to ensure business requirements are being met and exceeded where possible.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

Seeing the Big Picture
Communicating and Influencing
Changing and Improving
Working Together

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

Business architecture

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £56,861, Office for National Statistics contributes £16,472 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

The Office for National Statistics is part of the Civil Service, and as such we share a number of key benefits with other departments, whilst also having our own unique offerings to support our valued colleagues across the organisation.

Whether you are hearing about us for the first time or already know a bit about our organisation, we hope that our careers site will give you a great insight into the benefits and facilities available to our colleagues, and our fantastic working culture.

Inclusion & Accessibility

At ONS we are always looking to attract the very best people from the widest possible talent pool, and we are proud to be an inclusive, equal opportunities employer. As a Disability Confident Leader we're committed to ensuring that all candidates are treated fairly throughout the recruitment process.

As part of our application process, you will be prompted to provide details of any reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process that you need. If you would like to discuss any reasonable adjustments before applying, please contact the recruitment team in the first instance.

If you would like an accessible version of any of the attachments or recruitment documents below or linked to in this advert, please contact the recruitment team who will be happy to assist.

ONS are committed to flexible ways of working that support a healthy work-life balance. ONS has already considered how this job could be right sized for applicants working flexibly and we are happy to explore options with you about working part time, in a job share or flexibly, in line with our hybrid working policies.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.

Security Clearance

For ONS the requirement for SC clearance is to have been present in the UK for 3 consecutive years immediately prior to applying and the department will consider eligibility by exception on a case-by-case basis. You will be asked to provide information regarding your UK residency during your application, and failure to provide this will result in your application being rejected.

At the point of SC application, you will need to provide or give access to the following evidence:

Departmental or company records (personnel files, staff reports, sick leave reports and security records)
UK criminal records covering both spent and unspent criminal records
Your credit and financial history with a credit reference agency
Security Services records

Visa Sponsorship

ONS can offer visa sponsorship as part of this recruitment campaign. However, applicants must still hold valid right to work in the UK at the point employment commences.

To work at the ONS, candidates must meet both UK right to work and security clearance requirements (where applicable).

If you are unsure whether you meet the appropriate right to work or security clearance eligibility criteria, please refer to the guidance on Gov.uk or contact the recruitment email provided in the advert before applying. Failure to meet these requirements will result in your application being rejected and employment offers being withdrawn.

Application Process

Number of Stages: 2 stage process

Stage 1: Application

Stage 2: Interview

Stage 1 - Application

The assessment process at the application stage will be based on your work history, CV, skills, experience, and personal statement. It is important that your application is tailored to highlight the skills, knowledge, and experience relevant to the role.

A personal statement is required at application stage, the maximum word count allowed is 1250 words, which should not be exceeded. You should provide evidence for each essential skill criterion listed in the person specification. As these criteria are scored, it is advisable to give clear examples for each one, including the impact of your actions, ideally utilising the STAR technique (Situation, Task, Action, Result).

Please note that Success Profiles Behaviour examples are not required at this stage of the application process.

In instances where a high number of applications are received, the sift pass mark may be adjusted, and candidates will be invited to interview based on merit order, i.e., those with the highest scores.

When a high volume of applications are received, the sift pass mark may be adjusted. Candidates will be invited to interview based on their merit order, with those achieving the highest scores being prioritised. Applicants who score below the adjusted pass mark but still pass will be placed on hold and may be invited to interview at a later date.

Stage 2 - Interview

If invited to interview, you will be assessed using techniques aligned with the Civil Service Success Profiles framework, covering all behaviours listed in the job advert and any required technical skills.

You will be required to provide a 10 minute presentation at interview. The presentation topic will be emailed to candidates who have passed the initial online application stage, 1 week prior to interview. This presentation will assess candidates against the Business architecture.

Interviews will be via Microsoft Teams.

A reserve list may be held for a period up to 12 months from which further appointments may be made.

We often have similar roles available at different grades. If a candidate is suitable for a similar role or a lower grade than they have applied for, we may offer the candidate that role without the need to go through a further selection process providing the role has the same behaviours, and essential skills.

Important Dates

Eligibility checks from 12/11 -18/11
Sift will be conducted from 20/11/2026
Interviews will be conducted from 3/12/2026

For the full terms and conditions of the post, please see attachment.

Please note that all campaigns may be subject to withdrawal at any stage if the internal resource position changes.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a basic (or equivalent) criminal record check.

Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).

People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

UK nationals
nationals of the Republic of Ireland
nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).

The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.

Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

Name : Strategic Resourcing Census
Email : Strategic.Resourcing.Census@ons.gov.uk

Recruitment team

Email : Strategic.Resourcing.Census@ons.gov.uk

Further information

If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with the Recruitment Principles and you wish to make a complaint, in the first instance, you should contact recruitment.complaints@ons.gov.uk. If you are not satisfied with the response you receive from the Department, you can contact the Civil Service Commission