Description Job description Join a collaborative mission to architect the digital future of our organisation, aligning strategy, technology, and innovation to deliver lasting impact. The National Records of Scotland (NRS) plans a holistic redesign of its services. This is an opportunity to shape the future of our organisation by leading the design and delivery of enterprise-wide architecture that underpins our strategic goals. The role of Principal Enterprise Architect is pivotal in driving innovation, enhancing service delivery, and embedding modern, scalable, and secure digital solutions. You will work across multidisciplinary teams to ensure our technology landscape is future-ready—supporting agile delivery, data-driven decision-making, and user-centred design. You will contribute to the development and delivery of new and evolving operating models, accountable for delivering enterprise-wide architecture capability to ensure the best and most cost-effective technology solutions are developed and deployed for our services. The Principal Enterprise Architect will report into the Director of Digital and IT and lead a fluid team of Technical, Solution and Data Architects. Bring your expertise to a team where your architectural vision will directly influence the future of digital public services. Responsibilities Develop and maintain the enterprise architecture vision, strategy, and roadmaps across business, data, and technology domains, including current (‘as is’), future (‘to be’), and transitional states. Identify priorities for change that enable delivery at pace, ensuring alignment with organisational goals and digital transformation strategies. Lead and influence the delivery of crosscutting capabilities, ensuring that architectural decisions support reuse, sustainability, scalability, and value for money. Understand and map the organisation’s ecosystem, including reference architectures and interdependencies across services, platforms, and business functions. Take a strategic view across all architectural domains, portfolios, and programmes, ensuring coherence and alignment with enterprise-wide objectives. Guide business, technology, and data decisions by recommending appropriate solutions that reduce risk and technical debt while enabling innovation and agility. Establish and promote architectural principles, policies, and standards, ensuring they are embedded in delivery practices and governance processes. Collaborate and consult with stakeholders across the organisation to assure that architecture aligns with strategic goals and delivery outcomes. Support and develop the architecture community, sharing knowledge, mentoring peers, and contributing to capability building across teams. Conduct horizon scanning to identify emerging technologies, trends, and industry developments, assessing their potential impact and opportunities for the organisation. Communicate effectively across technical and nontechnical audiences, translating complex architectural concepts into accessible language to support decision making. Contribute to agile, multidisciplinary teams, applying agile principles and practices to support iterative delivery and continuous improvement. Responsibilities Success profile Success profiles are specific to each job and they include the mix of skills, experience and behaviours candidates will be assessed on. Technical / Professional Skills: The role aligns to the Principal Enterprise Architect role within the DDaT Architecture job family. You can find out more about the skills required here. These skills are assessed by technical assessment, designed to represent the role. Candidates reaching this stage will receive a Technical Assessment Candidate Pack which outlines the specific skills to be assessed, plus the method of assessment. Experience To be successful in this role you will need to have the following experience: Lead Experience 1. A strong track record in providing hands-on, pragmatic architectural leadership across a multi-service and technologically diverse environment—working with both internal teams and external service providers. This should include strong relationship-building, influencing, and negotiation skills to provide effective technical and professional leadership to the wider architecture and technology community. Considerable experience in developing and defining strategic target business architecture to support improved organisational outcomes, strategic decision-making, architectural governance, and optimal business design. An excellent applied knowledge of modern technical architectures, cloud technology, IT infrastructure, virtualisation and data management—ideally with experience in automation and AI. Considerable experience of driving and delivering technological change at pace within a context of organisational transformation, operating across functional and organisational boundaries with shifting priorities. Demonstrable experience in developing technical capability within an organisation, including empowering, supporting, and developing staff to achieve high performance. Behaviours: Seeing the big picture (Level 4) Making effective decisions (Level 4) Working together (Level 4) You can find out more about Success Profiles Behaviours, here: Success Profiles - Civil Service Behaviours (publishing.service.gov.uk) Behaviours are assessed at interview. Full details will be shared in advance with all candidates invited to this stage. How to apply Apply online, providing a CV and Supporting Statement (of no more than 1000 words) which provides evidence of how you meet each of the 5 Experience criteria listed above. Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools can be used to support your application, but all statements and examples 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, and presented as your own) applications will be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance for more information on acceptable and unacceptable uses of AI in recruitment. Candidates will have their applications assessed against all Experience criteria. If a large number of applications are received an initial sift will be conducted on the Lead Experience criteria highlighted above. Candidates who pass the initial sift will have their applications fully assessed. If invited for further assessment, this will consist of an interview and DDaT Technical assessment where the behaviours, experiences and technical skills outlined in the Success Profile will be assessed. The sift is scheduled for w/c 8th September. Assessments are scheduled for w/c 29 th September, however this may be subject to change. Qualifications About us National Records of Scotland (NRS) is Scotland’s record keeper. Our purpose is to collect, preserve and produce information about Scotland's people and history and make it available to inform current and future generations. We offer rewarding careers and employ people across Scotland in a wide range of professions and roles. NRS is a Non-Ministerial Department of the Scottish Government and our staff are part UK Civil Service, working for Ministers and senior stakeholders to deliver vital public services which improve the lives of the people of Scotland. We offer a supportive and inclusive working environment along with a wide range of employee benefits. Find out more about what we offer. As part of the UK Civil Service, we uphold the Civil Service Nationality Rules. DDaT Pay Supplement This post is part of the Scottish Government Digital, Data and Technology (DDAT) profession, as a member of the profession you will join the professional development system. This post currently attracts a £5,000.00 annual DDAT pay supplement, applicable after a 3-month competency qualifying period. The payment will be backdated to your start date in the role. Pay supplements are reviewed regularly and there is one currently underway. Changes will be communicated when the review is concluded. Working pattern Our standard hours are 35 hours per week and we offer a range of flexible working options depending on the needs of the role. If you have specific questions about the role you are applying for, please contact us. Security checks Successful candidates must complete the Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS), before they can be appointed. BPSS is comprised of four main pre-employment checks – Identity, Right to work, Employment History and a Criminal Record check (unspent convictions). You can find out more about BPSS on the UK Government website, or read about the different levels of security checks in our Candidate Guide. Equality statement We are committed to equality and inclusion and we aim to recruit a diverse workforce that reflects the population of our nation. Find out more about our commitment to diversity and how we offer and support recruitment adjustments for anyone who needs them. Further information Find out more about our organisation, what we offer staff members and how to apply on our Careers Website. Read our Candidate Guide for further information on our recruitment and application processes. For more information on the role, please contact Michael O’Loughlin at michael.oloughlin@nrscotland.gov.uk