Total remuneration: £100,087 - £114,401 – please note this is a defined payscale
Pay Supplement: The base salary for this role is £80,716 - £92,259. This job qualifies for a 24% Digital, Data and Technology Annual Pay supplement which is included in the total remuneration above.
Pension: (RoS contribution)
Annual leave: 42 days annual holiday
Duration: Permanent
Working Pattern: 35 hours per week. We are a flexible employer and will consider a variety of working patterns on a case-by-case basis. For example, compressed hours, term-time working or part-time working.
Location: Hybrid working model. Contractual base either at Meadowbank House, Edinburgh (EH8 7AU), or St Vincent Plaza, Glasgow (G2 5LD). You will be expected to attend one of these locations as required by the role.
Department: Architecture
Directorate: Digital Data and Technology (DDaT)
Role Reports to: DDaT Director
Grade: C2
Closing date: 17 May 2026 at 23:59
Number of vacancies: 1
Registers of Scotland (RoS)
Join an award-winning organisation recognised for its technology and innovation. Registers of Scotland is a world-leading pioneer in land and property registration. Our full-stack teams design, architect, and build all our registration products in-house. We work to create digital solutions for the people of Scotland. You will get an opportunity to nurture your creativity and develop with us through access to the latest data, software engineering and product delivery techniques.
Inclusion
We welcome applications from all backgrounds and are committed to building a diverse workforce that reflects Scotland. We particularly welcome applications from underrepresented groups in Technology and design. Your unique perspective and experience will strengthen our team's ability to create services that work for all our communities.
This job is for you if you want…
Work with purpose: working for the people of Scotland to set the bar for land and property registration worldwide.
Flexible and hybrid working: depending on the role and team requirements, work when and where it’s best for you and your stakeholders.
Benefits: enjoy pay progression, pension contributions of up to, up to a year’s parental leave, and 42 days annual holiday.
Investment in professional development: we invest in all our people so that they have the right skills to be productive and confident in their job.
Diversity and Inclusion: We are an ‘Investor in People’ and a ‘Disability Confident’ employer. We are inclusive, stronger together, and committed to putting our people first.
Inclusive and supportive culture: RoS values diverse perspectives and experiences. We're an agile, digital organisation where everyone has a voice in shaping our strategy. You'll join a collaborative environment where different approaches are celebrated and where we actively work to ensure everyone can contribute their best work.
To learn more about RoS and what we offer visit our or watch this .Hear from our colleagues about their experience of working within our Digital, Data and Technology teams
Our Tech stack
Backend: Java, Python and Spring Boots
Frontend: JavaScript, React and Typescript
DevOps: AWS. CI/CD, Kubernetes and OpenShift
AWS: AWS SNS, Comprehend, EC2, Lambdas, RDS, SageMaker and Textract
Data: Hadoop, Microsoft SQL Server, Pandas, PowerBI, PostgreSQL, Pytorch, Spark, TensorFlow and Tableau
The Role
As Chief Architect, you’ll be a trusted technical adviser to our Executive team, shaping the technology direction of Registers of Scotland (RoS) at a pivotal point in our digital transformation journey. You’ll provide authoritative strategic leadership, ensuring that our technology architecture underpins delivery of our corporate plan and long‑term strategic objectives.
You’ll define and own the enterprise-wide technology vision, creating a clear architecture blueprint that enables growth, agility, security, and resilience while driving cost optimisation through modern, innovative platforms and capabilities. From cloud and serverless technologies to AI‑enabled solutions, CI/CD pipelines, event driven architectures, and “Next Best Action” services, you’ll champion modern engineering practices that simplify complexity and accelerate delivery.
This is a role where architecture directly translates into real-world outcomes. Your decisions will help deliver:
•Secure, resilient, and compliant digital services
•Improved sustainability and operational efficiency
•Reduced technical debt and operational effort
•Faster progress towards a fully digitised Land Register
You’ll lead a high performing team of around six Domain Architects, fostering alignment across technical teams and embedding architectural governance that enables innovation while protecting critical national services. As a key member of the DDaT Leadership Team, you’ll influence at Executive and Board level providing clarity, assurance, and confidence in architectural choices that have long‑term public value.
RoS operates a legally and economically critical national register, with complex legacy platforms, high value data assets, and evolving customer and legislative demands. The Chief Architect role is accountable for shaping technology decisions in an environment where resilience, security, and service continuity are paramount, and where architectural choices have long‑term operational and public value impact.
If you’re motivated by leading at scale, shaping strategy as well as solutions, and using technology to deliver lasting public good, this is a rare and highly influential opportunity.
Over the next 12–24 months, success in the role will mean:
•Develop the Enterprise Architecture Strategy and Blueprint, endorsed by EMT and actively guiding technology and investment decisions
•Provide a focused 3–5 year technology roadmap that supports RoS’s 2027–2032 Corporate Plan objectives.
•Agree and establish architectural standards, embedding them into all major delivery and change programmes
•Establish governance and monitoring mechanisms to ensure adherence to the blueprint and standards
•Build a strong permanent Domain Architect community, reducing reliance on contractors and putting clear talent and succession management in place
•Ensure RoS is recognised as visibly contributing to Scottish Government and public sector architecture forums
•Reduce cost to serve and improve resilience and security through architectural simplification and technology choices
•Demonstrate that architectural direction has accelerated delivery of RoS’s goal of becoming a fully digital registration and information business.
•Evidence that architectural direction has measurably improved delivery outcomes, including reduced technical debt, increased platform resilience, and faster, safer delivery of digital services.
This is a rare opportunity to shape the future of digital delivery for one of Scotland’s most trusted public bodies, where your leadership will have national impact.
Responsibilities
Setting Direction
•Define and deliver Registers of Scotland’s Enterprise Architecture vision, aligned to corporate and DDaT strategy.
•Own the 3–5 year Architecture Blueprint, setting clear principles for platforms, operating models, and vendor engagement.
•Balance strategic leadership with hands-on engagement in priority architectural decisions.
•Own and evolve the Cloud Strategy, championing resilience, security, simplification, and value for money.
•Lead the Architecture Steering Group, ensuring transparent, vendor‑neutral decision-making.
•Influence at Executive and Board level, clearly articulating architectural options, risks, and trade-offs.
•Translate emerging technologies into practical, outcome focused innovation.
Delivery & Operations
•Work with delivery teams to realise the target architecture, including automation (AI/ML/LLMs), cloud migration, legacy retirement, and cloud‑native, event‑driven platforms.
•Champion delivery against the approved architecture roadmap.
•Define and operate the architecture operating model, including governance, assurance, and decision rights.
•Act as the final architectural authority, providing assurance across programmes while balancing pace and long-term resilience.
•Ensure secure‑by‑design, compliant, and resilient practices are embedded throughout delivery.
Governance & Standards
•Define and embed pragmatic enterprise architecture standards and frameworks ( TOGAF, GDS).
•Ensure technology adoption aligns to strategic priorities and delivers value for money.
•Provide architectural assurance and input to investment and business cases.
•Embed security, accessibility, compliance, and resilience into all architectural decision‑making.
•Oversee effective governance of the Architecture and Platform Steering Groups.
People Leadership
•Lead and mature the architecture function, building sustainable enterprise capability.
•Line‑manage and develop the Domain Architect team, providing coaching and technical leadership.
•Act as a visible architectural leader, fostering collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement.
•Represent RoS externally, engaging across Scottish and UK public‑sector digital communities.
For full details and expectations please review the
Key Responsibilities
Essential Criteria – Skills and Attributes for Success
Experience/Technical:
We will assess you against the following Experience and Technical skills during the application and assessment process:
Influence, Governance and Scale:
•Significant experience leading enterprise or solution architecture in complex organisations.
•Proven track record of delivering large-scale legacy modernisation and cloud migration programmes.
•Experience designing and implementing solutions that balance user needs, business outcomes, and technical sustainability.
•Skilled in stakeholder engagement and communication with both technical and non-technical audiences, including Executives and Boards.
•Demonstrated ability to prioritise and deliver an enterprise roadmap across multiple domains.
•Strong leadership skills with experience influencing technical direction across 10+ teams and budgets exceeding £20m.
•Experience developing architecture capability across an organisation, including mentoring architects and embedding architectural thinking in engineering teams.
•Experience assessing total cost of ownership, cost‑to‑serve, and long‑term economic impact of architectural decisions (especially cloud and AI choices).
Technical
•Deep experience with AWS native services in large, regulated environments, including Lambda, API Gateway, S3, Aurora/PostgreSQL and infrastructure as code (CDK) across secure multi‑account estates.
•Strong architectural experience with container platforms, including Kubernetes and/or Red Hat OpenShift, covering operational, security and lifecycle concerns.
•Proven ability to embed security, privacy, resilience and compliance by design within enterprise architectures aligned to public sector obligations.
•Strong experience shaping enterprise data and AI architecture, including responsible ML and LLM adoption, MLOps, model lifecycle and data pipelines, integrated into a coherent, scalable enterprise architecture.
•Expert knowledge of event‑driven, service‑oriented and microservice‑based architectural patterns.
•Deep understanding of modern engineering ecosystems and practices, including Java and Python platforms, CI/CD, automated testing, DevSecOps and SRE‑aligned operating models.
Behaviours
You will be scored against the below Behaviours at the assessment stages:
•Leadership
•Communicating and Influencing/ Developing Self and Others (Cluster)
•Seeing the Big Picture / Making Effective Decisions (Cluster)
•Changing and Improving
•Delivering at Pace/ Managing a Quality Service (Cluster)
Application Process
To apply, click on 'Apply now' and complete the online application form.
You will need to submit:
•A CV outlining your career history and how you meet the technical experience criteria (max four pages).
•Please provide a supporting statement of no more than 500-750 words.
Your statement should take the form of a covering letter and include an example of leading or developing a strategy within a complex or large-scale organisation, particularly at a pivotal moment. The panel will assess your statement against the technical and experience criteria outlined above. Please ensure you clearly demonstrate how your skills and achievements meet these requirements.
•Your CV and supporting statement should be submitted as a single MS Word file.
Please note:
·If we receive a high volume of applications, we may complete an initial sift on Technical Experience Criteria
·We reserve the right to invite candidates to participate in a telephone interview prior to being further assessed.
·Applications that are not accompanied by CVs will not be scored or statements over 750 words will not be considered.
·We would strongly recommend that your statement is written in the (Situation, Task, Action & Result) and preparing your answers using software such as MS Word or Google Docs, and then uploading the file.
·We strongly advise you review our policy on in the application process. RoS may check answers with an AI detection tool and will contact you for a pre-screening call to verify your responses.
·Applications and appointments are subject to a strict merit-based assessment process, in line with the
Assessment Stage 1
If successful at application stage, you will be invited to a 30-minute online interview in which we will assess you in the following behaviour and essential criteria:
•Leadership Behaviour, Experience and Technical criteria
Assessment Stage 2
If you are successful at the first-stage interview, you will be invited to attend an in-person assessment at our Glasgow office. The assessment will include the following:
•Behaviour Based Interview
•Pre-prepared presentation exercise
Please note the final assessments will require ½ a day presence in our office
Behaviour based interview questions will be given to candidates 15 minutes before the start of the interview to allow candidates to prepare in advance. You will be able to take short notes with you into the interview from your preparation.
Information on Success Profiles
For further information on success profiles, visit our
Recruitment timeline
Advert live: 30 April 2026
Advert close: 17 May 2026 at 23:59
Sift: 18–20 May 2026
Assessment -Stage 1: Week commencing 18 May 2026 (subject to change)
Final Assessment Stage: Week commencing 1 June 2026 (subject to change)
Feedback
Feedback will only be provided if you progress to interview stage.
Reserve List
In the event that further posts are required, a reserve list of successful candidates will be kept for up to 12 months.
Nationality and immigration status
In general, only nationals from the following countries (and associations of countries) are eligible for employment in the Civil Service: the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, and the Commonwealth. EU nationals (with settled or pre-settled status), certain EEA nationals, Swiss and Turkish nationals are also eligible for employment. Detailed provisions on determining eligibility on the grounds of nationality and, where relevant, immigration status can be reviewed
Security
Successful candidates must undergo a Basic check.
Individuals working with government assets must complete checks.
Diversity and inclusion
As a proud member of the Disability Confident Scheme, we welcome applications from disabled candidates. We’re not as diverse as we’d like yet, and we’re working on it. We especially welcome applications from underrepresented groups – people who are disabled, minoritised ethnic groups, and younger people (16-24 years of age). To learn more, please see our .
As part of the application process, we would like to invite you to please complete our diversity monitoring form. This information is not shared with recruitment panels but will allow us to further improve our processes to increase diversity.
Reasonable adjustments
We want everyone to have the chance to perform at their best. If you need any adjustments (for example, extra time, a hearing loop, materials in large font) in any part of our recruitment process, please get in touch via We will discuss adjustments individually with any candidates who request these.
Find out more about reasonable adjustments on
DDaT supplement
This post is part of the Digital, Data and Technology profession (DDAT) and attracts a pay supplement. This is a tool which RoS uses to benchmark our salaries against current market rates. A review of the benchmark is undertaken every two years, this means that the supplement may go up or down depending on market activity. Advance notice will be given of any changes.
Further information
For further information relating to RoS, including:
·Additional details on pay & benefits
·The Civil Service Code
·Complaints process
·Use of AI in the application/recruitment process,
Please view our
If you have any questions, please contact