{"id":4240541,"url":"https://alion.io/job/projects-by-if-freelance-system-engineer-technical-architect","title":"Freelance System Engineer / Technical Architect","company":{"id":691093,"name":"Projects by IF","domain":"projectsbyif.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/projectsbyif","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":null},"role":"DevOps","role_family":"DevOps","seniority":"staff","employment_type":"freelance","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["London, United Kingdom"],"countries":["GB"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"GCP","optional":false},{"name":"Model Context Protocol","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-13T10:10:31Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-13","last_verified_at":"2026-11-13T12:01:13Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":0,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":0},"description":"Role Details:\nLevel: Lead\nStart Date: December\nDuration: 6 months\nDay Rate: Dependent on experience\nWeekly hours: 5 days/ week\nLocation: Hybrid, 2 days a week in London\nWe're looking for a Systems Engineer / Technical Architect to help us reimagine a function of government as part of an agentic ecosystem.\nYou'll join a small multidisciplinary team of designers, researchers and engineers, working closely with civil servants and the department's own technical teams.\nYou'll own working out what the new system is. What are the constituent pieces, how do they fit together, and what’s needed to make it secure, accountable and auditable? The role suits someone who can sketch a target architecture on Monday and make it real with a prototype by Friday.\nIn this role you will:\nDesign the target architecture based high-level requirements and constraints, agentic capabilities and best practices\n\nRecommend approaches to new challenges such as delegated authority and permissions\n\nSet out security, resilience and threat risks and mitigations, including agent-specific risks such as prompt injection and automated abuse\n\nDesign and build the components that make the system accountable and auditable, such as audit logging and permission checks\n\nIdentify and test the riskiest technical assumptions\n\nBuild working prototypes and PoCs with the engineers\n\nProduce clear architecture decision records, diagrams and patterns that teams can reuse\n\nEngage with the client’s architects, security and assurance experts to get input and agreement on the right approach\n\nSet out a realistic path from prototype to delivery\n\nKey skills and experience\nMust haves:\nSignificant experience as a technical or solution architect working on complex, ambiguous problems\n\nA strong background in API design, integration patterns and event-driven or distributed systems\n\nDeep knowledge of how agents interact with other parts of the system; tools, MCP servers, agent-to-agent protocols etc\n\nExperience designing for security, privacy, observability and auditability from the start including threat modelling\n\nExperience of authentication and authorisation, including delegated access, such as OAuth\n\nHands-on coding skills, with the ability to build working prototypes quickly\n\nCloud architecture experience (AWS, Azure or GCP) and infrastructure as code\n\nThe ability to explain architecture clearly to designers, policy specialists and senior stakeholders\n\nNice to have:\nExperience in working on UK government services\n\nExposure to data-sharing standards and legislation, such as the Digital Economy Act\n\nAn agency or consultancy background\n\nLocation\nYou will need to be able to work from our offices (London) for a minimum of two days a week.\n1. Application\nPlease attach your CV, plus a portfolio or any work you would like to also share.\n2. Initial screening call\nA short conversation to cover the basics - your timezone, working languages, availability, and a chance for you to ask early questions about the role and how we work.\n3. Technical interview (~60 minutes)\nA deeper conversation about your technical background and experience. We’ll talk through how you’ve approached real problems, the decisions you’ve made, and how you’d apply that thinking to the work at IF.\n4. Ways of working interview (~45-60 minutes)\nA conversation about how you collaborate, communicate, and work with others - including how you operate in an advisory capacity with clients and teams.\nWe’ll aim to keep you updated at every stage and let you know the outcome promptly after each step.","description_format":"text","description_chars":3552,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United Kingdom","iso":"GB","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Creative Agencies"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-13T12:01:13Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":86,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.86,"p_room":1,"age_days":0,"expected_fill_days":36,"reasons":["conf:2","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-11-13T14:35:38Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/projects-by-if-freelance-system-engineer-technical-architect","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/projects-by-if-freelance-system-engineer-technical-architect.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-13T14:35:38Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":29274,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-14T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":691093},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=691093"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fprojects-by-if-freelance-system-engineer-technical-architect"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"free","price":{"credits":0,"usd":0},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fprojects-by-if-freelance-system-engineer-technical-architect"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fprojects-by-if-freelance-system-engineer-technical-architect"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/projects-by-if-freelance-system-engineer-technical-architect\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fprojects-by-if-freelance-system-engineer-technical-architect"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":4240541}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"projectsbyif.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":4240541},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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