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Job summary

Main area
Administration
Grade
NHS AfC: Band 8a
Contract
Fixed term: 10 months (until 31 October 2026 - Secondment only for current NHS employees)
Hours
  • Full time
  • Job share
  • Flexible working
37.5 hours per week
Job ref
990-TD-P&P-17533-E
Employer
NHS England
Employer type
NHS
Site
Any NHSE Office
Town
Nationally
Salary
£62,929 - £70,830 pa includes a RRP payment of 13% (excluding London weighting)
Salary period
Yearly
Closing
06/10/2025 23:59

Employer heading

NHS England logo

Senior Systems Engineer

NHS AfC: Band 8a

Our Organisation

The NHS is building a culture that is positive, compassionate and inclusive – and we all have our part to play.

As employers we are committed to protecting and promoting the physical and mental health and wellbeing of all our colleagues. This underpins our values as set out in the NHS Constitution and supports us to be an Employer of Choice, while helping our colleagues to deliver high quality services for our patients and communities.

As a flexible employer, we want to support you to work in a way that is best for the NHS, our patients and you. Talk to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement whether that’s a job share, part time, hybrid working or another flexible pattern. In addition, although the role advertised may have a ‘home’ office base indicated, we remain committed to supporting flexibility around workplace locations. If it works for the service, we will do our best to make it work for you.

We are an accredited Living Wage Employer which means that every colleague working for our organisation and third-party contractors will earn a real Living Wage.  We are one of over 15,000 organisations, who voluntarily chose to pay the real Living Wage.

Job overview

Within NHS England, system engineering is about building in the whole-system space rather than focusing on a specialism such as application or infrastructure. 

Senior Systems Engineers will work on systems that improve healthcare for millions of people in the UK. Systems range from citizen facing web portals to internal back-end services and will typically feature complex application logic that requires robust, secure, quality-focussed development practices. 

We have an exciting opportunity to join our Demographics team in Products and Platforms, which builds and operates a set of products including the Personal Demographics Service (PDS) and GP Registration 

PDS is the national master database for NHS patients in England, Wales and the Isle of Man. It contains more than 80 million records, of which over 60 million are for people currently registered with a GP. 

GP Registration Services manage the end to end GP Registration process to reduce the burden on practices releasing time back to practice staff. The service improves NHS Number matching and reduces duplications and confusions for patient records. The service also improves patient access to GP services with patients being able to access the service via the NHS App and nhs.uk. 

The main technologies we use in this team are AWS, Terraform, and Python

Main duties of the job

As a Senior Systems Engineer you will: 

  • Developing, building, and operating national, highly available distributed systems being built and run within NHS England. 
  • Operating within and contributing to the NHS England engineering principles
  • Technical ownership across the system space, including application, environments, infrastructure and networks, pipelines, and operational tools. 
  • Engage in peer-to-peer collaboration to solve engineering problems and drive-up organisation engineering standards. 
  • Contributing to Engineering maturity within the team. 
  • Coaching and mentoring colleagues. 

Working for our organisation

Our work supports the NHS to deliver high quality services for patients and best value for taxpayers.

Our staff bring expertise across hundreds of specialisms — including clinical, operational, commissioning, technology, data science, cyber security, software engineering, education, and commercial — enabling us to design and deliver high-quality NHS services.

We lead the NHS in England by:

  • Enabling local systems and providers to improve the health of their people and patients and reduce health inequalities
  • Making the NHS a great place to work, where our people can make a difference and achieve their potential
  • Working collaboratively to ensure our healthcare workforce has the right knowledge, skills, values and behaviours to deliver accessible, compassionate care
  • Optimising the use of digital technology, research, and innovation
  • Delivering value for money

Earlier this year, the Government announced that NHS England will gradually merge with the Department of Health and Social Care, leading to full integration. The aim is to create a smaller, more strategic centre that reduces duplication and eliminates waste.

If successful at interview, we will initiate an Inter Authority Transfer (IAT) via the Electronic Staff Record (ESR). This retrieves key data from your current or previous NHS employer to support onboarding, including competency status, Continuous Service Dates (CSD), and annual leave entitlement. You may opt out at any stage of the recruitment process.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Candidates will need to demonstrate experience of the following:

  • Infrastructure / application development experience
  • Experience working across all layers of the stack including application, infrastructure, CI/CD, testing, monitoring and alerting etc.
  • Implementing quality-focussed development practices
  • Evidence using appropriate testing techniques
  • Working within a team to deliver software in a collaborative way

The post of Senior Systems Engineer has been awarded a Recruitment and Retention Premia (RRP) in response to current labour market conditions. In recognition of this, the role attracts an additional monthly RRP payment equal to 13% per annum. 

Please be aware that RRP is non-contractual and subject to review 

Please note that the reason for the fixed term of this contract is - Short-term vacancy. 

Earlier this year the Government announced that NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care will increasingly merge functions, ultimately leading to NHS England being fully integrated into the Department. The purpose of this change is to create a smaller, more strategic centre which will reduce duplication and eliminate waste. 

You can find further details about the role, including key responsibilities and accountabilities, alongside the organisational structure and person specification in the attached Job Description and other supporting documents. 

Secondments

Applicants from within the NHS will be offered on a secondment basis only, agreement should be obtained from their employer prior to submitting the application.

On-call 

Participation in a shared on-call rota is required to support a 24/7/365 service, this rota covers evenings, weekends, and public holidays. 

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria
  • Qualified to Masters degree level in a suitable technical, scientific or mathematical subject (or equivalent experience)

Experience

Essential criteria
  • Infrastructure / application development experience
  • Experience working across all layers of the stack including application, infrastructure, CI/CD, testing, monitoring and alerting etc.
  • Working within a team to deliver software in a collaborative way

Knowledge and skills

Essential criteria
  • Implementing quality-focussed development practices
  • Evidence using appropriate testing techniques

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Apprenticeships logoMindful employer.  Being positive about mental health.Disability confident committedStep into healthAccredited Living Wage Employer

Applicant requirements

This post will require a submission for Disclosure to be made to check for any unspent criminal convictions.

Documents to download

Apply online now

Further details / informal visits contact

Name
Andrew Blundell
Job title
Consultant Systems Engineer
Email address
[email protected]
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