NHS England

Lead Systems Engineer

The closing date is 21 October 2025

Job summary

ALead Systems Engineer is typically the technical lead for multidisciplinary teams delivering and operating multiple components for a system. There are many opportunities to work on national, highly available distributed systems being built and run by in house teams.The systems can differin size,scaleand purpose, but an example system would:

  • Have a round-the-clock requirement to be available to a level of 99.9% or higher.

  • Have a national-scale impact on unavailability, and cope with the load associated with a daily transactional user-baseofmore thanone hundred thousand people.

  • Adopt modern Cloud best-practices and open standards to support interoperability and re-usability.

  • Achieve high availability through operational simplicity.

  • Provide flexible low-cost horizontal scale out to handle expected and unexpected variations in load.

  • Handle the architectural trade-offs necessary to avoid logical bottlenecks.

  • Provide security controls appropriate for the storage of large volumes of sensitive data - hundreds of millions of records and documents.

  • Have a direct clinical impact on patient care.We now 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

Main duties of the job

  • 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.

    Have technical ownership across the system space, including application, environments, infrastructure and networks, pipelines and operational tools.

    Engaged in peer-to-peer collaboration to solve engineering problems and drive-up organisation engineering standards. This is a significant part of the Lead Systems Engineer role, in the order of 25% of time.

    Responsible for Engineering maturity within the team.

    Coaching and mentoring colleagues to develop the team.

    Candidates will need to demonstrate experience of the following:

    • Experience working on a complex application across all layers of the stack including application, infrastructure, CI/CD, testing, monitoring and alerting etc.

    • Implementing quality-focussed development practices and testing techniques

    • Working within a team to deliver software in a collaborative way

    • Experience of taking a lead role, for example driving design decisions or managing stakeholders effectively.

    • Experience of driving and implementing improvements within a product or team.

About us

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.

Details

Date posted

07 October 2025

Pay scheme

Agenda for change

Band

Band 8b

Salary

£77,346 to £89,875 a year pa includes a RRP payment of 20% (excluding London weighting)

Contract

Fixed term

Duration

11 months

Working pattern

Full-time, Job share, Flexible working

Reference number

990-TD-P&P-18110-E

Job locations

Any NHSE Office

Nationally

LS1 4PL


Job description

Job responsibilities

The post of Lead 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 20% 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.

Job description

Job responsibilities

The post of Lead 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 20% 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

  • Masters or equivalent qualification, specifically in a computer, scientific or mathematical subject or equivalent experience.

Desirable

  • Formal systems analysis and design methodologies

Skills and Knowledge

Essential

  • Maintains high-level knowledge of specific technical specialism(s) provides general advice regarding their application and provides hands-on application of appropriate skills. The specialism can be any area(s) of information or communication technology, technique, method, product or application area
  • Is able to employ experience of their specialism(s) to directly benefit delivery of solutions
  • Good knowledge and understanding of software quality good practices

Experience

Essential

  • Experience of using appropriate tools, including logical models of components and interfaces, to contribute to the development of highly available systems architecture.
  • Demonstrable responsibility for levelling comment responses from multiple technical perspectives and working with the supplier to satisfactory resolution. Escalating where necessary.
  • Ability to make decisions confidently and ensure team members are given clear objectives.
  • Proven ability to decompose a solution design into a set of conceptual and logical IS / IT components that can be mapped against a highly available system architecture.
  • Experience of ensuring documentation reviews follow the correct process, issues are resolved and appropriate risk mitigations are identified and implemented.
  • Working with the Principal Systems Engineer, is able to ensure that contracts that are agreed with suppliers deliver optimum value to NHS England.
Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

  • Masters or equivalent qualification, specifically in a computer, scientific or mathematical subject or equivalent experience.

Desirable

  • Formal systems analysis and design methodologies

Skills and Knowledge

Essential

  • Maintains high-level knowledge of specific technical specialism(s) provides general advice regarding their application and provides hands-on application of appropriate skills. The specialism can be any area(s) of information or communication technology, technique, method, product or application area
  • Is able to employ experience of their specialism(s) to directly benefit delivery of solutions
  • Good knowledge and understanding of software quality good practices

Experience

Essential

  • Experience of using appropriate tools, including logical models of components and interfaces, to contribute to the development of highly available systems architecture.
  • Demonstrable responsibility for levelling comment responses from multiple technical perspectives and working with the supplier to satisfactory resolution. Escalating where necessary.
  • Ability to make decisions confidently and ensure team members are given clear objectives.
  • Proven ability to decompose a solution design into a set of conceptual and logical IS / IT components that can be mapped against a highly available system architecture.
  • Experience of ensuring documentation reviews follow the correct process, issues are resolved and appropriate risk mitigations are identified and implemented.
  • Working with the Principal Systems Engineer, is able to ensure that contracts that are agreed with suppliers deliver optimum value to NHS England.

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Certificate of Sponsorship

Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).

From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).

Additional information

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Certificate of Sponsorship

Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).

From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).

Employer details

Employer name

NHS England

Address

Any NHSE Office

Nationally

LS1 4PL


Employer's website

https://www.england.nhs.uk/about/working-for/ (Opens in a new tab)


Employer details

Employer name

NHS England

Address

Any NHSE Office

Nationally

LS1 4PL


Employer's website

https://www.england.nhs.uk/about/working-for/ (Opens in a new tab)


Employer contact details

For questions about the job, contact:

Consultant Systems Engineer

Andrew Blundell

england.engineering@nhs.net

Details

Date posted

07 October 2025

Pay scheme

Agenda for change

Band

Band 8b

Salary

£77,346 to £89,875 a year pa includes a RRP payment of 20% (excluding London weighting)

Contract

Fixed term

Duration

11 months

Working pattern

Full-time, Job share, Flexible working

Reference number

990-TD-P&P-18110-E

Job locations

Any NHSE Office

Nationally

LS1 4PL


Supporting documents

Privacy notice

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