Cyber Operations purpose is to support safe care and build public trust by strengthening NHS England’s cyber resilience and enabling the wider health system to be cyber resilient, supporting Transformation Directorate’s purpose of delivering the best care and outcomes for the NHS.
The Cyber Operations sub-directorate consists of four areas:
Cyber Security Operations Unit
Cyber Delivery Unit
Cyber Improvement Programme
Chief Information Security Office Function
As a Junior Cyber Security Engineer in the Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC), you will support day to day operation, support and improvement of core cyber security platforms and services.
You will maintain and tune security tooling across identity, access, network and XDR technologies, ensuring system health, data integrity and effective alerting. You will support multi-tenant platforms such as XDR, SIEM, monitoring analytics, queries and dashboards, and identify opportunities to improve performance.
You will contribute to onboarding by supporting ingestion pipelines, enrichment processes and integrations that enable CSOC operations. You will also support planning and implementation of system changes through formal change management, considering risk, impact and service continuity.
Working with senior engineers, you will help improve service reliability, resilience and scalability, contributing to documentation, runbooks and operational processes, and providing technical support to trainee colleagues.
The main duties you would be involved with are as follows:
Work within the Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC) providing technical engineering support for core security platforms and services, taking responsibility for their reliable day to day operation, monitoring and maintenance in line with service requirements.
Support and maintain CSOC platforms, including monitoring platform health, investigating data ingestion issues, maintaining and tuning detections, and responding to system generated alerts to ensure effective coverage.
Provide technical input into the handling of cyber and IT security incidents, supporting investigation, containment and recovery activities, and contributing to post incident remediation and service improvement.
Diagnose and resolve service incidents relating to security tooling (e.g. SIEM, XDR, logging pipelines), escalating complex issues where appropriate and contributing to root cause analysis and preventative actions.
Support the planning, assessment and implementation of changes to cyber security systems, tooling and configurations via formal change management processes, considering technical risk, impact and service continuity.
Contribute to operational service activities including system checks, access management, user support requests, and the development and maintenance of standard operating procedures and technical documentation
NHS England has a wide range of statutory functions, responsibilities and regulatory powers. These are focused on supporting the wider NHS to deliver high quality care, as well as doing those things that are best done once for the whole NHS.
Our staff bring expertise across clinical, operational, commissioning, technology, data science, cyber security, software engineering, education, and commercial specialisms — enabling us to design and deliver high-quality NHS services.
In March 2025, 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.
If you currently work within the NHS and 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 process.
Colleagues with a contractual office base are expected to spend, on average, at least 40% of their time working in our offices.
Staff recruited from outside the NHS will usually be appointed at the bottom of the pay band.
We cannot offer visa sponsorship for any vacancies.
Please see the attached Job Description and Person Specification for more information about the role and responsibilities.
Please ensure your supporting statement includes demonstratable evidence and specific examples on how you meet the criteria for each of the key skills specified. This will be used in both the shortlisting and interview processes
As part of the shortlisting process you may be asked to complete an assessment via a third party platform called Immersive Labs. Immersive Labs is a gamified learning environment. We use their screening product to help assess whether our candidates meet the technical requirements were looking for during the recruitment process.
Important: Please be aware there are residency requirements you need to meet:
All NHS England Cyber Security personnel must hold Security Clearance level as a minimum. To meet National Security Vetting requirements, SC clearances require 5 years continuous UK residency. In certain cases, this can be reduced to three years continuous UK residency, with additional overseas checks for the previous two years. Candidates who were posted abroad for service with HM Government, Armed Forces or within a UK government role - will still be considered.
Please make sure you meet these requirements before applying for this role. You don’t need to have SC already, however, failure to achieve the requirements for SC after offer will result in the job offer being withdrawn.
For further advice please check: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/united-kingdom-security-vetting-clearance-levels/national-security-vetting-clearance-levels#security-check-sc
The post of Security Officer 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 10% per annum.
Please be aware that RRP is non-contractual and subject to review.
Please be aware that should you be successful in this position, you will be hired to the job title of Security Officer and this job title is advertised to attract the right skills needed for the role.
