Working Full time: 37.5 hours per week
This is an exciting and pivotal time to join the Trust as we transform and modernise our digital infrastructure, shaping a resilient, secure, and scalable architecture that underpins safe and effective patient care.
We are seeking a highly motivated, forward-thinking Senior IT Specialist / Architect to join our Senior Infrastructure team. This is an excellent opportunity for an experienced technical professional to play a leading role in designing, evolving, and safeguarding the Trust’s core infrastructure estate.
Working at both a strategic and operational level, you will influence the future direction of our digital architecture while ensuring high availability, performance, and security of critical systems. You will collaborate across Digital, clinical, and partner teams to deliver innovative solutions that support the Trust’s ambition for digital transformation, enabling improved outcomes for patients and staff alike.
You will bring deep technical expertise across enterprise infrastructure technologies, including Active Directory, DNS/DHCP, identity and access management, certificate services, endpoint and server security (e.g. GPO and anti-malware), virtualisation platforms, storage solutions, and enterprise backup and recovery capabilities.
Acting as a senior technical authority, you will lead the design, optimisation, and ongoing management of the Trust’s core infrastructure estate, ensuring systems are secure, resilient, and scalable to meet both current operational demands and future digital ambitions.
You will play a key role in delivering complex infrastructure projects to challenging timescales, balancing operational priorities with governance, risk, and compliance requirements. Working closely with internal stakeholders and external partners, you will ensure solutions are aligned to organisational standards and best practice.
In addition, you will lead and develop a high-performing, multi-skilled team, fostering a culture of continuous improvement, accountability, and technical excellence. You will be responsible for maintaining high availability of critical services, driving proactive infrastructure improvements, and ensuring the Trust’s digital platforms continue to support safe, effective, and innovative patient care.
The Trust’s services are provided from three locations:
- The Countess of Chester Hospital: providing 473 general and acute beds.
- Ellesmere Port Hospital: providing 60 beds as a rehabilitation, intermediate and outpatient facility.
- Tarporley War Memorial Hospital: a base for community services which serve the local rural population.
The Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust employs 5,964 staff (headcount) to provide care and treatment to a population of over 400,000 people living in Chester and West Cheshire which includes Ellesmere Port and Neston as well as the Deeside area of Flintshire.
The Trust works collaboratively within the wider Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care System. Due to its location on the border with North Wales, the Trust also works closely with the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board.
The Trust treats patients from England and some parts of Wales. During 2024/2025, there were approximately 643,000 patient attendances (inpatient, A&E, outpatient and diagnostic) ranging from a simple outpatient appointment to major cancer surgery
See Job Description for further details.
Recruitment selection processes are based on competence (see Person specification) and values. An applicant guide to help and support you through your recruitment journey can be accessed at the bottom of this page.
If you have a disability that meets the definition set out in the Equality Act 2010, and you can show that you meet the ‘essential’ criteria described in the person specification for an available position, please answer ‘YES’ to the question: ‘Do you wish to be considered under the Guaranteed Interview Scheme?’
Please inform the team if you have any special support needs to be considered as part of the interview and selection processes.
The trust offers a Guaranteed Interview Scheme to any armed forces community applicants who meet the essential criteria for the post.
If a DBS is required for your role, you are encouraged to enrol for the DBS Update Service. A small annual fee applies which is payable to the DBS Service. Please note applicants will be required to pay for their DBS check. Costs will be deducted from their salary over the first three months of employment.
New entrants to the NHS will commence on the minimum of the scale stated above.
Applicants requiring sponsorship may wish to determine the likelihood of obtaining sponsorship for this position by assessing themselves against the criteria on the gov.uk website - https://www.gov.uk/check-uk-visa.
The Trust will not sponsor where the starting salary does not meet immigration rules
Applicants are advised to apply early as if a large number of applications are received for this post, we reserve the right to close the vacancy prior to the advertised date.
Good luck with your application.
