NHS England Jobs

Head of Systems Engineering – NHS Spine

About the job

Head of Systems Engineering – NHS Spine

Vacancy: 2738

Salary Details: Band 8D – £108,642 – £125,288 (which includes a 30% Recruitment and Retention Premium)

Location: Leeds or London

Vacancy Type: Permanent

Hours Per Week: 37.5

Working Pattern: Full-time, flexible working options considered

Additional allowances: This role includes 30% Recruitment and Retention Premium (RRP) and where applicable, attracts a London Weighting Allowance of 20% of basic salary which is subject to a minimum payment of £5,132 and a maximum payment of £7,746

As the NHS celebrates its 75th year, technology and digital innovation has never been so important, it’s front and centre of the NHS Long Term Plan and the continued commitment to improving health outcomes for patients.

The NHS England Transformation Directorate has a mandate to deliver a very broad and complex set of new products, platforms, technical applications, services, and capabilities over the coming years to support the transformation of health and care. The scale and maturity of the national digital channels is now central to NHS delivery of health and care goals.

We now have an exciting opportunity for an experienced systems engineer to join our NHS Spine Service as Head of Systems Engineering.

Having a direct impact on 1000s of lives, the Head of Systems Engineering will be working to ensure the NHS is fit for the future and ready for what’s next.

Spine is one of the NHS’s Critical National Infrastructure assets connecting 28,000 organisations and 44,000 systems across health and care. It currently handles over 1.3 billion messages a month and at peak times is processing more than 3,200 messages a second.

Spine allows information to be shared securely through national services such as the Electronic Prescription Service, the Personal Demographics Service, the Summary Care Record and the e-Referral Service.

SPINE is transitioning to a cloud hosted service and it is evolving from a domain-based monolith, into a set of discrete microservices that allow the service and teams to scale up and down in the future.

As a Head of Systems Engineering your role will include:

• Technical leadership and national delivery of this national, highly available distributed system

• Supporting the Engineering Centre of Expertise in defining guiderails and standards and ensuring your teams adherence, to NHS England’s architectural principles

• Working with key internal and external partners and stakeholders to develop the architecture and engineering approaches to optimise the Spine service within AWS

• Ensuring continued availability of existing systems

• Maintaining service security, providing security controls for the storage of very large volumes of highly sensitive data

• Streamlining the SPINE to ensure continued value for money across the NHS

• Inspiring your team and nurturing a culture of continuous improvement through Agile, Lean and DevOps delivery methodologies

Some of the skills and experience we’re looking for:

• Extensive experience of leading the design and delivery of large-scale IT transformation projects

• Extensive knowledge and experience of cloud-based technologies

• Extensive experience of using appropriate tools for systems architecture and design including logical models of components and interfaces

• Extensive knowledge of automation and scalability within a cloud environment

• Experience of acting as Subject Matter Expert (SME) for systems design and delivery

• A track record of owning effective business relationships with external suppliers/partners, ensuring architectural assurance and continued delivery against contractual agreements

• Demonstrable experience of building and leading high-performing teams based on a culture of collaboration and continuous development and improvement

• Excellent communication and people skills, comfortable presenting highly technical and complex information to non-technical audiences

As well as the technical skills and experience needed to be successful in this role we’ll also be exploring some of the following core competencies at interview:

INFLUENCE: Uses evidence to make decisions and defend ideas. Builds alignments with other teams or departments.

KNOWLEDGE: Builds own knowledge, stays updated and shares expertise. Recognises and meets evolving customer needs.

BUSINESS SKILLS: Develops and deploys strategies and new technologies, makes commercially sound decisions and optimises resources.

COMPLEXITY: Synthesises complex information, deliverables, and stakeholder needs. Communicates complex concepts in a clear and effective manner.

AUTONOMY: Empowers and coaches others in order to develop talent and drive engagement. Holds self and others accountable.

This role could be based from either our Leeds or London office and we are running adverts for both locations. You need only apply to a single advert to be considered for either location.

About us:

We are a great place to work. What we do matters.

NHS England leads the NHS in England to deliver high quality care for all. We support NHS organisations to deliver better outcomes for our patients and communities, work to get the best possible value for taxpayers, and drive improvement across the NHS. This includes improving the health of the population and the quality of care, tackling inequalities, and delivering care more efficiently.

Our outstanding teams are passionate about technology and public service, making use of everyone’s skills to improve people’s lives.

We collaborate to deliver world class tech and intelligence, so come and join us. We are committed to sustainability, diversity and inclusion; our people are at the heart of what we do.

To find out more about the type of work we do, please take a look at our website.

Why you should apply

We value the different experiences our people bring to their work. We’re working to create an environment where everyone can make a full contribution no matter their background, identity, or circumstances. Which means, we encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and abilities.

Our work matters. You matter.

What we offer you:

• we’re moving to a hybrid working approach which offers you an informal, flexible way of blending home and office working
• flexible working opportunities – we value and respect the diversity of our employees, and applications from prospective candidates who require flexible working arrangements are welcomed; these include part-time hours, job sharing, flexible hours and part-remote set ups
• 27 days annual leave increasing to 33 days with service
• a generous pension (with our contribution equal to 20.6% of your earnings)
• NHS Discounts including shops, restaurants, gym, mobile phones, and insurance
• employee benefit schemes including our Season Ticket Loan, Car Lease and Bike to Work schemes

Next steps

To view further information please see the attached role profile.

If you require a reasonable adjustment or support with your application, please contact Resourcing.team@nhs.net

This post is not exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. We only ask applicants to disclose convictions which are not yet spent / unspent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. Following an offer of employment, we will carry out a Basic Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check as part of the pre-employment check process.

We have approved the external recruitment of this business-critical role on a permanent basis. This decision was made through the established recruitment controls process and endorsed by key HR stakeholders. The team has explored alternative resourcing options which has proven to be an unviable option due to the specialist technical skill set required to carry out this specific role