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NHS England
About
NHS England’s purpose is to create the conditions for an ambitious and high quality NHS. We empower our people and partners to solve problems, provide outstanding care for every patient and improve the nation's health.
Our 7 regional teams work directly with systems and NHS providers across the country. Each region acts as the interface between national strategy and local delivery, overseeing performance, supporting improvement and enabling transformation at scale.
Trainee Cyber Security Engineer (Security Trainee)
Accepting applications until: 29-Jun-2026 23:59
Vacancy status: Open
Accepting applications until: 29-Jun-2026 23:59
Key details
Location
- Site
- Wellington Place, Leeds / Hexagon House, Exeter
- Town
- Leeds/Exeter
- Postcode
- LS1 4AP
- Major / Minor Region
- West Yorkshire
Contract type & working pattern
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full time - 37.5 hours per week
Salary
- Salary
- £32,073 - £39,043 per annum
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Grade
- (NHS AfC: Band 5)
Specialty
- Main area
- Cyber Operations
Our Organisation
We share the core values set out in the NHS Constitution, which all colleagues are expected to demonstrate.
We support you to work in a way that is best for the NHS, our patients and you and your colleagues. 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.
Job overview
Cyber Operations purpose is to support safe care and build public trust by building 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 operational areas:
- Cyber Security Operations Unit (CSOU)
- Cyber Delivery Unit (CDU)
- Cyber Improvement Programme (CIP)
- Chief Information Security Office Function (CISO)
As a Trainee Cyber Engineer, you will work within the Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC), supporting day-to-day operation of core cyber platforms under senior guidance. You will assist in maintaining and monitoring security tooling across identity, access, network and XDR technologies, ensuring system health and data flow.
You will support multi-tenant threat platforms such as XDR and SIEM solutions, helping maintain analytics, queries and dashboards, and flagging issues or improvements. You will assist onboarding by supporting data ingestion, enrichment and integrations.
You will contribute to implementing approved changes through formal change processes and appropriate supervision. Working with senior engineers and service leads, you will help maintain service reliability, documentation and runbooks, while building your technical skills through hands-on experience and training.
Advert
The main duties you would be involved with are as follows:
- Work within the Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC) providing technical engineering support to core security platforms and services, ensuring systems are operational, monitored and maintained in line with service requirements.
- Assist in the day-to-day operation of CSOC platforms, including monitoring platform health, managing data ingestion issues, maintaining detections and responding to system-generated alerts.
- Provide technical input into the handling of cyber and IT security incidents, supporting investigation, containment and recovery activities in line with agreed incident management processes.
- Assist with the diagnosis and resolution of service incidents relating to security tooling (e.g. SIEM, XDR, logging pipelines), escalating issues where appropriate and contributing to root cause analysis.
- Assist in the delivery of approved changes to cyber security systems, tooling and configurations through formal change management processes, ensuring changes are implemented safely and documented.
- Contribute to routine service activities including system checks, access management, user support requests and the maintenance of standard operating procedures and technical documentation.
Working for our organisation
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.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
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
Please be aware that should you be successful in this position, you will be hired to the job title of Security Trainee and this job title is advertised to attract the right skills needed for the role.
If you like what you have read and think you have the skills and experience, we need then don't delay, apply today! We get lots of applications for our roles and so we sometimes have to close our posts early. Don't miss out!
Applicant requirements
Person specification
Knowledge
Essential criteria
- Basic knowledge of the tools and processes for maintaining application security; ability to design and implement security programs to prevent data loss and access intrusion from web and mobile applications.
- Basic knowledge of modules, processes and technologies of Information Security Operation Centre (ISOC); ability to detect, response and utilise related platform and applications to perform cyber security initiatives.
Desirable criteria
- Basic knowledge of tools, techniques and processes of intrusion detection and prevention; ability to detect, resolve and prevent intrusion behaviours to protect organisational networks.
Skills & Experience
Essential criteria
- Basic knowledge of technologies and technology-based solutions dealing with information security issues; ability to apply these in protecting information security across the organisation.
Qualifications
Essential criteria
- NHS England Academy apprenticeship graduation or equivalent cyber security experience, which equates to degree level equivalent/ vocational qualification level 6 or equivalent experience.
Documents
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Daryl Kayes
- Job title
- Head of Security (Lead)
- Email address
- [email protected]
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