Infra Ops Engineer - Critical Communications (Airwave)

Wiltshire Police; Devizes; Hybrid; GBP 44,000 - 54,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid working (3 days in the office)

Gym membership on-site

25 days annual leave + bank holidays

Job summary

Wiltshire Police is seeking an Infrastructure Operations Engineer (Operational Communications) to support, operate and secure mission-critical comms services including Airwave. You will monitor, diagnose and resolve incidents while maintaining service resilience for frontline policing across systems and control room interfaces.

The role requires strong incident management and problem-solving capabilities, with a focus on reliability, security and collaboration with multi-agency partners.

Qualifications

• Foundation IT / Computing qualification or equivalent early-career experience in infrastructure operations.
• Experience in Incident Management – can identify and register incidents, gathering the required information and allocating it to the appropriate channel.
• Ownership and Initiative – can show an awareness of problem resolution processes and pass problems on to your team.
• Problem Management – can investigate problems in systems, processes and services, with an understanding of the level of a problem, for example, strategic, tactical or operational and contribute to the implementation of remedies and preventative measures.
• User Focus – can show an awareness or understanding of user experience analysis and its principles and explain the purpose of user stories and the focus on user needs

Responsibilities

• Support the operation of Airwave radio and associated operational communications infrastructure, ensuring services are monitored, stable and available for frontline policing and that interoperability with other agencies and emergency services is maintained.
• Assist in the monitoring of operational communications systems, including network status, coverage, availability and service alerts, escalating issues in line with defined procedures.
• Identify, log and categorise operational communications incidents, ensuring accurate information capture and timely escalation to senior engineers, suppliers or on-call support.
• Support incident management activities for live operational communications issues, including assisting with diagnostics, restoration actions and communication updates.
• Assist with major incident support, ensuring accurate logging, status tracking and support to senior responders during critical or multi-agency events.
• Undertake technical configuration of radio systems including software and radio hardware/asset upgrades
• Carry out routine operational checks on radio systems, control room interfaces and supporting infrastructure, ensuring service readiness and identifying early signs of degradation.
• Support planned maintenance and change activities affecting operational communications, following strict change control to minimise risk to live policing operations.
• Create and own robust test plans for end to end user functionality and interfaces with other connected systems such as control room technology
• Assist with service continuity and resilience activities, including backup checks, failover validation and reporting on system readiness for major incidents.
• Support device and asset management processes for operational communications equipment (e.g. radio devices), ensuring records are accurate, auditable and up to date.
• Maintain and update operational communications documentation, including runbooks, checklists, escalation paths and standard operating procedures.
• Apply and follow security, accreditation and cryptographic control procedures, escalating any risks relating to access, devices or communications security.
• Support service transition and early life support for changes impacting Airwave or future ESN services, helping ensure operational readiness.
• Work collaboratively with control rooms, operational policing teams and technical teams, ensuring a coordinated approach to service support.
• Liaise with suppliers and national service providers to support fault resolution, service performance and escalation activities.
• Contribute to continuous service improvement, identifying recurring issues, trends or risks within operational communications services.
• Develop detailed knowledge of operational communications environments, including Airwave, ESN transition, radio systems and critical communications infrastructure, including Control Room.
• Take ownership of continuous professional development, proactively maintaining, developing and demonstrating the application of skills, knowledge and behaviours required for the role, ensuring professional capability remains current, effective and aligned to evolving technologies, standards and ways of working.

Skills

Incident Management

Ownership & Initiative

Problem Management

User Focus

Foundation IT qualification

Education

Foundation IT / Computing qualification

Tools

Airwave

Job description

Wiltshire Police is seeking an Infrastructure Operations Engineer (Operational Communications) to support, operate and secure mission-critical comms services including Airwave. You will monitor, diagnose and resolve incidents while maintaining service resilience for frontline policing across systems and control room interfaces.

The role requires strong incident management and problem-solving capabilities, with a focus on reliability, security and collaboration with multi-agency partners.