Senior Digital Forensic Specialist (Chelmsford, Headquarters)

Essex Police and Kent Police; Chelmsford; On-site; GBP 42,000 - 50,000; Full time

Job summary

A regional law enforcement agency in Chelmsford is looking for a Senior Digital Forensic Specialist to oversee a team in digital investigations. This role entails ensuring compliance with ISO standards and utilising advanced extraction techniques for digital data. Candidates should possess strong technical skills across various digital devices, have a good understanding of relevant ISO standards, and previous experience in digital forensics. The position is full-time with shift work, including weekends.

Qualifications

• Experience in a Digital Forensic service provider.
• Knowledge of leading digital forensic tools.
• Ability to adapt to new technologies.

Responsibilities

• Supervise a team of digital forensic practitioners.
• Provide advice on digital data extraction.
• Ensure compliance with ISO standards.

Skills

Technical ability across digital devices

Interpersonal skills

Understanding of ISO 17025

Education

Educated to A level standard or 2 years’ experience

Job description

Location of Role: Chelmsford

Advert Closing Date: 04/12/2025

Starting Salary: £49,716.00 (pro‑rate for part‑time vacancies)

Part/Full Time: Full Time

Contract Type: Permanent

Working Pattern: Shift not 24/7

Kent Police and Essex Police have recently transformed their digital service to adapt and take advantage of the latest technology and infrastructure available. An exciting opportunity has arisen for an individual to undertake the role of Senior Digital Forensic Specialist within Kent and Essex Digital Services, based at Essex Police Headquarters.

The new Digital Services’ structure has been designed to provide the best possible career progression and CPD framework to ensure you will have the tools and necessary experience to carry out first‑class digital forensic investigations.

Digital devices and information communication technology are present in almost every investigation the Police Service undertakes. These range from complex computer platforms to mobile phone handsets, games consoles, digital CCTV systems and satellite navigation. As digital devices continue to evolve it will be critical that you are able to adapt & learn new emerging technologies to meet the requirements of the role.

The role involves the day‑to‑day supervision of a team of digital forensic practitioners to ensure service delivery against published SLAs in support of investigations, ensuring compliance with ISO standards and relevant legislation.

You will be able to provide advice and assistance to officers and staff concerning the proportionate extraction of digital data. This role requires you to utilise streamlined, targeted extraction techniques or triage capability of sized digital devices to enable faster charging decisions.

You will have an understanding of the quality standard ISO 17025 and how this affects the role. You will be required to develop and maintain your competence under these requirements ensuring best practice is shared amongst colleagues. It is expected that you will update your technical knowledge of specialised Digital Forensic procedures and advancements within the Digital Forensic field.

To balance these technical attributes, you will need to be a highly motivated team player with the ability to manage a high caseload and be able to utilise coaching methods to provide an environment that is both supportive and constructive to other members of the team.

In this role you will be dealing with highly sensitive and distressing information which requires you to have a high degree of emotional resilience. You will also be required to work to tight deadlines and be able to multi‑task, dealing with competing demand and court requests.

We are looking for an enthusiastic and dynamic individual who can demonstrate within their reason for application the following skills and/or experience:

• Technical ability across a range of digital device, knowledge of computer and/or mobile phone hardware, software, and operating systems.
• Educated to A level standard or have at least 2 years’ recent experience within a Digital Forensic service provider (law enforcement or private sector), to include experience of the leading digital forensic tools currently employed nationally.
• Good understanding of ISO 17025.
• Interpersonal skills and the ability to communicate effectively verbally and in writing.

The Senior Digital Forensic Specialist role is shift based, you will be working a 6‑week pattern where you will be required to work 1 weekend in 6. The shifts are detailed below:

• AM shift: 0700 – 1500.
• PM shift: 1200 – 2000.

Interested applicants are encouraged to contact Andrew Richards on [e-mail] or Andrew Marbrow on [e-mail] for further information regarding the role.

Your application for this role will be shortlisted on the content you provide within the “reason for application” question, within the application form itself. CV’s, covering letters or attachments are not included in the shortlist. Within your “reason for application” answer, please refer to any experience, skills, and abilities you feel you have that will make you suitable for this role, based on the role criteria stated in the job advert or job description. Please provide as much detail as possible as insufficient content may mean you do not meet the shortlisting criteria, however please note this question is limited to 9,000 characters and this system will count spaces and blank lines as characters. This count may differ from the Microsoft Word word count function therefore you may wish to use a different online character counter to check the characters used.

Depending on your current vetting level and security clearances, you may be required to complete additional vetting information during the recruitment process.

Kent Police and Essex Police welcomes applications regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership status, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, sex, or employment status.

Please let us know if you require extra support at any stage of the application process, or for further information regarding this position, please email us at [e-mail] stating ‘Application Support and Adjustments’ in the title of your email. Alternatively, you can call us on 01245 452833. Where appropriate we will make adjustments to the selection process, working arrangements and/or the working environment provided it is reasonable in all the circumstances to do so.

If you’re not from the UK, you must be a resident in the UK and have lived here continuously for the last three years. You must also be free from restrictions with indefinite leave to remain. If you’re from the UK you must have lived here continuously for the last three years. This doesn’t apply to those serving abroad in the British Armed Forces.

Essex Police is a Disability Confident Leader, we:

• Have subjected our Disability Confident self‑assessment to external challenge and validation.
• Are taking an active leadership role in encouraging and helping other employers on their journey to becoming Disability Confident.

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion are central to the values of our organisation. At Essex Police we value and embrace the unique experiences, identities and abilities that each of us bring to our roles. We strive to empower everyone to bring their authentic self openly and safely to work.

Through the dedicated commitment of our support networks, DE&I team and wider HR departments, we are on a journey to embed our DE&I commitments, ensuring Essex Police is an employer of choice; where everyone feels included.

Essex Police and Kent Police are an equal opportunities employer. Communications may be recorded for monitoring purposes.