Senior Systems Engineer

NHS England; Exeter; On-site; GBP 65,000 - 95,000; Full time

Job summary

NHS England is seeking a Senior Systems Engineer to design, build, operate and continually improve national services across England. You will work in multidisciplinary product teams on citizen-facing digital products and back-end platforms, using Python, TypeScript, .NET, Terraform, AWS and Azure.

You will mentor colleagues, contribute to engineering standards and take technical ownership across the system landscape, including CI/CD pipelines and production systems.

Qualifications

• Experience designing and building complex software systems.
• Ability to own technical aspects across applications, infra, networks and environments.
• Experience mentoring colleagues and driving engineering best practices.
• Experience with on-call support and 24/7/365 services.
• Familiarity with modern engineering practices and CI/CD pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Develop, build, and operate highly available, distributed systems that deliver national services.
• Work within NHS England's engineering principles and standards.
• Take technical ownership across system landscape including CI/CD, tooling and environments.
• Collaborate with peers to solve complex challenges and improve engineering maturity.
• Coach, mentor, and support colleagues in their professional development.

Skills

System design

Distributed systems

Technical ownership

Mentoring

On-call

Tools

Python

TypeScript

.NET

Terraform

AWS

Azure

Job description

Within NHS England, system engineering is about building in the whole-system space rather than specialising solely in applications, infrastructure, networks, or platforms. We are seeking experienced Senior Systems Engineers to join multidisciplinary product teams across a range of national services. You will play a key role in designing, building, operating, and continually improving systems that support citizens, patients, and healthcare professionals across England. As a Senior Systems Engineer, you will work on services used by millions of people. These range from citizen-facing digital products to critical back-end platforms and APIs. The role involves solving complex technical challenges and applying modern engineering practices to ensure systems are secure, reliable, resilient, and maintainable. We currently have opportunities across multiple teams, using a diverse range of technologies including Python, TypeScript, .NET, Terraform, AWS, and Azure. Alongside technical delivery, you will contribute to engineering best practices, support colleagues through mentoring and knowledge sharing, and help shape the direction of the services and platforms you work on.

On-call

Participation in a shared on-call rota may be required to support a 24/7/365 service, this rota covers evenings, weekends, and public holidays.

As a Senior Systems Engineer, You Will

• Develop, build, and operate highly available, distributed systems that deliver critical national services within NHS England.
• Work within and contribute to NHS England's engineering principles and standards.
• Take technical ownership across the system landscape, including applications, infrastructure, networking, environments, CI/CD pipelines, and operational tooling.
• Collaborate with peers to solve complex technical challenges and drive continual improvement in engineering standards across the organisation.
• Contribute to the ongoing improvement of engineering maturity within the team.
• Coach, mentor, and support colleagues in their professional and technical development.

Candidates must demonstrate experience of the following in their application:

• Application development
• Test engineering and automation
• Infrastructure engineering, e.g. infrastructure as code
• CI/CD including design, development and maintenance of pipelines
• Operating services in production

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. For further details / informal visits contact: Name: John Collinson Job title: Principal Systems Engineer Email address: [e-mail]