Network Engineer

Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust celebrates diversity and promotes equal opportunities; we are committed to challenging and eliminating racism and other forms of discrimination and advancing and promoting equality of opportunity in the provision of services and creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We believe that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect.

We take positive action to support disadvantaged groups and also particularly encourage applications from ethnic minorities, disabled and LGBTQIA+ people that are under-represented in our workforce. Furthermore we welcome applications from reservists and ex-armed forces personnel as we recognise the benefits of the values, skills, training and experience that they bring to their work with us. We encourage all applicants to share their equality information with us.

Job overview

Position - IT Operations Voice & Data Engineer

Band 5 Network Engineer

Full time 37.5 Hours per week

Are you an experienced Network Engineer looking to advance your career within the NHS? We have an exciting opportunity for a talented digital professional to join our team.

As a Network Engineer, you will play a key role in enabling patient care through the provision of a secure and reliable digital network infrastructure and services.

You will be responsible for designing and implementing network solutions, maintaining network security, and providing technical support and troubleshooting when required.

In this role, you will have the opportunity to work with state-of-the-art technologies, such as network automation, VoIP, wireless, and SD-WAN. You will also collaborate with other IT teams and stakeholders to deliver integrated solutions that meet the needs of the NHS organisations we support.

This post will require the successful candidate to be able to travel frequently between sites in the course of performing duties.

Main duties of the job

Key responsibilities include:

1. Managing network infrastructure and services to meet NHS requirements
2. Providing expert technical support for network services
3. Ensuring network security and compliance with relevant policies and standards
4. Identifying and resolving network issues to minimize downtime and optimize performance
5. Collaborating with other IT teams and stakeholders to deliver integrated solutions.

To succeed in this role, you should have:

1. Experience as a Network Engineer, preferably with knowledge of Cisco network technologies
2. A solid understanding of network security best practices
3. Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to work under pressure
4. Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to build relationships with colleagues and stakeholders at all levels
5. A basic understanding of designing and implementing network solutions in a complex network environment.

In return for your skills and experience, we offer a competitive salary, a generous benefits package, and the opportunity to work with cutting-edge technologies in a dynamic and supportive environment where you can make a real impact on patient care.

Working for our organisation

Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.

We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.

At the heart of all we do is our commitment to 'perfect care' - care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We're currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.

Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

To provide 3rd line support in the operational management, implementation, and maintenance of voice and data communication networks within the appropriate networks team assisting in the provision of continuous and acceptable service to all end users.

Accurate, concise recording of Incident actions within the Service.

To provide support in delivering cabling requirements to provide long term resilient infrastructures capable of supporting the joint needs for data and Telecommunications.

To provide support in the enforcement of policies and procedures covering security and integrity of the Trust's communication systems and networks to protect against unauthorized access or loss of revenue through system fraud.

The post holder is accountable to the Network lead for the site but works closely with the Voice & Data Manager within Informatics Merseyside and wider IM operational and account teams.

To carry out the installation and commissioning of network equipment involving some complex work with tools, some lifting of heavy equipment and requiring significant keyboard skills to ensure accuracy when programming this. Occasionally this will involve working in dirty and difficult areas.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Working towards Cisco Certified Network Associate or equivalent knowledge voice/data networks knowledge and experience.
• Relevant first degree or equivalent experience

Experience

Essential criteria

• Specialist knowledge and experience in telecoms and/or data networks and systems
• Experience of being responsible for financial or physical assets, particularly the management of contractors.

Desirable criteria

• Knowledge of Cisco networking

Communications

Essential criteria

• Ability to communicate complex issues with staff at appropriate levels within the Health Informatics Service, its Partner Organisations and with service providers, service users, and professional bodies outside of the Health Informatics Service. To train and instruct others in the use of network services.

Please ensure you check the email account from which you apply for all correspondence. All information regarding your application will come from apps.trac.jobs not NHS Jobs.

Only those applicants who demonstrate clearly how they meet our person specification will be shortlisted for interview.

As a Disability Confident Employer, we offer a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants who consider themselves to be disabled who meet the minimum (essential) criteria for the role in the person specification. If you would like your application to be considered under the Trust's guaranteed interview scheme you can indicate this in the personal information section of your online application form.

Should you require a reasonable adjustment to our recruitment process please email recruitment@merseycare.nhs.uk to ensure that measures can be put in place to support you.

We reserve the right to close any vacancy earlier than advertised in exceptional circumstances once we have received a high volume of applications.

The Trust expects all post holders who require an enhanced DBS for their role subscribe to the DBS Update Service. You will be required to enrol for this service for a fee of £16 per year and maintain registration. Trans applicants who require a DBS check and do not want to reveal details of their previous identity can contact the DBS Sensitive Applications Team (01516761452 or email sensitive@dbs.gsi.gov.uk) with their application number once they have completed their DBS application form. The team can prevent any previous identity showing on the DBS Certificate, unless the applicant has a conviction under their previous details in which case this will need to be disclosed.

Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.

Please be advised that the use of Artificial Intelligence on applications is monitored and if you choose to use this, you must declare this on your application form.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Applicant requirements

The postholder will have regular contact with vulnerable people and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Documents to download

• Job Description & Person Specification (PDF, 371.2KB)
• Network Engineer OH Risk ID (PDF, 113.1KB)
• A Great Place to Work (PDF, 2.1MB)
• Employee Benefits (PDF, 950.7KB)