Trainee cyber security engineer (security trainee)

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.

Cyber Operations Sub-directorate

• 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.

Responsibilities

• Work within the 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.

Additional Information

If you currently work within the NHS and are successful at interview, an Inter Authority Transfer (IAT) will be initiated 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.