Senior IT System Specialist / Architect

Working Full time: 37.5 hours per week

This is an exciting and pivotal time to join the Trust as we transform and modernise our digital infrastructure, shaping a resilient, secure, and scalable architecture that underpins safe and effective patient care.

We are seeking a highly motivated, forward-thinking Senior IT Specialist / Architect to join our Senior Infrastructure team. This is an excellent opportunity for an experienced technical professional to play a leading role in designing, evolving, and safeguarding the Trust’s core infrastructure estate.

Working at both a strategic and operational level, you will influence the future direction of our digital architecture while ensuring high availability, performance, and security of critical systems. You will collaborate across Digital, clinical, and partner teams to deliver innovative solutions that support the Trust’s ambition for digital transformation, enabling improved outcomes for patients and staff alike.

You will bring deep technical expertise across enterprise infrastructure technologies, including Active Directory, DNS/DHCP, identity and access management, certificate services, endpoint and server security (e.g. GPO and anti-malware), virtualisation platforms, storage solutions, and enterprise backup and recovery capabilities.

Acting as a senior technical authority, you will lead the design, optimisation, and ongoing management of the Trust’s core infrastructure estate, ensuring systems are secure, resilient, and scalable to meet both current operational demands and future digital ambitions.

You will play a key role in delivering complex infrastructure projects to challenging timescales, balancing operational priorities with governance, risk, and compliance requirements. Working closely with internal stakeholders and external partners, you will ensure solutions are aligned to organisational standards and best practice.

In addition, you will lead and develop a high-performing, multi-skilled team, fostering a culture of continuous improvement, accountability, and technical excellence. You will be responsible for maintaining high availability of critical services, driving proactive infrastructure improvements, and ensuring the Trust’s digital platforms continue to support safe, effective, and innovative patient care.

The Trust’s services are provided from three locations:

• The Countess of Chester Hospital: providing 473 general and acute beds.
• Ellesmere Port Hospital: providing 60 beds as a rehabilitation, intermediate and outpatient facility.
• Tarporley War Memorial Hospital: a base for community services which serve the local rural population.

The Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust employs 5,964 staff (headcount) to provide care and treatment to a population of over 400,000 people living in Chester and West Cheshire which includes Ellesmere Port and Neston as well as the Deeside area of Flintshire.

The Trust works collaboratively within the wider Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care System. Due to its location on the border with North Wales, the Trust also works closely with the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board.

The Trust treats patients from England and some parts of Wales. During 2024/2025, there were approximately 643,000 patient attendances (inpatient, A&E, outpatient and diagnostic) ranging from a simple outpatient appointment to major cancer surgery

For further details / informal visits contact: Name: Scott Whiting Job title: Senior IT System Specialist / Architect Principle Email address: [email protected] Telephone number: 01244 835420

David Hignett

Associate Director; Infrastructure & Cyber Security

[email protected]