Airwave Support Adviser

Salary and Location

Salary: Band 7, £31,548 – £34,329

Location: Agile, Ponteland Police Station and Homeworking

Hours and Contract

37 hours per week, 18 months fixed term

The role

Here at Northumbria Police, we think our region is amazing! It takes a great deal of people from different backgrounds, with diverse skills and experience to serve our force area effectively. Think you have what it takes to help us make a difference? This could be the perfect time for you to join us in our Digital Department as an Airwave Support Adviser.

Join our team to help deliver a high-performing, cost-effective, and resilient mission-critical Force Communication service. This includes Airwave radio services, ICCS, and Digital Policing systems – ensuring they meet agreed service levels for essential business operations.

You’ll work closely with internal teams and external suppliers, offering expert advice and guidance to maintain optimal availability and performance of Airwave and other critical communication systems.

What you’ll do

• Participate in the effective delivery and 1st/2nd line support of Airwave and other mission-critical Force Communication systems, including initial fault diagnosis, correction, and escalation to system maintainers to ensure service continuity.
• Liaise with third-party suppliers (engineers, support staff, and account managers) to support the delivery of services in line with agreed service levels.
• Assist in the installation, configuration, and documentation of new Airwave equipment, systems, and services, ensuring compliance with planned standards.
• Assess user requirements for special events and operations, providing technical support and secure communications. Participate in critical command structures during major incidents, including out-of-hours support.
• Manage and implement CRYPTO information for covert communications and equipment across the 4 NE region Forces, covering Airwave and associated Digital Policing equipment.
• Contribute to the delivery of Incident and Problem Management services by identifying and resolving issues, monitoring trends, and ensuring system performance aligns with Service Level Agreements.

What you’ll bring

• Experience of providing 1st and 2nd line support for communications equipment (Airwave/ICCS).
• Highly organised and goal-oriented, with the ability to manage multiple activities, prioritise based on business needs, maintain excellent attention to detail, and proactively identify, investigate, and implement process improvements.
• Applies a logical and creative approach to troubleshooting, with proven experience in 1st and 2nd line support within operational environments. Skilled at translating technical concepts into business language, with strong listening, analytical, and problem-solving abilities.
• Good interpersonal and team working skills.
• Customer Service experience.
• Experience of producing, developing and maintaining accurate documentation.
• Strong presentation, writing, consulting and client facing skills.
• Effectively communicate with officers and staff across the organisation.

Application and Recruitment

The recruitment process will consist of the initial application form followed by a face to face interview. You can save your application and come back to it any time prior to the closing date on the advert.

We are proud members of the Business Disability Forum, with whom we collaborate to improve the lives of disabled employees. We are also a Disability Confident Employer. If you demonstrate that you meet the minimum criteria for this role as stated in the advert, we will progress your application and offer you an interview. If you tell us that you have a disability, we can make adjustments to support you through the recruitment process (for example we can arrange extra time for tests or provide a sign language interpreter). You can get in touch with us via careers@northumbria.police.uk for any support regarding the application process. Please provide us with plenty of notice so we can ensure your visit goes smoothly.

If your application is successful, we’ll ask you to complete a Management Vetting (MV)/ Security Clearance (SC) form, therefore you must be a resident of the UK for a minimum period of 5 years to ensure vetting checks can be successfully performed. A job offer will be dependent upon vetting clearance, medical information, and references.

Terms of appointment

This is an 18 month fixed term role subject to a six-month probationary period.

If you are successful in your application, you will have a six-month probation period with us where you will be unable to apply for any other post advertised internally or externally.

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible.