Senior Digital Forensic Specialist

Location of Role: Chelmsford

Advert Closing Date: 28/10/2025

Starting Salary: £47, pro-rata for part-time vacancies)

Part/Full Time: Full Time

Contract Type: Permanent

Working Pattern: Mon-Fri with occasional evening/weekends

Weekend/Evening Working: No

An exciting opportunity has arisen for an individual to undertake the role of Senior Digital Forensic Specialist within the Essex Digital Forensic Operations Team, based at Essex Police Headquarters, Chelmsford.

The role involves leading a team of Digital Forensic Specialists that conduct the acquisition, extraction, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of digital evidence in support of criminal investigations. You will also be required to form digital forensic strategies ensuring that processes undertaken are justified, proportionate and necessary.

The Digital Forensic Operations Team provides deployable on-scene services including the triage of digital devices, capture of live and volatile data, vehicle infotainment system extractions and cloud account downloads alongside laboratory based forensic analysis of seized exhibits. Therefore, applicants will require a driving license in order to be deployed and drive vehicles.

Digital devices are present in almost every investigation the Police Service undertakes. These range from complex computer platforms to mobile phone handsets, games consoles, digital CCTV systems and satellite navigation. As digital devices continue to evolve it will be critical that you are able to adapt and learn new emerging technologies to meet the requirements of the role.

To balance these technical attributes, you will need to be a highly motivated team player with good interpersonal skills and the ability to communicate effectively verbally and in writing. You will have the ability to manage a high caseload and be able to utilise your strong supervisory skills to provide an environment that is both supportive and constructive to other members of the team. In this role you will be dealing with highly sensitive and distressing information which requires you to have a high degree of emotional resilience. You will also be required to work to tight deadlines and be able to multi-task, dealing with competing demands and court requests.

The Digital Forensic Services' structure has been designed to provide the best possible career progression and CPD framework to ensure you will have the tools and necessary experience to carry out first class digital forensic investigations.

The assessment process consists of 3 stages; a technical knowledge check, presentation and competency-based interview questions.

Security Check (SC) vetting is required for this post.

At shortlisting we will be looking for essential evidence of:

• Advanced technical ability, including knowledge of computer and/or mobile phone hardware, software and operating systems.
• Educated to degree level in a relevant subject or have at least 3 years' recent experience within a Digital Forensic service provider.
• A thorough understanding of ISO 17025 and how it affects the role.
• Experience of writing technical statements for court.
• Experience of leading a team to ensure service delivery.
• Full Driving License

In addition, it would be helpful if you could evidence:

• Computer or mobile programming experience.
• Court experience as a digital forensic practitioner.

Our location:

Essex Police Headquarters, Chelmsford (Static – Office based)

The core working hours are Monday – Friday 0800 – 1600hrs with 1 in 6 weekends and Bank Holidays on-call.

There is an expectation of travel to other sites within Kent Police & Essex Police will occasionally be required.

Interested applicants are encouraged to contact Henry Mann (Digital Forensic Coordinator) for further information regarding the role at or on or

Kent Police and Essex Police have separate salary grading systems therefore the salary for this position will be dependent on which home office force you are appointed to. This will be discussed with the successful applicant before a final offer is made.

Your application for this role will be shortlisted on the content you provide within the "reason for application" question, within the application form itself. CV's, covering letters or attachments are not included in the shortlist. Within your "reason for application" answer, please refer to any experience, skills, and abilities you feel you have that will make you suitable for this role, based on the role criteria stated in the job advert or job description. Please provide as much detail as possible as insufficient content may mean you do not meet the shortlisting criteria, however please note this question is limited to 9000 characters and this system will count spaces and blank lines as characters. This count may differ from the Microsoft Word word count function therefore you may wish to use a different online character counter to check the characters used.

All of our posts require a level of vetting and security clearance. During the recruitment process you will be sent vetting information forms to complete.

Kent Police and Essex Police welcomes applications regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership status, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, sex, or employment status.

Please let us know if you require extra support at any stage of the application process, or for further information regarding this position, please email us at stating 'Application Support and Adjustments' in the title of your email. Alternatively, you can call us on Where appropriate we will make adjustments to the selection process, working arrangements and/or the working environment provided it is reasonable in all the circumstances to do so.

If you're not from the UK, you must be a resident in the UK and have lived here continuously for the last three years. You must also be free from restrictions with indefinite leave to remain. If you're from the UK you must have lived here continuously for the last three years. This doesn't apply to those serving abroad in the British Armed Forces.

Essex Police is a Disability Confident Leader, we:

• have subjected our Disability Confident self-assessment to external challenge and validation
• are taking an active leadership role in encouraging and helping other employers on their journey to becoming Disability Confident.

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion are central to the values of our organisation. At Essex Police we value and embrace the unique experiences, identities and abilities that each of us bring to our roles. We strive to empower everyone to bring their authentic self openly and safely to work.

Through the dedicated commitment of our support networks, DE&I team and wider HR departments, we are on a journey to embed our DE&I commitments, ensuring Essex Police is an employer of choice; where everyone feels included.

Essex Police and Kent Police are an equal opportunities employer. Communications may be recorded for monitoring purposes.