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Armourer

Defence, Legal , Other , Uniformed Services

Hours of Work: Monday – Friday 37 hours per week with a requirement to work outside office hours when necessary to meet the demands of the role.

Salary: Currently £28,734 - £29,337 moving to £30,458 – £31,097 applicable from 1 August 2025 plus £1365 environmental allowance.

Main Activities:

The main duties and responsibilities associated with the role include the following:

Ensuring the safety and serviceability of all firearms and ancillary equipment, such as night-vision sights, optical sites, and weapons magazines, through inspection maintenance and repair, together with functional tests of ancillary equipment.
Undertaking safety checks, mandatory inspections and repairs as required, including the maintenance, examination and rectification of all optical equipment.
Examining, maintaining, and undertaking gauging and rectification on all firearms and ancillary equipment in accordance with current manufacturer standards and procedures.
Completing technical examinations of firearms involved in ammunition accidents, including diagnostic work such as firearms testing.
Completing a minimum of twice-yearly inspections of firearms police stations throughout Northern Ireland, ensuring that all firearms, ammunition and ancillary items are safe to use during operations and that the general public are safe while such operations are being carried out.
Sharing technical advice and guidance with other members of the armourer team regarding serviceability of components and firearm modifications.
Ensuring small arms scrap is disposed of in accordance with current PSNI policy.
Completing health and safety risk assessments, and those relating to Control of Substances Hazardous to Health reports, ensuring any necessary register entries are maintained.
Carrying out weekly and monthly checks on weapons spares storage, security, and accounting in relation to the role-holders own workspace.
Collaborating with the relevant technical colleagues for the ‘fingerprinting’ and ballistics testing of new firearms and other weapons after specific repairs have been carried out.
Participating in the out of hours on-call rota in support of operational policing.
Writing and delivering detailed reports on firearms, ancillary and ammunition faults. This includes the general maintenance of reporting/records of work carried out on firearms and ancillary equipment on both computer and manual record-keeping systems.
Assisting the Senior Armourer in providing detailed reports on new equipment during evaluation and in preparing the associated evaluation reports on such new firearms systems. The role-holder is also required to maintain their own personal awareness of developments in technical matters, through access to relevant publications and training from manufacturers.

This Job Description reflects the main duties and responsibilities associated with this position. It is not intended to be exclusive or exhaustive.

Person Specification:

Essential Qualifications

NVQ Level 3 in Mechanical Engineering or equivalent Armourers Qualification.

Essential Skills and Knowledge

Knowledge, experience, or transferable skills related to the Armourer role, including (but not limited to) firearms and ammunition handling, weapon cycle principles, ballistics, firearms engineering or use of optical, laser, and electronic sighting systems.
Thorough understanding of environmental and safety considerations, such as health and safety, ability to carry out risk assessments and associated legislation relating to the use of firearms and munitions.
Effective communication and interpersonal skills, both orally and in writing, including the ability to prepare reports for more senior personnel.
Good organisational skills including the ability to manage and prioritise own workload.

On appointment, the role holder must successfully complete the College of Policing learning modules relating to the issue, maintenance and examination of police firearms. There will also be a requirement to attend Manufacturers Courses for each weapon system the PSNI hold.

Essential Other

IT literate specifically in the use of the Microsoft Office suite (including MS Word, MS PowerPoint, MS Excel and MS Outlook).
The successful candidate must have access to a form of transport which will enable them to fulfil the responsibilities of the job in full.

Short listing will be carried out based on essential criteria.

Successful applicants will be retained on a merit list for future opportunities arising.

We would encourage you to check the spam within your email system for any relevant correspondence.

Selection Methodology:

PSNI uses the Competency and Values Framework (CVF) which sets out nationally recognised behaviours and values to support all policing professionals. You will be assessed against the values and at the competencies level as indicated below. This will include both past and future focused questions. Further guidance and information about the Competency and Values Framework (CVF) is available here on our website. Please use the 2024 CVF for this role.

Applicants meeting the eligibility criteria and essential qualifications, skills and knowledge will be required to demonstrate their experience for the following criteria:

Competency and Value Based Interview