Systems Engineer

Spektrum supports apex purchasers (NATO, UN, EU, and National Government and Defence) and their Tier 1 supplier ecosystem with a wide range of specialist services. We provide our clients with professional services, specialised aerospace and defence sales, delivery, and operational subject matter expertise. We are looking for personnel to join our team and support key client projects.

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Who we are supporting 

The NATO Communication and Information Agency (NCIA) is responsible for providing secure and effective communications and information technology (IT) services to NATO's member countries and its partners. The agency was established in 2012 and is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium.

The NCIA provides a wide range of services, including:

• Cyber Security: The NCIA provides advanced cybersecurity solutions to protect NATO's communication networks and information systems against cyber threats.
• Command and Control Systems: The NCIA develops and maintains the systems used by NATO's military commanders to plan and execute operations.
• Satellite Communications: The NCIA provides satellite communications services to enable secure and reliable communications between NATO forces.
• Electronic Warfare: The NCIA provides electronic warfare services to support NATO's mission to detect, deny, and defeat threats to its communication networks.
• Information Management: The NCIA manages NATO's information technology infrastructure, including its databases, applications, and servers.

Overall, the NCIA plays a critical role in ensuring the security and effectiveness of NATO's communication and information technology capabilities.

The program

Assistance and Advisory Service (AAS)

The NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCI Agency) is NATO’s principal C3 capability deliverer and CIS service provider. It provides, maintains and defends the NATO enterprise-wide information technology infrastructure to enable Allies to consult together under Article IV, and, when required, stand together in the face of attack under Article V.

To provide these critical services, in the modern evolving dynamic environment the NCI Agency needs to build and maintain high performance-engaged workforce. The NCI Agency workforce strategically consists of three major categorise's: NATO International Civilians (NIC)'s, Military (Mil), and Interim Workforce Consultants (IWC)'s. The IWCs are a critical part of the overall NCI Agency workforce and make up approximately 15 percent of the total workforce.

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Role ID – C004744

Role Duties and Responsibilities

Systems Engineering

• Defines and manages scoping, requirements definition and prioritisation activities for initiatives of medium size and complexity.
• Contributes to selecting the requirements approach.
• Facilitates input from stakeholders, provides constructive challenge and enables effective prioritisation of requirements.
• Establishes requirements base-lines, obtains formal agreement to requirements, and ensures traceability to source.

Data engineering

• Designs and implements data pipelines and data stores to acquire and prepare data.
• Applies data engineering standards and tools to create and maintain data pipelines and extract, transform and load data.
• Carries out routine data quality checks and remediation.

Programming/software development

• Designs, codes, verifies, tests, documents, amends and refactors moderately complex programs/scripts.
• Applies agreed standards and tools to achieve a well-engineered result.
• Monitors and reports on progress.
• Identifies issues related to software development activities.
• Proposes practical solutions to resolve issues.
• Collaborates in reviews of work with others as appropriate.

Systems development management

• Plans and drives systems development projects which support the organisation's objectives and plans.
• Selects, adopts and adapts appropriate systems development methods, tools and techniques.
• Ensures that stakeholders are aware of required resources and that they are made available.
• Facilitates availability and optimum utilisation of resources.
• Monitors and reports on the progress of development projects.
• Ensures projects are carried out in accordance with agreed architectures, standards, methods and tools and addresses security and privacy requirements.
• Develops road maps to communicate future development activity.

Systems integration and build

• Provides technical expertise to enable the configuration of system components and equipment for systems testing.
• Collaborates with technical teams to develop and agree system integration plans and report on progress.
• Defines complex/new integration builds.
• Ensures that integration test environments are correctly configured.
• Designs, performs and reports results of tests of the integration build.
• Identifies and documents system integration components for recording in the configuration management system.
• Recommends and implements improvements to processes and tools.
• Enterprise-wide integration

Essential Skills, Experience and Certifications

• 3 years of experience with drafting ICT design and/or software development and planning of system and software delivery for large C4ISR projects, including:
• Proven ability to apply analytical and systems thinking to complex problems.
• Proven ability to moderate technical design related discussions with multi-disciplinary teams.
• Proven ability to effectively communicate orally and in writing, with good briefing skills.
• 3 years of experience in identifying and assessing new and emerging technologies and their adoption into larger systems.
• 3 years of experience managing relationships with technical stakeholders (internal and external).
• 3 years of experience in Data Engineering, defining and implementing data structures and pipelines in support of systems engineering activities.

Desirable Skills, Experience and Certifications

• Training/certification requirements for the role will typically include The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), ITIL, and COBIT, but this will depend on the responsibility and domain / segment
• Training/certification will be provided when hired, and not essential for qualifying for the post.

Education

• A minimum requirement of a Bachelor's degree at a nationally recognised/certified University in a related discipline and 2 years post-related experience. Or exceptionally, the lack of a university degree may be compensated by the demonstration of a candidate's particular abilities or experience that is/are of interest to NCI Agency, that is, at least 6 years extensive and progressive expertise in duties related to the function of the post.

Working Location

• The Hague, Netherlands

Working Policy

• Hybrid (70% of time on-site, 30% of time remote)

Travel

• Some travel to other NATO sites may be required

Security Clearance

• Valid National or NATO Secret personal security clearance