Senior Interoperability Engineer

Who we are:

For more than 75 years, NATO’s mission has been to preserve peace and security in the Alliance for nearly one billion citizens. The NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA) and its predecessors have worked tirelessly in providing the means that enable the connectedness and togetherness that keep our Alliance strong. We are the NCIA, a team of 3,300 civilian and military staff in 29 locations throughout Europe, North America and Asia.

Our technology and cyber experts allow NATO to conduct critical operations, protect NATO’s airspace, make data-driven decisions, defend against cyber-attacks, secure NATO networks and maintain superiority in space. This is all possible because of our greatest force, our people. In order to keep this edge we aim to hire, train and retain the very best staff.

Our staff members represent both the diversity and unity of our Alliance. When you join the NCIA, you will be part of an organization where you can contribute authentically to the mission and purpose of NATO and help us keep our technological edge.

About the job:

We’re expanding the highly successful Independent Assurance Branch (IAB) at the NCIA.  The new posts will be part of the Chief Quality Office (CQO) which leads the Agency Quality approach and is the governing authority on the Agency’s Quality Management and Risk Management System. The CQO leads the development and assurance of the QMS related processes and procedures, ensures independent verification and validation of project, programme and portfolio deliverables and service changes. The new Senior Interoperability Engineers that we’re hiring in The Hague, Netherlands will provide interoperability assurance and exercise support services, and are responsible for the NCIA reference environment services and support. 

The IAB plays a crucial role in ensuring that the NCIA delivers systems and services that work seamlessly together for exercises, missions and partners.   IAB independently verifies and validates the readiness of NATO Command Structure (NCS) systems for interoperability. This includes ensuring compatibility with assigned National and Multinational forces involved in NATO-led missions and exercises.  The IO branch oversees various activities, such as:

·       Interoperability assurance of all federated capabilities that are added and or modified within mission networks.

·       The IAB is highly involved in NATO interoperability initiative “Federated Mission Networking” (FMN). The IO Branch is responsible to verify and Validate all NATO capabilities for their “FMN Compliance”

·       Support for the overall FMN Framework by providing tools to prepare, execute, assess and report on Requests for Change (RFC’s) of all FMN Affiliates (NATO and non NATO Nations).

·       Support to nations in setting up, executing and assessing and reporting Interoperability exercises or test events with tooling and Subject Matter Expertise (SME)

·       Support to the NATO Digital Staff (NDS) and Allied Command Transformation (ACT) on Interoperability assessments, standards conformance testing and development of Interoperability test repositories and policy for NATO.

The Senior Interoperability Engineer will support with policy and governance by establishing policies, processes, and tools for interoperability assurance across the entire agency operating in accordance with NATO directives and collaborates with NATO Enterprise, NATO Alliance, and any coalitions where NATO participates.  There will be four key focus areas:

·       Mission CIS readiness: actively contributes to assure all federated capabilities that are added and or modified within the mission networks, like for example the Allied Reaction Force (ARF). For this we have teams of Subject matter experts that closely work the Service Management Authority, the operational units and the NATO Command structure to assure SACEUR’S command and control enablement to conduct operations. The work includes support to exercises and mission preparation activities by preparing, executing including assessment and reporting on the interoperability on all established mission services

·       Interoperability Assurance Activities: actively contributes to ensuring that NATO-led mission networks and exercises operate smoothly. For instance, during exercises like Steadfast Cobalt or Coalition Warrior Interoperability Exercise (CWIX), they verify that communication systems work seamlessly together.  Additionally, participate in Coalition Interoperability Assurance and Validation (CIAV) Working Groups. These groups focus on initiatives such as Federated Mission Networking (FMN), ensuring interoperability across different forces and partners.

·       Interoperability Assessments and Testing:  conduct thorough interoperability assessments and standard conformance assessments to verify systems implementation of standards. This involves evaluating projects, cross-projects, and even broader NATO Enterprise, NATO Alliance, and Mission Networks. Analyse complex test scenarios based on real-world operational use cases.  Extracting test conditions and designing test events are critical steps in ensuring effective interoperability.

·       Repository Management and Reporting:  Manage the Assurance, Verification, and Validation (AV&V) repository is another key responsibility. This repository contains essential information related to services, service functions, test requirements, test cases, and use cases.  Also contribute to defining and reporting interoperability Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) at different levels—project, portfolio, and program. These KPIs help track progress and identify areas for improvement.

For the full and detailed list of duties, please review the job description on the NCIA career site.

About you:

The essential requirements for this post are:

·       A minimum requirement of a Bachelor’s degree at a nationally recognised/certified University in a related discipline and 3 years post-related experience.
Proven experience with development of principles, assumptions, rules and guidelines to analyse, structure and classify interoperability requirements and their assessment for portfolios, programmes and projects

·       Proven experience with managing external stakeholders and co-workers during the execution of large complex projects, either in commercial or military environment;

·       Experience with using, designing, operating, maintaining and testing virtualized and cloud-based environments;

·       Experience as test engineer in interoperability events;

·       Knowledge of ISTQB foundation principles;

One or more of the following would additionally be desirable:

·       Experience with NATO interoperability exercises, like CWIX or Steadfast Cobalt.

·       Knowledge of the IO Toolset, Tidepedia, and JIRA;

·       Experience testing NATO applications like ICC, JTS, FAST, NCOP, LOGFAS, TOPFAS, etc…;

·       Experience testing and configuring NATO Standards, like MIP, FFT, TDL, NVG, OTH-Gold, APP-11 or…

·       Experience testing and configuring Commercial standards, like BGP, IPsec, SIP, NTP, DNS, SMTP/S, LDAP/S, SAML, HTTP/S

·       Advanced certification in the area of testing and testing management

What we offer:

·       Genuinely meaningful work as part of the most successful alliance in history;

·       3 year contract with competitive tax-free monthly salary of EUR 8,828 and household and children’s allowances;

·       Privileges for expatriate staff including expatriation and education allowances (where appropriate) and additional home leave;

·       Excellent private health insurance scheme;

·       Generous annual leave of 30 days plus official holidays;

·       NATO Pension Scheme;

·       Development programs such as professional training, wellbeing, and more.

To learn more about NCIA and our work, please visit our website.  The NCIA prides itself on being an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment of mutual respect and value uniqueness and differences in gender, gender identity, race, ethnic or cultural origin, age, religion, sexual orientation and physical or neurocognitive ability. 

Additional details on the conditions of application can be found via the NCIA career site.