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.
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.
Role ID – C005490
Role Duties and Responsibilities
System and Solution Engineering
- Analyse operational, functional & project requirements & translate them into implementable DCIS solutions.
- Define the overall technical solution and system architecture using the established DCIS Node, Module & Service taxonomies.
- Ensure that the resulting system delivers the required end-to-end functionality & emergent behaviour.
- Perform technical trade-off analyses considering performance, interoperability, security, deployability, resilience, maintainability, cost, schedule & technological maturity.
Model Based Systems Engineering
- Apply MBSE throughout the engineering lifecycle.
- Map project requirements against existing Requirement Models, Implementation Guidelines & Implementation Constraints.
- Maximise reuse of approved Modules, Services, architectures & engineering patterns.
- Identify gaps where existing Requirement Models or standardized building blocks cannot satisfy project requirements.
Complex Systems Product Ownership – Operational Nodes
- For designated Nodes already introduced into operational service, act as the Complex Systems Product Owner:
- Maintain technical ownership and system-level design responsibility for assigned operational Nodes throughout their lifecycle.
- Maintain an authoritative understanding of the Node architecture, configuration, interfaces, dependencies, capabilities & design constraints.
- Ensure that modifications to individual Modules or Services do not compromise the overall coherence, interoperability, performance, security or operational capability of the Node.
- Assess operational technical issues from an end-to-end system perspective & coordinate their resolution with the appropriate SMEs, Model Custodians & service organizations.
- Analyse requests for change, obsolescence issues, technology refreshes, security changes & evolving operational requirements to determine their impact on the complete Node.
- Define & maintain the technical evolution path & Node roadmap, aligned with Module & Service roadmaps & the wider DCIS Target Architecture.
- Identify technical debt, architectural divergence, lifecycle risks & emerging obsolescence before they become operational constraints Initiate or recommend engineering activities required to maintain the technical viability of the Node.
- Provide system-level technical guidance to operations, maintenance & service-management organizations where issues require design-level knowledge.
- Ensure that operational experience & lessons identified are fed back into the Modularity Framework, Requirement Models & future system designs.
- Maintain consistency between the as-designed, as-built and asoperated technical baselines of the Node.
- Support configuration & change-control processes by assessing the system-level impact of proposed changes.
Multi-Domain Technical Integration
- Integrate engineering contributions across DCIS technical domains, including as applicable:
- Network & Communication Access; WAN/LAN and network services; SATCOM & tactical communications; Radio systems; Infrastructure & Platform services; compute, virtualization & cloud technologies; storage & data services; cybersecurity & security services; identity & access management; Business Support Services; automation, orchestration & Infrastructure-as-Code; physical deployable infrastructure & associated supporting systems.
Technical Coordination
- Act as the primary technical focal point for assigned projects & operational Nodes.
- Coordinate the engineering contributions required from the different technical domains.
- Translate system-level requirements & operational issues into clear engineering tasks & technical questions for the appropriate SMEs & Model Custodians.
- Integrate the outputs produced by the different engineering disciplines into a single coherent solution.
- Identify conflicting requirements, assumptions or design decisions & drive their technical resolution.
Essential Skills, Experience and Certifications
- 10 years of relevant professional engineering experience, including significant experience with complex ICT/CIS, defence, aerospace, telecommunications or other highly integrated technical systems.
- Experience in Systems Engineering and/or Solution Architecture applied to complex systems.
- Complex Systems Engineering
- Significant experience in the architecture, design, integration, verification or lifecycle management of complex systems involving multiple technical domains.
- Demonstrated ability to translate operational or business needs into system requirements, architectures and implementable technical solutions.
- Experience defining and managing system boundaries; functional decomposition; interfaces; dependencies; constraints; nonfunctional requirements; system-level performance
- Technical Leadership
- Experience as a Technical Lead, Lead Systems Engineer, Solution Architect, System Architect or equivalent senior engineering role.
- Experience technically coordinating multidisciplinary engineering teams and SMEs
- Ability to provide clear technical direction
- Experience resolving technical disagreements and driving engineering decisions across organizational and technical boundaries.
- System Integration
- Significant experience integrating systems composed of multiple technologies, products or engineering disciplines.
- Strong understanding of system interfaces, dependencies and emergent behaviour.
- Experience identifying and resolving integration problems spanning multiple technical domains.
- Experience planning or supporting system integration, verification, validation and acceptance activities.
- Demonstrated ability to perform structured root-cause analysis
- Lifecycle Engineering / Product Ownership
- Experience supporting complex systems after their transition into operational service.
- Understanding of the relationship between:
- design authority; configuration management; change management; obsolescence; technology refresh; technical debt; operational support; system evolution.
- Experience assessing the system-level impact of changes to individual components, subsystems or services.
- Broad technical understanding across ICT/CIS domains, rather than being specialists exclusively within one technology. Strong knowledge of several of the following areas is expected:
- IP networking and routing; LAN/WAN architectures; network security and firewalls; compute and server infrastructure; virtualization and hyperconverged infrastructure; storage technologies; identity and access management; cybersecurity architectures; enterprise and infrastructure services; cloud and hybrid-cloud technologies; automation and orchestration; monitoring and management systems; telecommunications; SATCOM and/or radio communications; deployable or mobile ICT infrastructure.
- The candidate is not expected to be the SME in all these domains. However, they must have sufficient technical breadth to understand how these technologies interact.
- Strong understanding of requirements engineering, including functional and non-functional requirements.
- Ability to decompose complex systems into manageable subsystems and components while preserving understanding of the complete system.
- Strong understanding of interfaces and Interface Control.
- Experience with requirements traceability from operational need through implementation and verification.
- Understanding of architecture versus detailed design & the appropriate allocation of responsibilities between system-level & domain engineers.
- Experience performing engineering trade-off analyses
Education
- University degree in Systems Engineering, Telecommunications Engineering, Computer Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Computer Science or another relevant discipline
Working Location
Working Policy
Travel
- Possible travel to other Agency & NATO sites within Belgium up to 1 - 2 times per month
Security Clearance
- Valid National or NATO Secret personal security clearance