IT Specialist

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 – C004351

Role Duties and Responsibilities

• Provides guidance on the application and operation of elementary physical, procedural and technical security controls.
• Explains the purpose of security controls and performs security risk and business impact analysis for medium complexity information systems.
• Identifies risks that arise from potential technical solution architectures.
• Designs alternate solutions or countermeasures and ensures they mitigate identified risks.
• Investigates suspected attacks and supports security incident management.
• Designs system components using appropriate modelling techniques following agreed architectures, design standards, patterns and methodology.
• Identifies and evaluates alternative design options and trade-offs.
• Creates multiple design views to address the concerns of the different stakeholders and to handle functional and non-functional requirements.
• Models, simulates or prototypes the behaviour of proposed system components to enable approval by stakeholders.
• Produces detailed design specifications to form the basis for the construction of systems.
• Reviews, verifies and improves own designs against specifications.
• 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 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.
• Provisions/installs, configures and maintains infrastructure services and components.
• Monitors, measures and reports on infrastructure load, performance and security events.
• Identifies operational issues and contributes to their resolution.
• Carries out agreed operational procedures, including backup/restore, using supplied infrastructure tools and scripts.
• Carries out agreed system software maintenance tasks.
• Automates routine system administration tasks to specifications using standard tools and basic scripting.
• Monitors operational systems for resource usage and failure rates, to inform and facilitate system software tuning.
• Applies system software parameters to maximise throughput and efficiency.
• Installs and tests new versions of system software.
• Contributes to preparation of software implementation procedures with fall back contingency plans.
• Prepares and maintains operational procedures for storage management.
• Monitors capacity, performance, availability and other operational metrics.
• Takes appropriate action to ensure corrective and proactive maintenance of storage and backup systems to protect and secure business information.
• Creates reports and proposals for improvement.
• Contributes to the planning and implementation of new installations and scheduled maintenance and changes of existing systems.
• Perform other duties as may be required
• Deputise for higher grade staff, if required

Essential Skills, Experience and Certifications

• At least 2 years practical experience in the designing, implementing, and managing the underlying technology, software and hardware components that ensure the smooth functioning of servers, storage systems, data centers, and cloud services.
• Practical experience troubleshooting infrastructure related issues, perform regular maintenance
• Centralized storage systems based on FC, iSCSI, SAS or Hyper converged technology like vSAN
• Recent Virtualization Technologies based on VMWare ESXi and Virtual Centre
• Recent Microsoft Windows Server or Redhat Linux Operating Systems
• Expert Directory, Identity and Access Management consisting of multiple interconnected and federated Active Directory Domains and Forests

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

• Mons, Belgium

Working Policy

• On-site

Travel

• Some travel to other NATO sites may be required

Security Clearance

• Valid National or NATO Cosmic Top Secret personal security clearance