Officer, Interoperability and Standardization
🔍 Belgium
1. SUMMARY
The Defence Investment (DI) Division is responsible for facilitating the development and adoption of cutting-edge, innovative and interoperable capabilities, critical to ensuring the Alliance’s ability to undertake the full spectrum of missions and operations. Key lines of effort include:
- developing and implementing policies and programs to ensure the Alliance can rely on a capable and competitive transatlantic defense industrial base;
- facilitating and promoting multinational cooperation through a series of specific initiatives tackling critical capability requirements;
- leading the development and implementation of projects and major capability programmes in the land, maritime, air and space domains and in doing so addressing all policy, political-military, technical and practical aspects;
- leading NATO’s policy and engagements in the aviation domain;
- pursuing interoperability through standardization and developing with Allies new approaches to operational challenges, supported, among others, by operational experimentation and innovation;
- maintaining the Alliance’s technological edge through exploring and driving adoption of emerging and disruptive technologies, with a particular focus on autonomous systems;
- understanding, adapting to, and pro-actively addressing climate change´s implications on armaments;
- informing and responding to the Alliance’s evolving capability needs through the NATO Defence Planning Process (NDPP) implementation;
- providing oversight to NATO Agencies involved in capability development and delivery (in particular NATO Communication and Information Agency and NATO Support and Procurement Agency);
- working with a range of key stakeholders within NATO including the Strategic Commands and externally with NATO Partners and relevant international and regional organisations including the EU, as well as with industry and academia.
The Strategy Directorate is responsible for providing overall coherence of capability deliverables through policies, plans and links with external stakeholders.
Within the Strategy Directorate, the Capability Delivery Section (CDS) focuses on the delivery of NATO capabilities in the multinational NATO environment working with external governmental, military and industrial stakeholders. The Directorate supports the Conference of National Armaments Directors (CNAD), the senior North Atlantic Council (NAC) body responsible for the promotion of armaments cooperation in the Alliance
The incumbent’s main responsibility is to support NATO’s Standardization and Interoperability Activities, with a particular focus on the CNAD, the Aviation Committee (AVC) and Digital Policy Board (DPC) in decision-making. Within the Section, the incumbent leads standards development, adoption and coherence efforts within the armaments domain. A particular focus area will be on all standards development related to emerging and disruptive technologies and international and regional Standards Developing Organisations.
2. QUALIFICATIONS
ESSENTIAL
The incumbent must:
- possess a university degree from an institute of recognised standing in a relevant field for this role;
- have at least 5 years of relevant professional experience;
- possess broad knowledge regarding the developments affecting interoperability within the Alliance, especially relevant to Armaments;
- have experience of working on programme management related issues in an international environment;
- possess excellent analytical skills;
- have excellent briefing (verbal and written) skills and the ability to provide a high degree of impact and influence with political, civil and military stakeholders;
- possess the following minimum levels of NATO’s official languages (English/French): VI (“Proficiency”) in one; II (“Elementary”) in the other.
DESIRABLE
The following would be considered an advantage:
- professional certification or training in Project Management (e.g. PMP, PRINCE2);
- demonstrated managerial experience ideally supported by a management training or relevant qualification from an institute of recognised standing (e.g. completion of military staff college, completion of an executive MBA);
- relevant experience in technical standardization.
Expertise Development
Keep abreast of ongoing issues and developments in one’s own and other relevant areas and maintain broad general knowledge of current technology developments. Apply and develop expertise on armaments capabilities.
Information Management
Monitor ongoing work in international and regional Standards Developing Organisations and other relevant NATO committees/bodies for developments that may be of interest to DI.
Knowledge Management
Exchange knowledge and information with colleagues on topics affecting DI materiel standardization portfolio, in particular with the CNAD Main Groups and AVC.
Policy Development
Contribute to development of interoperability policies. Provide policy input regarding materiel standards when requested and ensure that the multiple NATO policies that affect DI portfolio are coherent with one another.
Project Management
Work with key members of the relevant NATO entities in order to help set the necessary political and military conditions to enable effective adoption of civilian standards defined by international and regional Standards Developing Organisations. Lead teams supporting standards development, adoption and coherence efforts and manage all practical, administrative and logistic aspects efficiently. Oversee activities executed under the Accelerating Interoperability and Standardization Fund.
Representation of the Organisation
Serve as Coordinating Officer. Participate and represent DI in meetings as required. Interact with and represent the Organisation in international and regional Standards Developing Organizations.
Stakeholder Management
Liaise extensively with all stakeholders of the CNAD and its substructure, NATO Standardization and Innovation community to ensure that requirements related technological enhancement are developed, delivered and sustained as efficiently as possible in the standardization portfolios under the responsibility of the Division.
Perform any other related duty as assigned.
4. INTERRELATIONSHIPS
The incumbent reports to the Head, Capability Delivery Section and works in close cooperation with the entire Division. The incumbent performs relevant tasks in direct contact with senior members of the IS and IMS, members of national delegations, NATO Science & Technology Organisation, NATO Agencies, International Organisations and subject-matter experts.
Direct reports: N/a
Indirect reports: N/a.
5. COMPETENCIES
The incumbent must demonstrate:
- Analytical Thinking: Makes complex plans or analyses;
- Clarity and Accuracy: Checks own work;
- Conceptual Thinking: Applies learned concepts;
- Customer Service Orientation: Takes personal responsibility for correcting problems;
- Impact and Influence: Takes multiple actions to persuade;
- Initiative: Is decisive in a time-sensitive situation;
- Organisational Awareness: Understands organisational climate and culture;
- Teamwork Solicits inputs and encourages others.
7. USEFUL INFORMATION REGARDING APPLICATION AND RECRUITMENT PROCESS
Please note that we can only accept applications from nationals of NATO member countries. Applications must be submitted using e-recruitment system, as applicable:
- For NATO civilian staff members only: please apply via the internal recruitment portal (link);
- For all other applications: www.nato.int/recruitment
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More information about the recruitment process and conditions of employment, can be found at our website (http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/recruit-hq-e.htm)
Appointment will be subject to receipt of a security clearance (provided by the national Authorities of the selected candidate), approval of the candidate’s medical file by the NATO Medical Adviser, verification of your study(ies) and work experience, and the successful completion of the accreditation and notification process by the relevant authorities.
NATO will not accept any phase of the recruitment and selection prepared, in whole or in part, by means of generative artificial-intelligence (AI) tools, including and without limitation to chatbots, such as Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (Chat GPT), or other language generating tools. NATO reserves the right to screen applications to identify the use of such tools. All applications prepared, in whole or in part, by means of such generative or creative AI applications may be rejected without further consideration at NATO’s sole discretion, and NATO reserves the right to take further steps in such cases as appropriate.
8. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
NATO is committed to diversity and inclusion, and strives to provide equal access to employment, advancement and retention, independent of gender, age, nationality, ethnic origin, religion or belief, cultural background, sexual orientation, and disability. NATO welcomes applications of nationals from all member Nations, and strongly encourages women to apply.
NATO is committed to fostering an inclusive and accessible working environment, where all candidates living with disabilities can fully participate in the recruitment and selection process. If you require reasonable accommodation, please inform us during your selection process.
Candidates will be required to provide documented medical evidence to support their request for accommodation.
Building Integrity is a key element of NATO’s core tasks. As an employer, NATO values commitment to the principles of integrity, transparency and accountability in accordance with international norms and practices established for the defence and related security sector. Selected candidates are expected to be role models of integrity, and to promote good governance through ongoing efforts in their work.
Due to the broad interest in NATO and the large number of potential candidates, telephone or e-mail enquiries cannot be dealt with.
Applicants who are not successful in this competition may be offered an appointment to another post of a similar nature, albeit at the same or a lower grade, provided they meet the necessary requirements.
The nature of this position may require the staff member at times to be called upon to travel for work and/or to work outside normal office hours.
The organization offers several work-life policies including Teleworking and Flexible Working arrangements (Flexitime) subject to business requirements.
Please note that the International Staff at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium is a non-smoking environment.
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