Staff Officer (BCM - Project Controls Coordinator)

Post Context

ACT contributes to preserving the peace, security and territorial integrity of Alliance member states by leading, at Strategic Command level, Warfare Development required to enhance NATO’s posture, military structures, forces, capabilities and doctrines.

The Resources and Management (RM) Directorate acts on behalf of SACT on all internal management and resource-related issues. It monitors the coherency of ACT plans to ensure that ACT remains an effective and efficient organization and improves continuously.

The Strategy Management Branch is responsible for the cross-functional coherence of ACT’s Programme of Work (PoW). In the wider NATO context, the Branch is the POC for the integrated objective-based midterm planning. It is also the POC for management and governance modernisation within the Alliance. These responsibilities translate into two broad areas of activity: Resource Planning and Policies, including Resource Reform, and Internal Management coherence, performance analysis, and management in support of the ACT executive boards, organisational development, and portfolio, programme and project (P3) management activities.

The Project Controls Coordinator will manage the analysis, research and tracking of business change projects across the organization in line with the ACT mission and values. They are responsible for collecting, coordinating, maintaining, and communicating project information across the business change programme to the team lead and other stakeholders across the organization. They will contribute to ACT business resource management and best practices identification, and other ACT initiatives as needed. The results of these projects may influence the decision to obligate resources of the organization.

Principal Duties:

• Collect and maintain project controls information for change initiatives in ACT’s business change portfolio. Project controls information includes, but is not limited to, project plans, schedules, cost estimates, allocated resources, risks and issues, the state of approval, and management of change.
• Coordinate project controls information, using judgement and expertise to assess the overall coherence of this information within and across business change projects. Identify conflicts, especially on resources, and propose remediation options.
• Generate and maintain portfolio level control information, based on cross-initiative assessments, especially portfolio level risks and issues. Maintain the linkage between portfolio and initiative level information and identify orchestrated risk and issue responses across the portfolio.
• Aggregate and summarize the health of business change projects, to inform project leads, Business Change Management team leadership, and ACT leadership. Leverage Business Intelligence automation to provide reliable and succinct overviews and dashboards.
• Refine data structures and best practices for collecting and communicating project controls information using MS Office applications and other applications approved for use on NATO networks. Drive improvement in the wider use of automation in project management across ACT.
• Acting by example and through incremental introduction in processes and tool, drive the transition towards lean and agile project control approaches through ACT.
• Arrange and conduct workshops and interviews with project teams delivering business changes, to collect and maintain project controls information.

Essential Qualifications / Experience:

• University Degree in management information systems, accounting, economics, finance, business administration, public administration, operations research, project management or related discipline  and 2 years function related experience; or Higher Secondary education and completed advanced vocational training  in that discipline leading to a professional qualification or professional accreditation with 4 years post related experience.
• Minimum of 2 years of experience in project controls in the last 5 years, with a proven track record of independently collecting and managing project information from at least 3 of:
  • Scheduling,
  • Cost or effort estimation,
  • Resource allocation and management,
  • Risk identification, analysis, and management,
  • Scope and change management.
• Data analysis and data management experience, including assessment of data quality, appropriate elicitation, analysis, and communication of uncertainty.
• Information and knowledge management experience, including document and data configuration management and knowledge sharing practices.
• Proven ability to work independently and as part of a team in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills, with experience of supporting senior stakeholder engagement

Language:

English – SLP 3333 - (Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing)

Desirable Qualifications / Experience:

• Minimum of 1 years of experience in the last 5 supporting the management of initiatives using structured agile project, program and portfolio management approaches (e.g. SCRUM, SAFe, DSDM, PRINCE2 Agile, …)
•  Experience in the last 5 supporting the management of initiatives using traditional structured project, program and portfolio management approaches (e.g. PMP, PgMP, MSP, MoP, PRINCE2, …)
• Knowledge of industry and / or Government best-practice project controls tools and methods, with experience both of using these tools and methods, and carrying out equivalent duties without these tools and methods.
• Advanced knowledge of MS Excel, MS Project. Good knowledge of MS Word, MS Powerpoint, MS SharePoint, MS Access (or other relational database systems).
• Familiarity with NATO's mission, structure, and activities.
• Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Management Science, Engineering, Project Management, Operational Research, or a related discipline.

Attributes/Competencies:

Personal Attributes:

• The post requires an inquisitive, details oriented, rigorous person; who is able to interpret different ways of reporting and communicating from others and translate them into overarching standardized summaries. This requires precision, tact, adaptability, negotiation, and personal resilience. The ability to recognize, respect and deal with cognitive diversity is key. The post requires a systems-thinker, who is able to integrate and synthesize information into a coherent situational awareness picture. It requires comfort with ambiguity, and the ability to support decision-making under uncertainty

Managerial Responsibilities:

• Controls daily work priorities and may be involved in the direction, planning, coordination and review of the work of others

Professional Contacts:

• The post does not have the authority to commit the organization to any CoA externally, but interacts with every level of the organization to collect information and report on the progress of the initiatives.

Contribution To Objectives:

• The post provides analysis and advice to assist decision makers in defining internal business change priorities and plans, affecting the whole organization.

Security Clearance

The successful applicant will be required to apply for and receive a NATO SECRET Security Clearance prior to final confirmation of contract and commencement of employment.

Contract

• This position is linked to a specific NATO project and is for a limited duration of 3 (three) years only.
• Serving NATO International Civilian staff will be offered a contract in accordance with the NATO Civilian Personnel Regulations.  

Notes for Candidates

The HQ SACT web site gives full details on the eligibility criteria and application processes to be adopted by all candidates.  However, candidates should particularly note:

Please answer each of the pre-screening questions completely in English. Expressions such as: “please see attached CV, please see annex, please see enclosed document, etc” are not acceptable; this is a cause of immediate rejection of the application.

Particular attention should be given to Education and Experience section of your application form, which should be populated with details of your career to date and educational achievements and certifications as they relate to your application.

The candidature of NATO redundant staff at grade G11 will be considered with priority.

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.

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

This vacancy will close on 15 September 2025 @ 17:59hrs (EDT)/11:59hrs (CEST).