Staff Officer (Best Practices QM & BM)

Schedule: Full-time

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 Capability Development Directorate (CAPDEV) comprises two Divisions—Requirements and Capabilities. The Directorate supports SACT in his Capabilities Requirement Authority (CRA) role. It is responsible for a holistic through lifecycle Capability Development approach that infuses innovation and transformative efforts that are an integral part of the Warfare Development. This includes responsibilities for elicitation, development, capture and collection, quality review, traceability and visibility of capability requirements.

The Capabilities Division coordinates the development of capabilities from capability planning through acceptance and then disposal with the management entities, NATO Headquarters staff and the NATO Governance Structure. This entails synchronizing horizontally across capabilities to achieve coherent efforts and outcomes.

The Programme Management Office (PMO) is organized into two sections; Programme & Project Management (P2M) and Best Practices/Quality Management.

The branch provides Programme & Project Management (P2M) expertise to support development of NATO's common funded capabilities and oversight over capability programmes.

Specific support to Programme Directors includes integrating P2M Best Practices and Quality Management processes.

The PMO also ensures consistency of delivery across the programmes and projects by providing standards, methods and processes, knowledge management, assurance, training and mentoring & coaching.

Moreover, the PMO reports via a programmatic overview for the entire capability portfolio through their entire life Cycle. Additionally, the Branch provides a hub for information for key NATO stakeholders (including SCs, HNs, NATO Agencies, NATO HQ and Territorial Host Nations) to facilitate a transparent distribution of programme and project information between all stakeholders, as well as the Nations.

With the now permanently increased demand signal related to the NATO 2030 initiative and beyond, additional workforce resources are required to meet the expanding demand upon Capability Enabling activities within PMO programme responsibilities in order to match resource to task.

This PLN will be responsible for analysing, recommending and supporting to implement process improvements to capability delivery across the BAU and NATO 2030 additional programmes and projects. Given the significant increase in workload, process improvements can create considerable benefits within CFCD. This PLN will analyze current business processes and identify new and alternative approaches to more effectively and efficiently perform programme and project management of capability delivery business activities. This person should be a senior SME who will use scientific methods to examine and improve efficiency (doing more with less or the same resources) and effectiveness (deliver the desired outcome with those resources) of common funded capability delivery specifically within HQ SACT.

Principal Duties:

Analyse and optimize current business processes, and identify new and alternative approaches to more effectively and efficiently perform programme and project management of capability delivery business activities in support of NATO 2030 initiatives:

Evaluate internal workflows and business processes.

Identify inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and areas for improvement in existing processes and workflows.

Interpret complex data and business metrics for relevant stakeholders.

Document business process modeling activities for future reference.

Identify methods to streamline operations, enhance efficiency, and increase overall productivity.

Support continuous improvement initiatives and to achieving operational excellence. Specifically working from a business, technical and/or operational perspective.

Routinely coordinate with other scientific professionals, programme directors, capability monitors and SMEs from different functional areas.

Ensure best practices are captured, collect and process lessons learned, provide and assess tools, ensure standardization by:

Standards (Define and implement governance standards - reporting and information requirements, financial management standards (through links to finance), accountability and escalation routes). This service area has following principal objectives:

Develop, define and maintain processes, methods and approaches

Capture best practices in Programme Management and incorporate into CD department

Propose tools ensuring collaborative working across team, department and organization boundaries

Develop directives and tailoring/flexing guidelines for standards, methods and approaches.

Develop templates

Incorporate Lessons Identify (LI) to appropriate documentation and inform directives according to taxonomy.

Ensure standardization providing links to other standards.

Provide Assurance through the Manage Lessons identified/Lessons learned process within ACT CD department and coordination within CMF framework by:

Collecting lessons from CD branches through the usage of appropriate tools

Analyse and assess collected Lessons through appropriate processes.

Periodically report lessons to CD leadership in line with ACT and NATO LI/LL process.

Advise on Risk management, mitigation and contingency planning.

Essential Qualifications / Experience:

University Degree in information technology, computer science, engineering, mathematics, business management, business administration, operations research, business process engineering, management sciences, business innovation, engineering management, economics, public administration or related discipline and two (2) years of functional related experience (Or) Higher Secondary education with four (4) years of post-related experience

Four (4) years of experience in analysing and improving programme management and business processes.

Four (4) years of experience in programme management or programme management office within technology area.

Demonstrable knowledge and understanding of programme Management methodologies, metrics and concepts, and capability to apply such concepts within the context of the post.

Strong communication and collaboration skills, including the ability to translate technical findings to non-technical stakeholders and work effectively in cross-functional teams.

Excellent management, planning, and problem solving and communication (written and verbal) skills.

Language:

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

Desirable Qualifications / Experience:

Qualified Project Management Professional (PMP), PRINCE 2 (AXELOS) or equivalent.

Qualified Portfolio, Programme and Project Office (P3O) or equivalent.

Qualified Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) (AXELOS) or equivalent

An understanding of a National or NATO Capability Management Processes.

Knowledge of NATO responsibilities and organization, including ACT, ACO and NATO Agencies.

Knowledge of and experience of programme and project management.

Knowledge of and experience from problem definition and analysis using Industry best practices.

Must be a qualified professional with appropriate understanding in data analysis and the ability to make effective use of provided software.

Must have proven ability to train and educate personnel in specific sector of competencies.

Advance knowledge of Word Processing, Spreadsheet and Graphics Presentation

Attributes/Competencies:

Personal Attributes:

The incumbent must work harmoniously in a multi-national environment while representing and projecting the needs of ACT in a firm but tactful manner.

The incumbent must be adept at public speaking and negotiation methods required to coordinate positions and gain multinational agreements.

The incumbent must exercise sound thought, judgment, initiative, adaptability and flexibility, particularly when dealing with organizations and agencies in a multi-national and multi-cultural environment.

The incumbent must exercise tact and diplomacy when dealing with working groups, committees, contractors, and consultants to achieve stated ACT goals and objectives.

The incumbent may routinely be expected to work extended hours and to travel as part of the appointment.

This post requires a very high level of work maturity and intellectual capacity to deal with the complexities of programme management within capability development. The requirement is for deep, extensive knowledge of programme management and recent experience in the development of capabilities at the tactical, operational and strategic levels.

Managerial Responsibilities:

Work will require high degree of external coordination on programmes that affects NATO as a whole.

May lead the work of process teams and chair meetings.

Professional Contacts:

The incumbent acts as a capability development and programme management advisor providing corporate knowledge to senior ACT leadership.

This requires the ability to liaise effectively, both internally and externally, with military and civilian personnel up to the rank/position equivalent to a military OF-8. Outside contacts include senior officials in NATO HQ, NATO agencies and research centres, and national government agencies and industry.

Contribution To Objectives:

A prime objective of SACT is to lead the transformation of Alliance capabilities. This post directly affects this objective by providing capability development and programme management expertise for the development of common-funded capabilities.

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. Newly recruited staff will be offered a three year definite duration contract.

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 G15 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.

This vacancy will close on 12 June 2024 @ 17:59hrs (EDT)/11:59hrs (CEST).