Data Engineer

Spektrum have a wide range of exciting opportunities in several global locations.

We are always looking to add great new talent to our team and look forward to hearing from you.

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 Duties and Responsibilities

Data engineering

• Designs and implements data pipelines and data stores to acquire and prepare data.
• Applies data engineering standards and tools to create and maintain data pipelines and extract, transform and load data.
• Carries out routine data quality checks and remediation.

Programming/software development

• Designs, codes, verifies, tests, documents, amends and refactors moderately complex programs/scripts.
• Applies agreed standards and tools to achieve a well-engineered result.
• Identifies issues related to software development activities.
• Proposes practical solutions to resolve issues.
• Collaborates in reviews of work with others as appropriate.

Systems integration and build

• Defines the software modules needed for an integration build and produces a build definition for each generation of the software.

Data management

• Assesses the integrity of data from multiple sources.
• Provides advice on the transformation of data from one format/medium to another.
• Enables the availability, integrity and search ability of information through the application of formal data and metadata structures and protection measures.

Data modelling and design

• Applies standard data modelling and design techniques based upon a detailed understanding of requirements.
• Establishes, modifies and maintains data structures and associated components.
• Communicates the details of data structures and associated components to others using the data structures and associated components.

Essential Skills and Experience

• Ability to design, build and manage data pipelines for data structures encompassing data transformation, data models, schemas, metadata and workload management.
• At least two years' experience planning and maintaining data lakes and pipeline processes, both batch-wise and (near) realtime;
• Experience in working with large, heterogeneous datasets in building and optimizing data pipelines, pipeline architectures and integrated datasets using data integration technologies.
• Experience in using of data engineering tools to support data science, data analytics and data visualisation
• Experience with state-of-the-art data engineering, analytics, data integration and pipeline tools/programming language.
• Solid understanding of data security best practices, including data encryption, access controls, authentication/authorization mechanisms, and compliance requirements.
• Experience with monitoring and logging tools to ensure the reliability and performance of data pipelines and AI systems.
• Familiarity with containerization and orchestration tools such as Docker and Kubernetes.
• Knowledge of best practice of software development. E.g CI/CD pipelines, unit/functional testing, following styling guides

Working Location

• The Hague, Netherlands

Working Policy

• On-Site

Travel

• Some travel to other NATO sites may be required

Security Clearance

• Valid National or NATO Secret personal security clearance

We never know what new opportunities might be just over the horizon. If this opportunity isn't for you please feel free to send us your resume anyway and be the first to know if something suitable for your skills and experience comes up.