Quality Assurance Analyst

NATO; Norfolk (CT); On-site; USD 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

NATO seeks a staff officer in the Requirements Traceability and Quality Assurance Branch to provide requirements QA analysis support to Requirements Management Teams and Capability Programme Directors. The role may lead a Requirements Management Team and will coordinate guidance across DOTMLPFI for all assigned Operational Requirements and high-level requirements.

Responsibilities include validating quality, maintaining traceability, and mentoring staff on QA standards.

Qualifications

• Bachelor-level degree in a related discipline with 2 years of related experience, or equivalent vocational qualification with 4 years of post-related experience.
• Experience in quality assurance of government/military capability development processes is required.

Responsibilities

• Represent ACT at meetings and working groups within Europe.
• Monitor requirements throughout life cycle to ensure validity and alignment with user needs.
• Analyze and verify requirements to ensure quality standards are met.

Skills

Quality assurance

Requirements management

Analytical skills

Verbal communication

Written communication

Education

Relevant degree

Higher secondary + professional qualification

Tools

Requirements management tools

Job description

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 Requirements Division executes requirements management for NATO capabilities. It develops capability requirements, provides traceability and quality assurance of capability requirements, performs gap analysis and supports interoperability and implementation options across the DOTMLPFI spectrum.

The Requirements Traceability and Quality Assurance Branch supports Requirements Management Teams and Capabilities Programme Directors to maintain the quality of the capabilities requirements and traceability throughout the lifecycle of the capability. The Branch produces and ensures bi-directional traceability among all requirements, from the Operational Requirements, Capability Requirements, and other high-level requirements down through the technical requirements and specifications. Branch members may be assigned to lead Requirements Management Teams.

The incumbent is a staff officer in the Requirements Traceability and Quality Assurance Branch to provide requirements quality assurance analysis support to Requirements Management Teams and Capability Program Directors. The incumbent may lead a Requirements Management Team.

Principal Duties:

• Represent ACT at appropriate levels of engagement at requirements management related meetings, discussions, committees and working groups within Europe.
• Monitor requirements developed in all life cycle stages to support continued integrity and quality, to ensure they remain valid, applicable, and continue to satisfy operational user needs.
• Conducts analysis of and verification of requirements to ensure continuous adherence to quality standards and processes
• Conducts analysis of and verification of requirements quality standards and processes, through the capture and analysis of lessons learned from requirements management processes.
• As a member of a Requirements Management Team, validate the quality of capability requirements and their continuous alignment with user needs across all aspects of DOTMLPFI for all assigned Operational Requirements, Capability Targets, and other high-level requirements.
• Provides technical guidance to Requirements Management Teams and Capability Programme Directors related to maintaining quality of requirements.
• Supports identification of options in for resolving requirements management issues.
• Maintains configuration control of the requirements traceability matrices throughout the capability life cycle.
• Provides guidance, mentoring and training to Requirements Division staff on requirements quality assurance standards, processes and integration in the requirements definition process.
• Support requirements quality assurance aspects of Board and Committee approval processes.
• Coordinate requirements quality assurance technical guidance for the elicitation, capture and development of capability requirements across all aspects of DOTMLPFI for all assigned
• Operational Requirements, Capability Targets, and other high-level requirements to HQ SACT branches, ACO subject matter experts, industry, and Host Nations, as required.
• Support the management of traceability, validity, and applicability of requirements through the life cycle.
• Mentor Requirements division members on requirements management process, practices, and best practices

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 functional 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.
• Has at least two years (in the last five years) experience in quality assurance of government or military capability development processes including requirements engineering or through life management processes
• Has at least two years (in the last five years) experience in conducting quality assurance of programme management and requirements engineering processes and providing evidence-based traceability analysis to assure project scope.
• Has experience in accordance with the specific subject matter area of expertise.
• Experience in handing complex problems.
• Excellent analytical, problem solving and verbal and written communication skills.
• Knowledge of best practice government/military capability development procedures and organization.
• Knowledge of best practice government/military capability development, implementation and in-service support processes.
• Knowledge of best practice government/military funding and acquisition processes.

Language:

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

Desirable Qualifications / Experience:

• Experience in the field of requirements engineering to include requirements management and requirements elicitation.
• Knowledge of requirements management tools.
• Experience in briefing senior leaders/decision makers at the FOGO/governance level in a National or Multinational environment.
• Knowledge of Capability Development and Management processes in Infrastructure.
• Operational knowledge of Military Engineering and infrastructure development.
• Working knowledge of quality assurance management processes.
• Working knowledge of Configuration Management methods and practices.
• Programme and Project Management experience within a complex and dynamic programme environment
• Trained in requirements capture/collection, definition, decomposition and requirements management processes.
• Trained in Through Life Cycle Capability Traceability Management processes.
• Trained in project management process according to PRINCE2, MSP, MoR or equivalent

Attributes/Competencies:

Personal Attributes:

• Personal integrity & sense of responsibility.
• Professionalism and ability to structure, organize and prioritize work.
• Ability to take initiative and to work independently.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills. Must be able to capture complex problems, breakdown thoughts and ideas to their individual elements, recognise connections between these elements, and provide verifiable descriptions of implications.
• Ability to work under time pressure and deal with multiple tasks simultaneously.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills. Ability to work harmoniously and communicate strongly and coordinate in the diverse international environment - horizontally and vertically.
• Must be able to mediate amongst stakeholders and resolve conflicting points of view to achieve solutions.
• Must be a strong negotiator able to construct common learning processes within a group.

Managerial Responsibilities:

Responsible for daily work priority setting and results of work may affect higher level work prioritization. Work involves synchronization with other work strands and cross-functional planning

Professional Contacts:

The incumbent must develop and maintain professional contacts across the Command and externally on functional matters. Must be adept at relationship building, negotiation and conflict resolution to achieve results.

Contribution To Objectives:

The incumbent provides essential leadership of requirements QA. Contributes to project teams in the development of capability requirements to enable the execution of the capability delivery process in NATO. The incumbent has experience/knowledge of the full requirements life-cycle. The delivery of the incumbent's outputs directly impacts SACT's ability to meet strategic intent.

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

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.

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 encouraging women to apply.

This vacancy will close on 23 November @ 17:59hrs (EST)/11:59hrs (CET).