Deadline Date: Friday 17 July 2026
Requirement: JISR Services Support Centre (JSSC) Chief Technician
Location: Mons, BE
Full Time On-Site: Yes
Time On-Site: 100%
Total Scope of the request (hours): 641
Required Start Date: 17 August 2026
End Contract Date: 31 December 2026
Required Security Clearance: NATO SECRET
Duties & Role:
The contractor will be part of a team and will work in an integrated NIC + Contractors team, filling in a Chief Technician role.
The scope of the assignment will be limited to providing Level2 and Service Management Support according to the submitted Incidents, Service Requests, Change Requests, Task, Requests for Information or Internal activities, traceable through the NCIA ITSM and/or Azure DevOPS NATO Software Factory ticketing system.
The Chief Technician will be required to respond, document, categorize and solve all the assigned tickets according to the internal processes and procedures. The work will be executed mainly onsite, but some activities might require offsite presence at other NATO locations. Generally, remote work cannot be performed offsite since the nature and classification of the work requires the incumbent to be present in the office with access to classified networks. Nevertheless, incidental requests will be reviewed on a case by case basis.
The Chief Technician will participate in the daily reporting and planning activities (daily meetings) as well as the required participation in workshops, events and conferences related to the supported services, as requested by the Service Delivery Manager(s).
The Chief Technician will have to resolve tickets covering a wide range of Level2 activities, for example:
- Install, maintain, monitor and support the JSSC services (Intel- FS, ANB, Release Server, CoreGIS, HMART, CSD IPL/IWS, ICMT, AOSS, NAMIS, NABIS, REACT) mainly in support of Operations, Missions and NATO exercises.
- Provide timely response and resolution to all support tickets (incidents, service requests, changes, internal activities) following the internal processes
- Escalate issues to Level3 support team as appropriate, support in the troubleshooting and debugging of found issues (document and escalate trouble tickets from ITSM into Azure DevOps work items, as well as support in their resolution and testing)
- Offer Subject Matter Expertise for the JSSC applications to the user community and to COIs (supporting the Requests For Information)
- Get involved in User Acceptance Testing for new software releases in both organizing and test execution (supporting the Change Requests)
- Apply patches and install ISR software updates, coordinate outages (according to agreed Approved Service Interruptions, Security Audit Findings, regular software updates)
- Participate in NRF/ARF/Enterprise CABs as needed to support new software releases in the validation and verification process (support to Change Requests)
- Provide support in maintaining the NATO Software Factory infrastructure, user and rights management, software updates and internal activities
- Interface between JSSC applications and inter-operable FASes from other Business Areas
- Participates in on-call support. He/she also adheres to flexible 8 hrs/5 days a week shifts, which may be scheduled on-demand based on operational needs. This scheduling flexibility ensures that the duty activities can start earlier or later in a day, providing consistent and adaptable support in alignment with the organization's requirements.
Skills, Knowledge & Experience:
- The candidate must have a currently active NATO SECRET security clearance
- Experienced system engineering knowledge with proven Level2 support experience in multinational and/or military organisations, with at least 5 years of experience in Windows Server and Client Administration, Active Directory Administration, IIS web hosting, Linux administration, virtualization, and containerization technologies.
- Experience with automation and modern platform technologies, including Ansible, REST APIs/JSON, PostgreSQL/SQL, microservices architectures, Podman/Docker, Apache Kafka (or similar messaging platforms), and monitoring/logging solutions such as Prometheus, Grafana, Logstash, and Elastic Search.
- Microsoft SQL Server Administration knowledge (installation, configuration, maintenance, backup policies).
- SQL scripting knowledge, data consistency and data clean-up based on consultation with the user community and development team.
- Knowledge of networking, infrastructure, and security services, including DNS, DHCP, WSUS, GPOs, networking fundamentals, load balancing, PKI/certificates, and authentication concepts such as ADFS.
- Azure Devops and/or AWS experience.
- Hardware and software configuration of Server hosting platforms, custom disk configurations with specific storage controllers, RAID configuration, redundancy and safety approach in all levels of designing in implementing of the solutions.
- Very good virtualization skills, preferably on VMware with System Centre integration.
- Good knowledge of automation and scripting technologies, including PowerShell, Bash, and/or Python scripting.
- Experience with XML file manipulation, XSD validation and maintenance, and automation through PowerShell and scripting technologies.
- Extensive remote server administration experience.
- Must have excellent spoken and written English communication and presentation skills, as demonstrated by recent experience (within the past 5 years).
- Must have proficiency in the office Suite, Reporting tools.
- Must have excellent understanding and experience of network communication protocols TCP/IP, OSI layers, Firewalls and Security principles.
- Must demonstrate the ability and self-motivation to work on his/her own but must also work well within groups as part of a team.
- Must demonstrate an ability and keen sense for problem-solving.
- Motivated, good communication skills, team player.
- Able to work independently with minimal supervision.
- Knowledge of NATO responsibilities and organization.
Desirable Experience and Education:
- Desirable skills: previous knowledge of NATO FASs constitute and advantage, NATO software lifecycle support, knowledge of NATO policies and process.
- Desirable experience in various areas of Software Engineering including: Software design, implementation and testing, Programming languages, techniques and methodologies associated with the duties described above, Very good knowledge of commonly used standards and best practices for software engineering, including design patterns.
- Desirable knowledge/Exposure to technologies like WSO2, Kafka, Apache Camel, Redis, Neo4J, Angular, XSLT, Java development, Agile software development methodologies.
- Desirable: knowledge and experience in: Application server technologies, Multi-tiered, distributed systems, Service-Oriented Architectures, Relational data base management systems, Web authoring, design and administration tools,
- Desirable: knowledge and experience in: C#, HTML5 and modern JavaScript/TypeScript frameworks, Web Services, OData.
