Systems Engineer

NOTE: Previously proposed candidates were non-compliant for the following reasons: - The candidate attested that was incorrectly proposed for this RFQ. - The candidate’s expectation is that the work will be performed off-site. - The candidates are not compliant due to limited cloud experience of proposed personnel and limited relevance of the previous experience to the requirements. - The candidate lacks the required depth in building shared environments/services. The proposed candidate stated that he doesn’t hold a valid NATO security clearance. - The candidate has limited relevance for cloud environment development/management.

Deadline Date: Monday 8 July 2024

Requirement: Systems Engineer (Innovation)

Location: The Hague, NL

Full Time On-Site: Yes

Time On-Site: 100%

Period of Performance: 2024 BASE: 2024 BASE: As soon as possible not later than 19th August 2024 – 31st December 2024 with possibility to exercise the following options:

2025 Option: 1st January 2025 until 31st December 2025

2026 Option: 1st January 2026 until 31st December 2026

2027 Option: 1st January 2027 until 31st December 2027

2028 Option: 1st January 2028 until 31st December 2028

Start date is as soon as possible but not later than 19th August 2024

Required Security Clearance: NATO SECRET

1 INTRODUCTION

NCI Agency is looking for a Systems Engineer to support Allied Command Transformation (ACT) Science and Technology (S&T) PoW activities in the area of cloud automation technology and exercises in 2024. Furthermore, the resource will also support the Agency’s multinational project in the area of remote interoperability test facility.

The NCI Agency, as the main ICT service provider in NATO and the main technical entity providing subject matter expertise in the domain of cloud automation under the technical programmes of work with NATO ACT. The candidate will provide technical support and expertise to the ACT Science and Technology Programme of Work project that is being executed by Chief Technology Office Innovating Team.

2 OBJECTIVES

NCI Agency is contributing to the ACT’s S&T experimentation participate in designing and automating the deployment of multiple NATO C2 applications in a combined public and private cloud environment. Candidate will have the opportunity to implement CI/CD best practices and automation in a multi‐cloud context leveraging an open source stack. The candidate is also expected to influence the deployment and automation strategy and implement their ideas with a focus on abstracting the infrastructure and platform services from application developers.

Furthermore, the candidate will provide technical expertise to the Agency’s multinational project in the area of secure communications interoperability specifications. In this context, the candidate will have the opportunity to design and build landing zones in a cloud environment to enable interoperability testing. The candidate will have the opportunity to participate in standards setting processes and implementing testing environments in the domain of network security.

3 SCOPE OF WORK

Under the direction / guidance of the NCIA Point of Contact or delegated staff, the Systems Engineer (Innovation) engineer will support building the remote interoperability test facility.

This includes the following activities:

Support NCI Agency in the NATO Programmes of Work with ACT in the area of cloud automation technologies.

Support NCI Agency’s multinational project in the area of secure communications interoperability standards. Act as a work package lead to track progress of the technical work in the work package.

Provide technical support to NATO exercises and associated events organized by NATO bodies and the Agency.

Collaborate to the development of software automation code using Terraform, Ansible and/or Helm for the events Innovation Continuum 2024 and CWIX.

Perform cloud administration tasks on an AWS account based on GitOps, and on multiple Microsoft Azure tenants.

Collaborate to the planning and organisational aspects for the upcoming experimentations.

Participate to the bi‐weekly project meetings held in the NCI Agency in The Hague either online or face to face.

The contractor will be part of a team and will provide the service using an Agile and iterative approach during multiple sprints. Each sprint is planned for a duration of 1 week. The content and scope of each sprint will be agreed during the sprint‐planning meeting.

4 DELIVERABLES AND PAYMENT MILESTONES

The following deliverables are expected from the service on this statement of work:

2024 BASE: 01 January 2024 to 31 December 2024

Deliverable 01: 24 sprints of cloud automation support, technical support, and remote interoperability test environment development.

Payment Milestones: Upon completion of each fourth sprint and at the end of the work.

The NCIA team reserves the possibility to exercise the described options, depending on the project priorities and requirements.

The payment shall be dependent upon successful acceptance of the Delivery Acceptance Sheet (DAS) – (Annex B) including the EBA Receipt number Payment will be provided based on these deliveries as indicated in the table

Invoices shall be accompanied with a Delivery Acceptance Sheet (Annex B) signed by the Contractor and project authority.

2025 OPTION: 01 January 2025 to 31 December 2025

Deliverable 01: Up to 48 sprints of cloud automation support, technical support, and remote interoperability test environment development.

Payment Milestones: Upon completion of each fourth sprint and at the end of the work.

The NCIA team reserves the possibility to exercise the described options, depending on the project priorities and requirements.

The payment shall be dependent upon successful acceptance of the Delivery Acceptance Sheet (DAS) – (Annex B) including the EBA Receipt number Payment will be provided based on these deliveries as indicated in the table

Invoices shall be accompanied with a Delivery Acceptance Sheet (Annex B) signed by the Contractor and project authority.

2026 OPTION: 01 January 2026 to 31 December 2026

Deliverable 01: Up to 48 sprints of cloud automation support, technical support, and remote interoperability test environment development.

Payment Milestones: Upon completion of each fourth sprint and at the end of the work.

The NCIA team reserves the possibility to exercise the described options, depending on the project priorities and requirements.

The payment shall be dependent upon successful acceptance of the Delivery Acceptance Sheet (DAS) – (Annex B) including the EBA Receipt number Payment will be provided based on these deliveries as indicated in the table

Invoices shall be accompanied with a Delivery Acceptance Sheet (Annex B) signed by the Contractor and project authority.

2027 OPTION: 01 January 2027 to 31 December 2027

Deliverable 01: Up to 48 sprints of cloud automation support, technical support, and remote interoperability test environment development.

Payment Milestones: Upon completion of each fourth sprint and at the end of the work.

The NCIA team reserves the possibility to exercise the described options, depending on the project priorities and requirements.

The payment shall be dependent upon successful acceptance of the Delivery Acceptance Sheet (DAS) – (Annex B) including the EBA Receipt number Payment will be provided based on these deliveries as indicated in the table

Invoices shall be accompanied with a Delivery Acceptance Sheet (Annex B) signed by the Contractor and project authority.

2028 OPTION: 01 January 2028 to 31 December 2028

Deliverable 01: Up to 48 sprints of cloud automation support, technical support, and remote interoperability test environment development.

Payment Milestones: Upon completion of each fourth sprint and at the end of the work.

The NCIA team reserves the possibility to exercise the described options, depending on the project priorities and requirements.

The payment shall be dependent upon successful acceptance of the Delivery Acceptance Sheet (DAS) – (Annex B) including the EBA Receipt number Payment will be provided based on these deliveries as indicated in the table

Invoices shall be accompanied with a Delivery Acceptance Sheet (Annex B) signed by the Contractor and project authority.

5 COORDINATION AND REPORTING

The contractor shall participate in daily status update meetings, sprint planning, sprint retrospectives and other meetings, physically in the office, or in person via electronic means using Conference Call capabilities, according to project manager’s instructions.

For each sprint to be considered as complete and payable, the contractor must report the outcome of his/her work during the sprint, first verbally during the retrospective meeting and then in written within three (3) days after the sprint’s end date. The format of this report shall be a short email to the NCIA Point of Contact mentioning briefly the work held and the development achievements during the sprint.

6 SCHEDULE

This task order will be active immediately after signing of the contract by both parties.

The BASE period of performance is as soon as possible but not later than 19th August 2024 and will end no later than 31st December 2024

If the 2025 option is exercised, the period of performance is 01st January 2025 to 31st December 2025.

If the 2026 option is exercised, the period of performance is 01st January 2026 to 31st December 2026.

If the 2027 option is exercised, the period of performance is 01st January 2027 to 31st December 2027.

If the 2028 option is exercised, the period of performance is 01st January 2028 to 31st December 2028.

7 CONSTRAINTS

All the deliverables provided under this statement of work will be based on NCI Agency templates or agreed with the project point of contact.

All code, scripts, documentation, etc. will be stored under configuration management and/or in the provided NCI Agency tools.

All the deliverables of this project will be considered NATO UNCLASSIFIED

Part of the work may involve handling classified networks, therefore, a security clearance at the right level is expected for the contractor(s) undertaking this project, although the contractor may start working already while the clearance process is ongoing.

8 SECURITY

The security classification of the service will be up to NATO SECRET.

The contractors is required to hold a valid NATO SECRET security clearance

9 PRACTICAL ARRANGEMENTS

The contractor will be required to provide the service on‐site in The Hague. Access to the NCI Agency NATO Software Factory platform will be provided in coordination with the NCIA Point of Contact or delegated staff.

The contractor may be required to travel to NCI Agency, Brussels, Belgium and other sites within NATO for completing these tasks. Travel expenses will be reimbursed to the individual directly (outside this contract) under NATO rules.

Travel expenses will be reimbursed in accordance with Article 5.5 of AAS+ Framework Contract

This service must be accomplished by ONE contractor.

10 QUALIFICATIONS

[See Requirements]

Requirements

10 QUALIFICATIONS

• The contractors is required to hold a valid NATO SECRET security clearance

The consultancy support for this work requires a systems engineer with the following qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field. At least 6 years of relevant professional experience.
• Deep knowledge and demonstrable experience in IT automation and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools in cloud environments, such as Ansible, Terraform, and Helm.
• Experience with containerization technologies and orchestrators, such as Docker, Podman, and
• Kubernetes/OpenShift.
• Familiarity with DevOps practices, tools and methodologies.
• Proven experience with Linux and Windows system administration.
• Strong knowledge of one or more cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, GCP, or OCI.
• Deep understanding of cloud architecture principles particularly in setting up landing zones and cloud network design
• Excellent understanding of networking concepts and cloud networking technologies.
• Experience with cryptographic elements: Key management (PKI), encryption algorithms (AES) and encryption in transit (TLS) Documentation skills, with the ability to create detailed technical specifications and architecture diagrams.

Preferred qualifications:

• Extensive knowledge of AWS or Microsoft Azure. Related Professional Cloud Certifications are desirable.
• Experience in AWS edge devices (e.g., Snow family) or Microsoft Azure (e.g., Azure Stack Hub).
• Working in an international environment comprising both military and civilian elements.
• Experience working with standards organizations and/or open source software maintenance.
• Configure and maintain network security controls, including firewalls, VPNs, and access control lists (ACLs).
• Implement and manage cryptographic elements like PKI, digital certificates, and encryption algorithms (AES).
• Experience in multi‐cloud deployments.