Deadline Date: Monday 3 March 2025
Requirement: Interoperability Solution Development / Architecture Support
Location: The Hague, South Holland, NETHERLANDS
Not to Exceed: 72,900 Euro
Required Start Date: 14 April 2025
Required Security Clearance: NATO Secret
Introduction:
* The NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCI Agency) located in The Hague, The Netherlands, is currently involved in the development of new capabilities for NATO as well as in the support of existing capabilities. In the light of these activities, the C2 Service Centre is looking for solution architect with experience in C2 System Engineering, Data Lake, Data Modelling and Cloud Activities.
* Solution Architect shall provide the technical C2 expert subject matter expertise solutions and communication of high-level structures to enable and guide the design and development of integrated solutions that meet current and future business needs.
* Changes to service, process, organisation, operating model and other aspects may be required in addition to technology components, and solutions must demonstrate how agreed requirements (such as automation of business processes) are met, any requirements which are not fully met or, and any options or considerations which require a business decision.
Objectives:
The main objective of this statement of work is the support the development of new and maintenance of existing software modules, provide the service delivery and solution engineering solutions to NATO Data Lake/NCDF ecosystem of capabilities of Lake Diver (search) and Integration Core (Data Lake/NCDF Node).
Scope of Work:
The scope is supporting Research and Development (R&D) of the future NATO capabilities developed by NCI Agency for NATO enterprise and take on the testing effort in various venues across NATO.
The services will be delivered in Sprints, and each sprint will have the duration of two weeks.
During one sprint, the assigned personnel will act as one of the leading technical engineer demonstrating future Data Lake/NCDF Information Services ecosystem consisting of Data Lake (NCDF Information Service Node), INT-CORE Data Lake Node and Lake Diver, performing the following activities:
* Act in the position of the senior engineering expert to guide the development team to make sure that capabilities are being developed useful to NATO Enterprise.
* Act as a deputy manager and, deputy, managing stakeholders to capture and develop the requirements, architecture, components and vision of Data Lake, Lake Diver and INT-CORE.
* Engage with user communities to capture the operational requirements.
* Participate in yearly exercises such as Coalition Warrior Interoperability Exercise (CWIX) and/or Bold Quest as one of the technical leads in the month of June taking place in Poland or other exercise locations.
* Engage with nations to develop test plan scenario, architecture and support the execution of the exercise as the key SME.
* Visit operational entities across NATO Enterprise to conduct interviews with operators. Understand user requirements and translate the requirements into solutions.
* Produce detailed component specifications and transform it into detailed designs for implementation.
* The provision of comprehensive guidance on the development of, and modifications to, solution components to ensure that they take account of relevant architectures, strategies, policies, standards and practices and that existing and planned solution components remain compatible.
* If needed, act as part the development team by developing software code.
* Ensure appropriate standards (including industrial, international and NATO) are adhered.
* Provides advice on technical aspects of system development and integration (including supporting change management processes).
* Assist in the preparation of technical plans and works to ensure that appropriate technical resources are made available.
The content and scope of each sprint will be agreed during the sprint-planning meeting, in writing, based on the activities mentioned above.
All of the defined deliverables are deliverable artefacts such briefings, reports, designs or specifications with a well-defined NCI Agency-specified format.
All deliverables are to be peer reviewed within the deliverable cycle. Input and guidance will be provided by NCI Agency in written from or/and during the targeted review meetings.
Lake Diver, Int-Core (Data Lake Node) And Data Lake:
NATO Lake Diver is a natural language search prototype capability, currently classified as Minimum Viable Product (MVP). This capability is leveraging NATO Data Lake and NATO Integration Core (INT-CORE). Lake Diver is based on JavaScript front end.
INT-CORE is an enabling Functional Area System (FAS) developed in C# with its web component undergoing transition from Silverlight to HTML5. INT-CORE is supporting NATO and national Functional Area Systems by providing data-centricity, data management, data augmentation and data integration. INT-CORE is designed to provide a toolbox for Data Mangers across the NATO enterprise to configure data services in ad-hoc fashion.
INT-CORE provides flexible and adaptable mechanisms that enable information exchange to support the C5ISR, mission-specific business processes and bridge information exchange gaps while bringing:
* Rapid provision of information exchange bridging services;
* Supporting transformation of information exchanges from system centric to data centric;
* Aggregation of Battle Space Objects using different formats and protocols for all data sources;
* Flexible translation, fusion and augmentation of the data for consumers in a required format and protocol;
* Enhanced interoperability within NATO and nations between FAS;
* Improved situational awareness throughout the battle space;
* Integration with new data sources can be done without the software code changes, allowing the rapid delivery of validated solutions to emerging requirements;
* Provision of system administration, monitoring, error handling and error notification capabilities;
Interoperability Standardization:
Within the context of the Interoperability Standardization Program of Work, as well as other related projects such as the development of NATO Core Data Framework (NCDF), the selected personnel will undergo different development and engineering tasks related to interoperability of multinational systems.
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 architecture artefacts, scripts, documentation and required code will be stored under configuration management in the provided TIDE, TIDE GIT and/or NCIA AZURE as part of the NSF Cloud.
* Part of the work may involve handling classified networks, therefore, a security clearance NATO Secret is expected for the contractor undertaking this project.
* Contractor must deliver travel estimates 2 weeks from the point of the request in order to update Purchase Order authorizing contractors travel.
Security:
The services performed under this SOW require that the assigned personnel have a valid NATO SECRET security clearance.
The expected classification level of the deliverables is NATO UNCLASSIFIED.
Practical Arrangements:
* This is a deliverables-based contract.
* The contractor shall support the NCIA on-site for up-to 40% of time in the NCIA The Hague, Netherlands premises during contract performance. Contractor can provide services remotely for up-to 60% of the remaining time in a NATO country as per NATO Security Policy. The remote performance could be increased depending on status of the project with agreement of the line manager; in this case the competed price remain unchanged.
* Travel costs from off-site of Contractor location to on-site to The Hague shall be included in the sprint costs.
* (Optional) Up-to 2 Sprints (for connected duration of 1 month) yearly shall be executed in the month of June in Bydgoszcz, Poland as part of the CWIX. The travel duty costs of this optional item shall be included in the sprint costs.
* (Optional) Up-to 5 Sprints (for duration of 2,5 months in total) yearly shall be executed across the year in Mons, Belgium. The travel duty costs of this optional item shall be included in the sprint costs. Sprints can be executed in not-connected fashion depending on the need.
* Contractor is foreseen to travel to NATO Sites. Contractor must obtain USA and EU business visas. The costs of visa issuing shall be the responsibility of the contractor. Purchaser is not responsible for paying any costs for visa issuing process, including the man-effort of time required to acquire such visas.
* It is foreseen that the contractor will support NCIA during various exercises and conferences across the year. It is expected that the contractor will travel for up-to 10 weeks within NATO countries in addition.
* The travel costs identified in 8.8 are out of scope and will be borne by the NCI Agency separately in accordance with Article 5.5 of AAS Framework Contract and within the limits of the NCIA Travel Directive. The cost of travel will be done in the most economical means from off-site location of execution.
* The work depicted in this SOW is expected to be carried by a single contractor.
Requirements:
Security:
The services performed under this SOW require that the assigned personnel have a valid NATO SECRET security clearance.
Qualifications:
THE FOLLOWING EXPERTISE AND KNOWLEDGE IS ESSENTIAL FOR THIS REQUIREMENT
For the tasks under this task order, we require the contractor to have the following qualifications:
* Well versed in JavaScript and C# with a minimum experience of 4 years.
* Well knowledge in .NET Core and NET 8+
* Well Knowledgeable in Angular and HTML5 with at least 4 years of recent experience.
* Strong knowledge of system design architecture, overall system to system integration in the ecosystem of high efficiency information exchange
* Knowledge of at least 3 years of experience with system integration, data modelling data translations, transformations and modelling processes
* The contractor is familiar with including DNS, domains, PKI certificates, network designs;
* Comfortable in presenting solutions to working groups
* The contractor has strong knowledge and practical experience of the following (a minimum of 24 months in the last 40 months) with industry equivalent of Data Bricks, Apache Kafka, Sparks, RabbitMQ and/or similar;
* The contractor has strong knowledge and practical experience of the following (a minimum of 24 months in the last 40 months) with Software and/or System Architecting in modern industry standards such as UML
* The contractor has strong knowledge and practical experience of the following (a minimum of 24 months in the last 40 months) with Knowledge of modern software development methodologies (e.g. Software development life cycles, Agile methodologies), a certification in the field of agile software development and/or SCRUM is a plus.
* It is desirable that the contractor is well experienced with JSON, XML, XSD, will have to learn XQUERY and XPATH and/or XSLT rapidly,
* Very Desirable, but not mandatory knowledge in XSLT
* The contractor has a flexible, cooperative and customer focussed attitude; sets high standards for quality and quantity; monitors and maintains quality and productivity; works in a systematic, methodical and orderly way;
* The contractor must have the nationality of one of the NATO nations.
* Language Proficiency: Fluency in English, both written and spoken, is required. NOTE: Most of the work of the NCI Agency is conducted in the English language.