Senior Specialist – Head of Team – Application Services, ICT Operations Unit - The Hague, Nederland - Europol

Beschrijving

ORGANISATIONAL CONTEXT

This selection procedure is intended to fill one currently available post.

Europol retains the right to make use of the reserve list to select candidates for similar posts within the organisation, should business needs require so.

Organisational setting:
The post of Senior Specialist – Head of Team – Application Services is located in the ICT Operations Unit, ICT Department, Capabilities Directorate.

The ICT Department has the responsibility for devising, delivering and operating critical technology capabilities and solutions supporting the core mission and support processes of Europol. Over 150 internal staff members and a significant number of domain-specific consultants are responsible for devising, developing, delivering and operating information management and communication technology capabilities that ensure enhanced criminal information analysis and exchange among Europol, Member States and third parties.

The ICT Operations Unit is responsible for the operations, management, availability and security of the Europol ICT Infrastructure and Applications. This includes teams responsible for Workplace Services, Service Management, Platform Services, Deployment Services, Application Services, Infrastructure Services and ICT Security.

Purpose of the post:
As the Head of Team for Application Services, the incumbent will be responsible for the end-to-end stability, availability, security and Cost of Operation for all applications and solution used by Europol as a well as those provided to the Member States and partners of Europol.

The Head of Team will steer a team of professionals with in-depth technical knowledge of the applications and will closely work to together with other teams that provide the infrastructure and network layers.

The success in the position will be measured by the stability, availability, security and cost for running the applications and the level of execution of the tasks and milestones according to the agreed annual ICT work plan.

Reporting lines:
The incumbent will report to the Head of Unit – ICT Operations.

Job environment:
This post might require participation in a shift system including weekends and nights as well as on-call duty.

FUNCTIONS AND DUTIES

The incumbent carries out the following main functions and duties:

General Head of Team responsibilities

• Coordinate the work of a group of individuals by effective and efficient planning, prioritisation, and scheduling of tasks and responsibilities;

• Monitor progress of work in line with key performance indicators; ensure work being produced is of high quality and meets business needs; apply corrective measures where needed;

• Define and supervise the accurate and timely execution of processes and procedures to ensure adherence to corporate policies, fundamental rights, standards and data protection regulations;

• Set clear expectations and objectives and direct work towards a common goal;

• Identify, address and propose resolutions to issues affecting the team;

• Provide constructive feedback, guidance and support and coach team members;

• Encourage continuous learning and development of team members;

• Create an open, honest and inclusive team culture with respect for diversity, where team members are encouraged to perform at their best.

Specific responsibilities

• Define and implement the roadmaps and steer the lifecycle management for the portfolio of software applications in operation at Europol;

• Ensure the stability, availability and security of all applications according to established KPIs by sound proactive and preventative maintenance and professional incident resolution, overseeing not only the technical aspects under direct control but also coordinating dependent services from other teams like networking and development;

• Be responsible for automation processes and technologies to make sure all targeted Europol solutions can be deployed in a fully automated way in the test, production and development environments;

• Define and drive change of all parts of applications to make them fit for use for fully automated deployment, jointly with peer team leaders;

• Ensure the provision of engineering and system administration services to the Development teams;

• Plan and manage the budget allocated to the team in line with the agreed workplan and budgeting cycle, ensuring cost-effective solutions for the areas of responsibility and drive the procurement, delivery and installation of new products and services;

• Monitor and evaluate application performance and identify opportunities for improvement; recommend and implement technological advancements to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of application services;

• Establish and foster relationship with other teams, mainly the Infrastructure, Platform, Security, Development and Architecture teams;

• Perform any other duties in the area of competence as assigned by the line management.

REQUIREMENTS - ELIGIBILITY AND SELECTION CRITERIA

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA

a. Candidates must

• Be a national of one of the Member States of the European Union and enjoy full rights as a citizen;

• Have fulfilled any obligations imposed by the applicable laws on military service;

• Produce appropriate character references as to his or her suitability for the performance of the duties;

• Be physically fit to perform the duties pertaining to the post as further specified in Article 13 of the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants of the European Union (CEOS);

• Produce evidence of a thorough knowledge of one of the languages of the Union and a satisfactory knowledge of another language of the Union to the extent necessary for the performance of the duties.

b. Candidates must have

• A level of education which corresponds to completed university studies attested by a diploma when the normal period of university education is at least 4 years;
OR

• A level of education which corresponds to completed university studies attested by a diploma and appropriate professional experience of at least 1 year when the normal period of university education is 3 years.
OR

• Professional training of an equivalent level in a relevant area (e.g. Police Officer's School) and after having completed the training, at least the number of years of relevant professional experience indicated in the table below:

Duration of professional training Additional professional experience required for equivalency
More than 6 months and up to 1 year 4 years
More than 1 year and up to 2 years 3 years
More than 2 years and up to 3 years 2 years
More than 3 years 1 year

• In addition to the above at least 6 years of professional work experience gained after the award of the diploma.

SELECTION CRITERIA
a. Professional experience:
Essential:

• Experience in supervising application services in an agile / DevOps environment, in a larger ICT organisation (indicative 1000 users or more);

• Experience, preferably 5 years or more, in supervising a team including direct line responsibility in a similar function;

• Experience with deploying solutions in an automated way, both on-premises and in the Cloud;

• Experience working in an agile ICT environment, linking the Agile Development teams to the ICT Operations domain where ITIL methodology is followed.

Desirable:

• Experience with Configuration Management and automated infrastructure provisioning tools (e.g. Puppet, Terraform, Ansible);

• Experience with Micro Services architecture; (e.g. Kubernetes, Rancher, Istio, Neuvector).

b. Professional knowledge:
Essential:

• Knowledge of Dev(Sec)Ops methodologies and best practices;

• Knowledge of ITIL Service Management Framework;

• Knowledge about Infrastructure principles and technologies in the areas of Data Networking, Server and Storage technologies, Databases and Middleware;

• Knowledge about CI/CD pipelines, tools and best practices; (e.g. Azure DevOps);

• Knowledge of common Cloud based technologies, tools and best practices; (e.g. Azure, AWS);

• Knowledge of information security fundamentals and their implications for ICT operational processes.

c. General competencies:
Essential:
Communicating:

• Excellent communication skills in English, both orally and in writing;

• Excellent presentation skills;

• Ability to draft clear and concise documents on complex matters for various audiences.
Analysing & problem solving:

• Structured approach to work aimed at getting results;

• Excellent analytical and critical thinking skills;

• Competent user of Microsoft Office applications (MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook) and the internet.
Delivering quality and results:

• High degree of commitment and flexibility;

• High level of customer and service-orientation.
Prioritising and organising:

• Excellent organizational skills including the ability to plan own work load, establish clear priorities and exercise initiative;

• Ability to manage projects and familiarity with project management terminology and methodology.
Resilience:

• Strong ability to work well both independently and in a team;

• Very good interpersonal skills, including the ability to effectively liaise with other departments, groups and teams as well as with external partners;

• Ability to remain effective under a heavy workload and demonstrate resistance to stress.
Living diversity:

• Ability to establish and maintain effective working relations with co-workers in an international and multi-disciplinary work environment.
Advising:

• Ability to synthesise various data into a coherent and relevant whole, transforming it into a valuable and correct conclusion;

• Building constructive relationships with clients, adequately identifying and managing their needs and expectations, and giving well-grounded advice.
Team supervision:

• Ability to manage a diverse team including the ability to motivate staff, effectively plan and monitor the work of other staff members and to provide guidance.

d. Additional conditions:
Fulfil the condition stipulated in Article 5 of the Decision of the Executive Director on the Duration of contracts of employment for Temporary Agents, on the start date of the possible contract of employment which may be offered .