For more than 75 years, NATO’s mission has been to preserve peace and security in the Alliance for nearly one billion citizens. The NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA) is NATO’s technology and cyber hub. We are a team of 3000 civilian and military staff, working together to connect all corners of NATO and maintain its Edge from 30 locations across the Alliance.

We are a key partner in NATO's Digital Transformation, working hand in hand with industry to provide technical solutions and expertise, facilitating political consultations and decision-making, and enabling multi-domain operations.

Our experts provide secure static and deployable communications infrastructure, satellite communications and information technology services, connected the Alliance’s forces, and strengthening NATO’s defence and deterrence posture. Fulfilling NCIA’s missions is possible because of our greatest force, our people. In order to reinforce NATO’s edge, we aim to hire, train and retain the very best staff.

Our staff members represent both the diversity and unity of our Alliance. When you join NCIA, you will be part of an organization where you can contribute authentically to the mission and purpose of NATO and help us ensure seamless connectivity among Allied partner nations.

About the Program

The NCIA internship is a 6-month program based at one of our key hubs in The Netherlands, Belgium or Portugal. Our internship opportunities start from either 1 March or 1 September with the start date being dependent on the timeline to secure the required security clearance to work within the NATO community. During an internship, you will join and support a diverse international team and simultaneously learn from our experts via on-the-job training, working independently on purposeful projects or initiatives during your tenure.

About the Internship

Internship duration: 6 months

Location: Braine-l'Alleud, Belgium

Service Management and Control (SMC) is accountable for the full lifecycle of support for Service Delivery Management that includes strategy, design, transition, operation and continuous service improvement. SMC enables standardised ways of working across the NATO enterprise, as well as strengthening network protection and enterprise stability via Change and Configuration Management. SMC provides the common components, toolsets, expertise, and human resources to support seamless, integrated and correlated management of services and automation support for key processes through integrated event, asset and Configuration Management. SMC also orchestrates product lines (Service Lines, CSUs) across the NCI Agency to achieve and exceed customer expectations within the terms and conditions of a given OLA/SLA.

Based in Braine-l'Alleud, Belgium, you will join the NCI Agency as we embark on a journey to transform our IT services to support NATO's Digital Endeavour.

As an intern working in IT Transition Assurance, you will play a crucial role in ensuring the smooth transition of IT services into a live environment. Your work will primarily focus on Transition Planning and Support (TPS), which acts as the bridge between service design and live operations. You will be involved in coordinating various activities and collaborating with stakeholders to ensure that service requirements are met effectively.

Key responsibilities will include:

· Human Resources Support: Assisting in assigning roles and responsibilities for transition activities, defining necessary authorizations, and supporting training and knowledge transfer efforts for team members.

· Criteria Management: Helping ensure that entry and exit criteria for each stage of the transition are clearly defined. You will also be involved in monitoring the criteria for halting or starting certain activities (e.g., deployment, testing).

· Stakeholder Coordination: Supporting communication and coordination with all relevant stakeholders, such as customers, third-party vendors, suppliers, IT service management staff, and other internal or external parties. You will ensure that all parties are informed and aligned on transition activities.

· Execution Support: Assisting in managing baselines to ensure a clear understanding of the service architecture before transition starts. You'll also help track points where change authorization is required and support error handling and control processes. Through this internship, you will gain hands-on experience in service transition processes, develop a deeper understanding of the IT industry, and build essential skills in project management, stakeholder communication, and change management.

About you:

The valuable knowledge and experience that you bring to this role is:

Business situation analysis:

Investigates straightforward business situations to identify and analyse problems and opportunities. Contributes to the recommendation of improvements. Follows agreed standards and techniques to investigate, analyse and document business situations. Engages with stakeholders under direction.

Quality assurance:

Contributes to the collection of evidence and the conduct of formal audits or reviews of activities. Examines records for evidence that appropriate testing and other quality control activities have taken place. Determines compliance with organisational directives, standards and procedures and identifies non-compliances, non-conformances and abnormal occurrences.

Risk management:

Undertakes basic risk management activities. Maintains documentation of risks, threats, vulnerabilities and mitigation actions.

Eligibility Criteria

To be eligible to apply for our internship program, you will need to meet the following criteria:

· You are a national of a NATO member country

· You are currently studying towards a university-level degree or have recently graduated in the past 12 months

· A thorough knowledge of one of the two NATO languages, both written and spoken, is essential and some knowledge of the other is desirable. Most of the work of the NCI Agency is conducted in the English language.

We also request that you please attach the following documents to your application form:

· Copy of the university degree you have completed and/or

· Proof of ongoing studies with the dates clearly mentioned if you are still studying

Application Process:

The application process for an internship at NCIA is:

Ø Apply via the NCIA Careers site by 23:59 CET 16^th March 2024

Ø If selected to progress to the first stage evaluation this will consist of a logic, numeracy and behavioral gamification exercises in addition to on-demand video questions aligned to the requirements of the internship

Ø Virtual interviews will take place in the month of April

Ø Tentative offer to be presented to successful candidates in early May

Compensation

Belgium

You will be compensated at a fixed taxable rate of 1,286.09 EUR per month, based on 38 hours of work per week and for reasonable travel expenses to start on day 1 and to return to your home location once the internship is complete.

Thank you for your patience while we consider your application. To learn more about NCIA and our work, please visit our website.

NCIA prides itself on being an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment of mutual respect and value uniqueness and differences in gender, gender identity, race, ethnic or cultural origin, age, religion, sexual orientation and physical or neurocognitive ability.

Additional details on the conditions of application can be found via the NCIA career site.