Senior Specialist – ICT Solutions Architect, Architecture Team, ICT Strategy

ORGANISATIONAL CONTEXT

This selection procedure is intended to fill one (1) 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 – ICT Solutions Architect, is located in the Architecture Team, ICT Strategy & Execution Coordination 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.

Purpose of the post:
The selected candidate will work in a team of enterprise and solution architects, each one predominantly focused in the specific architecture domain area for which they are most competent, but all closely cooperating as a team, coordinated by a Senior Specialist.

The incumbent will cooperate closely with software and infrastructure engineering and ICT Operations teams, providing hands-on architecture guidance and contributing to solution engineering as well as product management.

S/he will translate business requirements into solutions architecture and designs, producing baseline and target solution architecture documentation, and ensure their respective roadmaps are aligned with the business strategy on one side and with the overall ICT evolution on the other side.

Reporting lines:
The incumbent will report to the Head of the Architecture Team/Head of Unit - ICT Strategy & Execution Coordination.

FUNCTIONS AND DUTIES

The incumbent carries out the following main functions and duties:
• Produce, maintain, update, disseminate and expand the set of architecture standards, guidelines and reference architectures for the implementation and support of decentralised, cloud and datacentre-based solutions, focusing on the application and integration architecture aspects, either for custom built or COTS deployments;
• Identify and specify ICT architecture components required to enable the delivery of decentralised, cloud as well as datacentre-based solutions, providing guidance and review for their implementation and configuration, with as much detail as needed from time to time;
• Liaise with key stakeholders to support planning and execution of ICT changes and development initiatives;
• Assume quality assurance roles in ICT development projects;
• As needed, act as Technical Product Manager of selected systems and platforms, taking responsibility for the ICT product throughout its life cycle;
• Monitor and/or participate to selected EU, law enforcement, or other relevant fora, and sponsor internal adoption of interfaces and standards supporting the delivery and support of decentralised solutions;
• Devise capability and solution architecture blueprints (including roadmaps) in support of strategic as well as change initiative objectives;
• Upon request, participate in solution engineering and system administration activities, in cooperation with software and infrastructure engineering and ICT operations teams;
• Drive the evaluation and selection of the technical products that are required to implement decentralised, cloud and datacentre-based ICT solutions;
• Assesses business cases, project proposals, and project deliverables, to determine feasibility, impact on, and compliance with, the overall ICT architecture and landscape;
• Perform any other duties in the area of competence as assigned by the line management.

REQUIREMENTS - 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.

(CONTINUES IN SECTION BELOW)

REQUIREMENTS - ELIGIBILITY AND SELECTION CRITERIA

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 four years or more;
OR
• A level of education which corresponds to completed university studies attested by a diploma and appropriate professional experience of at least one year when the normal period of university education is at least three years;
OR
• Professional training of an equivalent level in a relevant area and after having completed the training, at least the number of years of relevant professional experience as indicated 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 9 years of professional work experience gained after the award of the diploma.

REQUIREMENTS - SELECTION CRITERIA

a. Professional experience:
Essential:
• Experience in architecture definition, specification, change management and providing architecture supervision and support to ICT delivery projects;
• Experience in designing applications for large scale deployments across a number of functional domains (i.e. web interfaces for data analysis and exploration, messaging and collaboration systems, reporting solutions, etc.) based on a combination of custom-built (mainly JEE, .Net and Python) or Commercial of the Shelf (COTS) products;
• Experience with devising designs to integrate custom-built and COTS based systems;
• Experience in incorporating the requirements of ICT operability and security into application and integration designs;
• Experience with complex agile software development;
• Experience in the following domain areas:
o Data integration, acquisition, processing and reporting/visualization architectures and standards;
o Web services architecture and standards;
o Microservices and event-driven architectures and standards (ex. containerized Kubernetes deployments and transactional integrity for microservices applications);
o Search system architectures and standards (ex. Elasticsearch, Opensearch and similar);
o Cloud application and services design/integration, including hybrid cloud/on-premises deployments;
o Privacy and Data Protection by design solutions.

Desirable:
• Experience with the Archimate modelling standard;
• Experience with Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence concepts, methods and tools/frameworks/processes;
• Experience in a complex public sector or international environment;
• Experience in designing ICT solutions specific to the Law Enforcement and Justice areas.

b. Professional knowledge:
Essential:
• Sound knowledge of the concepts, methods, techniques, and representative products in the following domain areas:
o Web scale architectures and software frameworks / libraries;
o Microservices patterns and anti-patterns (i.e. Service Mesh, Distributed Tracing, Circuit Breaker, etc.)
o Event-driven and Complex event processing architecture patterns and anti-patterns;
o Cloud application components and services architectures, design patterns/anti-patterns;
o Privacy by design techniques;
o Enterprise search architecture patterns and anti-patterns, tackling cross system/network search needs including the document model definition and evolution;

o Information architectures and standards, meta-data management, master data management, data modelling and design, data quality management;
o Data integration solutions, ETL and streaming data solutions, including data modelling and designs for that purpose across management.
• Knowledge of Architecture Modelling techniques: conceptualisation, modelling, and visualisation of architecture models and designs.

Desirable:
• Knowledge in the following domains:
o Virtualisation technologies and products;
o Information security;
• Knowledge of security design principles, including expertise in Threat Modelling techniques (i.e. STRIDE) and proficiency in modern authorization/authentication techniques such as Attribute-Based Access Control or Access Token pattern comprising relevant standards (i.e. OAuth2 and OIDC).

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:
• Excellent analytical and problem solving skills including the ability to anticipate potential problems, determine and implement solutions.
• 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.
• Ability to display initiative and a drive for improvement.

Prioritising and organising:
• Excellent organizational skills including the ability to plan work load, establish clear priorities and exercise initiative.
• Ability to manage projects and familiarity with project management terminology and methodology.

Resilience:
• Excellent ability to work well both independently and in a team.
• 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:
• Strong 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.

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.