Deadline Date: Monday 4 December 2023

Requirement: NIRIS Software Tester 1

Location: OFF-SITE 

Note: Please refer to your Subcontract Agreement, article 6.4.1.a, which states “Off-Site Discount: 5% (this discount is applicable to all requirements, and applies when the assigned personnel are permitted to work Off-Site, such as at- home)”. Please be sure to price this discount in your overall price proposal when submitting bids against off-site RFQs.

Required Start Date: 2 January 2024

End Contract Date: 31 December 2024

Required Security Clearance: NATO SECRET

Duties and Role:

1 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 experienced senior software testers.

More specifically, the work will support the full software development cycle of the Networked Interoperable Real‐Time Information Services (NIRIS) software. NIRIS has been developed to meet the Minimum Military Requirement (MMR) for receiving, disseminating and providing situational awareness information for Command and Control (C2) and is currently the most widely used system for providing such information in NATO.

2 OBJECTIVES

The main objectives of this statement of work can be summarized is to provide test support for NIRIS

3 SCOPE OF WORK

Under the direction / guidance of the NCIA Point of Contact or delegated staff, the software tester will extend / maintain the existing test suite and execute test cases. This includes the following activities:

• Write, execute and maintain the NIRIS test cases
• Work closely with the developers / testers to plan the test cases related to a product feature and report the issues
• Improve, provide feedback to make the testing process efficient
• Attend to team meetings to provide updates and impediments to the colleagues and delegated staff
• Share the knowledge inside the team

The contractor will be part of a team and will work using an Agile/Scrum and iterative approach during multiple sprints. Each sprint is planned for a duration of one 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 work on this statement of work:

Deliverable 01: 10 sprints of software development.

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

The NCIA team reserves the possibility to exercise a number of options, based on the same scrum deliverable timeframe and cost, at a later time, depending on the project priorities and requirements

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 achievements during the sprint.

6 SCHEDULE

This task order will be active immediately after signing of the contract by both parties but not before than 2nd January 2024 and will end no later than 31 December 2024.

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.

The contractor shall have a NATO SECRET security clearance.

8 PRACTICAL ARRANGEMENTS

The contractor will be required to work off site. Access to the NCIA code repositories will be provided in coordination with the NCIA Point of Contact or delegated staff.

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

This work must be accomplished by ONE contractor.

Requirements

9 QUALIFICATIONS

The consultancy support for this work requires a software developer with the following qualifications:

• The contractor shall have a NATO SECRET security clearance.
• The candidate has relevant and recent experience in testing (plan, write and execute test cases) computer networking software and Tactical Data Link software.
• The candidate has relevant and recent knowledge of Behaviour Driven Development
• The candidate has relevant and recent experience in software testing for WebGUI and CLI for networking‐products (TCP/IP stack)
• The candidate has solid experience in using test management tools, e.g. Zephyr, Test Rail, and the Scrum methodology.
• The candidate has good experience of administering Linux and Windows servers.
• The candidate is able to speak and write fluent English since the work is conducted in English
• Candidate is able to work independently and has can‐do spirit, being able to plan his/her work ahead.
• The candidate must have the nationality of one of the NATO nations.