Deadline Date: Thursday 30 November 2023

Requirement: JCHAT Senior Software Developer

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 developers.

JChat has been developed by the NCI Agency to provide operators with a text-based asynchronous chat capability. Chat communications is used daily by the operators to pass information, coordinate operations, and support collaborative decision-making. JChat is providing one-to-one chat, group (multi-user) chat and multi-user conferencing (moderated chat) and is based on Instant Messaging (IM) technology.

2 OBJECTIVES

The main objective of this statement of work is the development and maintenance of JCHAT software modules.

3 SCOPE OF WORK

Under the direction / guidance of the NCIA Point of Contact or delegated staff, the software developer will develop and update JCHAT software modules and provide support to other developers. This includes the following activities:

• Develop / update Java software modules
• Develop / conduct unit and automated testing of software components
• Attend virtual and in-person meetings

The contractor will be part of a team and will work using an Agile and iterative approach during multiple sprints. Each sprint is planned for a duration of 1 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 development 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 arrangements will be the responsibility of the contractor and the expenses will be reimbursed in accordance with Article 5.5 of AAS Framework Contract and within the limits of the NCIA Travel Directive.

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 software development using Java, including Java Swing.
• The candidate is well able to produce efficient, clear, readable, maintainable and high quality code.
• The candidate has relevant and recent development experience with chat related technologies, including but not limited to XMPP, XEPs,, M-LINK Server, Openfire Server and the Openfire plugin framework
• The candidate has recent experience in programming at the computer network level.
• The candidate has recent experience working in Scrum team and also in leading Scrum teams.
• The candidate has a strong track record in software development and has strong problem solving skills.
• The candidate is well able to produce efficient, clear, readable, maintainable and high quality code.
• The candidate has relevant and recent experience in continuous software integration and automated testing, including knowledge of test automation frameworks.
• The candidate is well able to communicate with external users / customers and translate their requirements in development tasks for the team.
• The candidate has relevant and recent experience in using development tools, e.g. Maven, Jira, GitLab, Zephyr.
• The candidate is able to speak and write fluent English since the work is conducted in English
• The candidate must have the nationality of one of the NATO nations.