2024-0099 NIRIS Senior Software Tester (NS) - FRI 24 May

Deadline Date: Friday 24 May 2024

Requirement: NIRIS Senior Software Tester

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: No Later Than 1 July 2024 (Possibility to exercise 1 (one) one‐year option: 1st January 2025 until 31st December 2025)

End Contract Date: 31 December 2024

Required Security Clearance: NATO SECRET

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 an experienced senior software tester.

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 objective of this statement include of work can be summarized as to provide test support to the NIRIS test team as a senior software tester.

3 SCOPE OF WORK

Under the direction / guidance of the NCIA Point of Contact or delegated staff, the senior software tester will:

• Support / coach the team in applying testing best practices for developing test cases. Share the knowledge inside the team to improve the test process.

• Develop new test cases, initially mostly manual, for testing functionality, developed by the NIRIS development team.

• Execute test cases, analyse test results and document issues in JIRA.

• Actively attend team meetings to provide status updates.

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:

4.1 ‐ 2024 BASE DELIVARABLE AND PAYMENT MILESTONES:

Deliverable 01: 10 sprints of software tester support

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.

The payment shall be dependent upon successful acceptance of the Delivery Acceptance Sheet (DAS) – (Annex B) including the EBA Receipt number

Payment will be provided based on these deliveries as indicated in the table

Invoices shall be accompanied with a Delivery Acceptance Sheet (Annex B) signed by the Contractor and project authority.

4.2 ‐ 2025 OPTION DELIVARABLE AND PAYMENT MILESTONES:

Deliverable 01: 10 sprints of software tester support

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.

The payment shall be dependent upon successful acceptance of the Delivery Acceptance Sheet (DAS) – (Annex B) including the EBA Receipt number

Payment will be provided based on these deliveries as indicated in the table

Invoices shall be accompanied with a Delivery Acceptance Sheet (Annex B) signed by the Contractor and project authority.

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 achievements during the sprint.

6 SCHEDULE

This task order will be active immediately after signing of the contract by both parties.

The BASE period of performance is as soon as possible but not later than 1 st July 2024 and will end no later than 31st December 2024

If exercised the options, the period of performance is 01st January 2025 to 31st December 2025.

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 NCI Agency provided 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.

8 SECURITY

The security classification of the service will be up to NATO SECRET.

The contractors is required to hold a valid NATO SECRET security clearance

9 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.

Travel expenses will be reimbursed in accordance with Article 5.5 of AAS+ Framework Contract.

This work must be accomplished by ONE contractor.

10 QUALIFICATIONS

[See Requirements]

Requirements

10 QUALIFICATIONS

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

• The contractors is required to hold a valid NATO SECRET security clearance
• The candidate has relevant and recent experience in planning, writing and executing test cases.
• The candidate has a solid understanding and own experience of test best practices.
• The candidate is well able to explain best practices in software testing to other testers in the team.
• The candidate has experience in working closely with the developers, PO and architect to be able to develop high quality test cases
• The candidate has strong experience in testing computer networking software and/or Tactical Data Link (Link1, Link16, OTH) software.
• The candidate has relevant and recent experience in software testing for WebGUI and CLI for networking products
• The candidate has strong knowledge of networking protocols: IP, TCP, DNS, HTTP and secured network connection (HTTPS, SSH, certificates)
• The candidate has good experience of administering and deployment of Linux and Windows servers, including automation deployment, e.g. Ansible.
• The candidate has relevant and recent knowledge of Behaviour Driven Development
• The candidate has Java coding skills for test automation
• The candidate is able to speak and write fluent English since the work is conducted in English
• The candidate is able to work independently and has can‐do spirit, being able to plan his/her work ahead and have a critical mind‐set.
• The candidate must have the nationality of one of the NATO nations.