Data Exchange and Preservation Infrastructure Competence Area Manager

Data Exchange and Preservation Infrastructure Competence Area Manager

EUMETSAT - European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites

Darmstadt, Germany

EUMETSAT is Europe’s meteorological satellite agency. Its role is to establish and operate meteorological satellites to monitor the weather and climate from space - 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The Infrastructure for Information Technology (IT) and Data Division (I2D) of the Technical and Scientific Support (TSS) department is responsible for the engineering, maintenance and upgrade of generic IT and data infrastructure in response to the needs of operational missions, future programmes and corporate IT.

Reporting to the Head of the Infrastructure for IT and Data Division, the Data Exchange and Preservation Infrastructure Competence Area Manager leads multiple teams of IT professionals responsible for the provisioning of Data Exchange and Preservation Infrastructure services. These include the near real time dissemination infrastructure, the multi-mission encryption management facility as well as the long-term data archives.

The EUMETSAT near real time dissemination infrastructure distributes the EUMETSAT products derived from satellites data to, among others, the National Weather Services and more than four thousand EUMETSAT users globally. It uses both satellite and terrestrial links to serve a cumulative data rate of over 700Mbps with an availability over 99.95%.

This near real time data dissemination is vital to weather forecasting and to safeguard the daily lives of world citizens. They aid meteorologists in identifying and monitoring the development of potentially dangerous weather situations and in issuing timely forecasts and warnings to emergency services and local authorities, helping to mitigate the effects of severe weather and protecting human life and property. This information is also critical to the safety of air travel, shipping and road traffic, and to the daily business of farming, construction and many other industries.

The EUMETSAT long term data archive, which currently contains more than 10 PBytes of stored data (and expected to reach 50 PBytes in coming years), securely stores all the data sets produced since the start of the Meteosat satellites in 1977. This is vital for the monitoring of the world environment and climate change.

The Data Exchange and Preservation Infrastructure Competence Area Manager is also responsible for the engineering, delta-developments and maintenance of EUMETSAT´s Data Exchange and Preservation infrastructure, as well as the detailed engineering and implementation of the upgrades required for new developments, to cope with the requirements from the new programmes, and the management of the related industry service contracts.

This position supports all the EUMETSAT programmes as well as the Copernicus Programmes.

Duties

• Manage a team of highly qualified IT engineers, securing long-term availability of the critical skills for the Competence Area and maintaining up-to-date technological awareness;
• Lead and coordinate the day-to-day provisioning of the EUMETSAT Data Exchange and Preservation Infrastructure services including support to operations, 2nd/3rd level investigations and problem resolution;
• Manage the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with the customer;
• As a response to evolving user needs, define and maintain a technical roadmap addressing the continuity, enhancement and major evolutions of the EUMETSAT Data Exchange and Data Preservation Infrastructures services;
• Lead and coordinate the specification, design and development of scalable and sustainable Data Exchange and Preservation Infrastructure, implementing the defined architectures and agreed roadmaps;
• Secure and manage the required level of industrial support by identifying, procuring and managing activities, tools, services or resources that can be outsourced.

Skills and Experience

• Minimum five-year experience in leading teams, including people development and maintaining critical skills in a fast changing area, with proven experience in planning and coordinating activities;
• Proven experience in IT system engineering, preferably in a high-availability, large scale, 24/7 operational environments;
• Experience in designing, developing, deploying and operating IT services according to recognised standards;
• Experience in near real time data dissemination systems, including related cloud technologies;
• Knowledge of long-term data archiving services and solutions, including cloud technologies;
• Knowledge of IT security and encryption systems;
• Experience in interacting with industry, in the context of procurements and management of service contracts;
• Strong interpersonal, team working and communication skills with a strong customer focus.

Qualifications

• A university degree in a relevant engineering discipline (e.g. telecommunications, network systems, etc.) or equivalent.

Languages

• The official languages of EUMETSAT are English and French. Candidates must be able to work effectively in English and have some knowledge of French.

Employment Conditions

The initial contract will be of 4 years’ duration, with subsequent 5 year contracts being awarded thereafter, subject to individual performance and organisation requirements. There is no limit to the amount of follow-up contracts a staff member can receive up to the EUMETSAT retirement age of 63 and there are certainly opportunities to establish a long career perspective at EUMETSAT.

This post is graded A3/A4 on the EUMETSAT salary scales. The minimum basic salary for this post is EURO 8518 per month (net of internal tax but excluding pension contribution and insurances) which may be negotiable on the basis of skills and experience. The salary scale provides for increments on the anniversary of taking up employment, and scales are reviewed by the EUMETSAT Council with effect from 1 January each year. In addition to basic salary, EUMETSAT offers attractive benefits. Further information, including salary details, is available on the EUMETSAT web site.

EUMETSAT is committed to providing an equal opportunities work environment for men and women.

Please note that only nationals of EUMETSAT Member States may apply. The EUMETSAT Convention requires that Staff shall be recruited on the basis of their qualifications, account being taken of the international character of EUMETSAT.

About EUMETSAT

This information is supplied to the National Meteorological Services of the organisation's Member States in Europe, as well as other users worldwide.

EUMETSAT also operates several Copernicus missions on behalf of the European Union and provide data services to the Copernicus marine and atmospheric services and their users.

As an intergovernmental European Organisation, EUMETSAT has 30 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom).

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