IT Specialist

**Contract type**:
Contract agent

**Directorate**:
Corporate Services Directorate

**Group**:
FGIV

**Grade**:
N.A.

**Level of Security Clearance**:
SECRET UE/EU SECRET

**Management of staff**:
N.A.

**Location**:
Brussels

**Indicative starting date**:
01/09/2025

15/05/2025

1. BACKGROUND

The European Defence Agency (EDA) was established on 12 July 2004, and is governed by Council Decision (CFSP) 2015/1835 defining the statute, seat and operational rules of the European Defence Agency. The Agency has its headquarters in Brussels.

The main task of EDA is to support the Council and the Member States in their effort to improve the Union's defence capabilities in the field of crisis management and to sustain the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) as it currently stands and as it develops in the future.

The Agency is structured into four directorates. The Corporate Services Directorate (CSD) and three operational directorates: Industry, Synergies and Enablers (ISE); Capability, Armament & Planning (CAP); Research, Technology and Innovation (RTI).

2. THE AGENCY'S WAY OF WORKING

The Agency is an “outward-facing” organisation, constantly interacting with its shareholders, the participating Member States, as well as with a wide range of stakeholders. It works in an integrated way, with multi-disciplinary teams representing all of the Agency’s functional areas, to realise its objectives. Its business processes are flexible and oriented towards achieving results. Staff at all levels need to demonstrate the corresponding qualities of commitment, flexibility, innovation, and team-working; to work effectively with shareholders and stakeholder groups, formal and informal; and to operate without the need for detailed direction.

3. THE CORPORATE SERVICES DIRECTORATE

The Corporate Services Directorate (CSD) provides critical business support to EDA operations by delivering high-quality corporate services under seven dedicated organizational elements, namely: Human Resources; Procurement and Contract Management; Finance; IT and Information Management, Security, Legal and Infrastructure. Additionally, the Record Manager is responsible for the effective management of information produced and/or received by the organisation.

CSD processes are geared towards efficient and optimal use of resources, leveraging good practice and technological solutions while ensuring sound financial management, transparency and accountability; outward focus and commitment to continuous improvement are the hallmarks of CSD.

4. DUTIES

We are seeking an experienced and versatile IT Product and Platform Manager to join our growing team, who contributes to the Agency’s data strategy to position EDA as a data-driven and AI-ready organisation, enhancing transparency and efficiency through a unified, strategic approach to data with a single pane of glass.

In this role, you will collaborate with project officers and business partners to understand and anticipate their needs, and translate them into product requirements; define the product vision; create a product roadmap; oversee all stages of product creation; manage the product backlog and prioritize based on changing requirements; and use data to monitor and evaluate product progress at each stage of the process.

In your close collaboration with business stakeholders, strategic partners, solution architects, and other product owners, you will strengthen the client centric service delivery based on agile and lean principles, a cloud-first approach (SaaS and PaaS), and an IT business partner model.

We are looking for an individual who will bring a sense of client and product obsession to the team and who will ensure that our solutions meet or exceeds expectations and deliver tangible business value.

Under the supervision of the Head of the IT, and the Strategic Platform Lead, you will contribute to the following activities:

- engage with business stakeholders to fully understand their needs and challenges and translate them into viable product requirements and features;
- create product vision, product roadmap and maintain and prioritize product backlog and user stories based on the requirements;
- manage relationships with stakeholders and ensure alignment on product direction;
- drive efficiencies through automation and adoption of strategic platforms with built-in AI capabilities;
- foster business alignment and innovation through the Agency's IT governance (i.e. ITCC) by identifying, preparing and presenting the roadmap and strategic topics with key business stakeholders;
- identify enabling EU framework contracts and/or prepare specifications in view of realising agreed projects (e.g. for Agile runway services, feasibility studies, proof of concepts, minimum viable products, product scale out);
- overlook or manage project implementations, assess impact to end users including organizational change management to ascertain effective user adoption and that project outputs are we