Requirements Engineering Quality Assurance Lead

Spektrum have a wide range of exciting opportunities in several global locations.

We are always looking to add great new talent to our team and look forward to hearing from you.

Spektrum supports apex purchasers (NATO, UN, EU and National Government and Defence) and their Tier 1 supplier ecosystem with a wide range of specialist services. We provide our clients with professional services, specialised aerospace and defence sales, delivery, and operational subject matter expertise. We are looking for personnel to join our team and support key client projects.

Who we are supporting

Allied Command Transformation (ACT) is NATO’s leading agent for change: driving, facilitating, and advocating the continuous improvement of Alliance capabilities to maintain and enhance the military relevance and effectiveness of the Alliance. The main objectives of ACT are: providing appropriate support to NATO missions and operations; leading NATO military transformation; and improving relationships, interaction and practical cooperation with partners, nations and international organisations. ACT therefore leads Alliance concept development, capability development, training and lessons-learned initiatives and provides unfettered military support to policy development within NATO.

The program 

Capability Development & Management Support (CDMS)

 DCOS Capability Development (CAPDEV) acts as the Supreme Allied Commander Transformation's Director for guidance, direction and coordination of the activities and resources of the Capability Development Directorate.

The Requirements Division will execute all tasks and activities needed to support requirements management for NATO capabilities

The Capability Requirements (CR) Branch will develop the Capability Requirements Brief and recommended courses of action to resolve issues through the life cycle management of requirements using matrixed, cross-functional project-specific Requirements Management teams.

The Requirements Forward Branch (Mons) is responsible for conducting requirements development and management representation and engagement-related functions in Europe.

The Capability Division coordinates the development of capabilities from capability planning through acceptance and then disposal with management entities, NATO Headquarters staff and the NATO Governance Structure

The Capability Forward Branch (Mons) coordinates with ACO, NCIA, NSPA, NATO HQ, territorial Host Nations, and NATO Centres of Excellence (COEs) to support the development of capabilities.

Strategic Plans and Policy (SPP) supports Allied Command Transformation in formalizing military advice to shape future military strategy, political guidance, and other policy documents supporting NATO’s strategic objectives.

Role ID: ACT-CDMS-26-02-B-45

Role Background

DCOS Capability Development (CAPDEV) acts as the Supreme Allied Commander Transformation's Director for guidance, direction and co-ordination of the activities and resources of the Capability Development Directorate. CAPDEV is responsible to:

Identify and prioritize Alliance capability shortfalls from short to long term, along a continuum of holistic capability development.

Lead the determination of required capabilities and prioritization of shortfalls to inform the delivery of materiel and non-materiel solutions across the Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, and Leadership, Personnel, Facilities and Interoperability (DOTMLPFI) lines of effort to enable a holistic approach to capability development, ensuring improvedinteroperability, deployability and sustainability of Alliance Forces.

The CAPDEV Quality Management Branch (QMB) provides a capability development quality assurance process and is responsible for developing and managing the CAPDEV Quality Management System (QMS) providing independent risk based assurance of capability development processes to ensure that outputs, products and services meet customer expectations, and comply with NATO Policies and Standards whilst ensuring that Portfolio, Programme, Project Management best practices and standards are implemented throughout the capability lifecycle.

The QMB:

• Conducts independent Quality Assurance and audit of processes, functions and activities, and quality control of outputs for compliance with agreed quality criteria and metrics or authorized exception processes.
• Supports Capability and Programme Directors by performing independent, assessments of performance (cost, schedule, scope, performance and risk) against agreed tolerances.
• Produces risk-based quality reports and quantified improvement opportunities: leveraging process metrics to forecast benefits and efficiencies
• Identifies and ensures resolution of Corrective and Preventative Actions (CPA) to manage risk and remediate issues, defects and deficiencies identified during audit and assurance reviews. Supports the identification and capture of programmatic and capability risks, on behalf of the accountable risk owners, to develop actionable recommendations and potential response activities.
• Leverages metrics and KPIs for external benchmarking of performance against comparable organizations and within and between internal teams.
• Fosters a culture of quality and Continuous Process Improvement through monitoring, measurement, and analysis and supports process owners in implementation of Continuous Process Improvement activities to improve quality of output, to increase the maturity of internal processes and to prevent issues, defects and deficiencies.
• Supports CUR/UR and other acquisition processes to ensure quality and consistency across NATO requirements management and NATO life cycle management (LCM) processes
• Supports Business Analysts and Capabilities’ Programme Directors to maintain the quality of capability requirements and traceability throughout the lifecycle of the capability.
• Ensures that capabilities requirements are developed to NATO Standards across all Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leadership, Process, Facilities and Interoperability (DOTMLPFI) lines of development and that dependencies with other capabilities are identified and managed.

 Role Duties and Responsibilities

• Provide independent quality assurance of information, management products and processes, and quality reports for CAPDEV leadership.
• Provide quality assurance expertise in support of HQ SACT’s programme management and requirements engineering and specifically in support of Requirements Managers undertaking the Identification, elicitation, capture, analysis, evaluation, integration and maintenance of high-quality capability (business) requirements.
• Support the ongoing development, and maintenance of the requirements repository and requirements related information and the achievement and maintenance of the organization’s requirements and quality expectations.
• Support the development and maintenance of processes relating to capability development and delivery. Contribute to the development of directives and standard operating procedures that relate to capability development and delivery including requirements development and management and the ACT Requirements Repository.
• Contributes to organizational continual process improvement activities.
• Participate in workshops, seminars, conferences and meetings in support of the activities above.
• Perform additional tasks as required by Line Manager. related to the role.

Essential Skills and Experience

• Five years’ experience in the last 10 in the field of quality assurance including requirements for engineering processes.
• Demonstrable recent (i.e. in the last 5 years) experience working in support of processes that were formally certified in accordance with the ISO 9001 standard.
• Experience with IBM Rational Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM), DOORS Next or equivalent tool for quality assurance and requirements engineering including personal use of quality assurance tools for evidence-based quality reporting.

 Education

• A University Degree in engineering, management, information systems, accounting, economics, finance, business administration, public administration, operations research, programme and project management or related disciplines.

 Language Proficiency

• Advanced Proficiency in English

 Working Location

• Norfolk, VA, USA

Working Policy

• On-Site

Contract Duration

• July 2026 – December 2030

Security Clearance

• Valid National or NATO Secret personal security clearance

We never know what new opportunities might be just over the horizon. If this opportunity isn't for you please feel free to send us your resume anyway and be the first to know if something suitable for your skills and experience comes up.