Staff Officer (Experimentation & Wargaming Design)

Post Context

ACT contributes to preserving the peace, security and territorial integrity of Alliance member states by leading, at Strategic Command level, Warfare Development required to enhance NATO’s posture, military structures, forces, capabilities and doctrines.

DCOS MDFD Directorate consists of eight HQ SACT-based Branches that have responsibility for NATO Force Development activities.

ACOS MDFD manages, coordinates and quality assures the outputs within the MDFD directorate.

The Experimentation and Wargaming Branch is responsible for developing and managing ACT’s Experimentation activities.

The Staff Officer (Experimentation Design) is a contributor to the technical design and delivery of operational experimentation, enabling the seamless placement of experiments into Alliance concept and capability development programmes while identifying and acting upon opportunities for synergy with other NATO or national programmes in order to maximize returns on investments.

Principal Duties:

• Directly responsible for the design of experiments within the annual NATO CD&E Programme of Work, in order to deliver best effect to the development of new concepts and capabilities, in accordance with the NATO CD&E Policy.
• Directly responsible for the contribution of draft experiment designs arising from the annual portfolio of experiment proposals validated by Nations’ CD&E experts to enable efficient execution of the experiments, while encouraging collaborative working, in accordance with the NATO CD&E Process.
• Directly responsible for experimentation design management to ensure that, within taut resource constraints, each planned experiment is configured to provide results that will address the required concept or capability effectively, and in an efficient and quality-assured manner.
• Serve as an expert in operational experimentation and participate as a senior team member in the planning, execution, analysis and reporting of experiments.
  Prepare and deliver briefings across the Alliance, to audiences up to OF-8 level, on the contributions made by operational experimentation to NATO’s Transformation and Adaptation strategy.
• Prepare and deliver instruction on operational experimentation to the NATO CD&E Course
  Identify Lessons learned, and best practices on experimentation techniques.
• Budget Authority - Manage experimentation funds as a Deputy Fund Manager.

Essential Qualifications / Experience:

• University Degree  and 4 years post related experience, or Higher Secondary education and completed advanced vocational training  leading to a professional qualification or professional accreditation with 5 years post related and 2 years function related experience.
• Four-six years’ experience (depending on educational background/degrees) in the design of experiments.
• Experience in applying experimentation to national or multinational military transformation activities.
• Proven track record in the delivery of successful experiment designs.
• Proven ability to communicate effectively orally and in writing, with emphasis on effectiveness in the distillation of complex technical subjects into cogent briefings tailored to non-technical audiences.
• Management experience in a government, international or industrial setting and in taking personal responsibility for the delivery of technical products.
• Experience in an instructional capacity, preparing and delivering training lessons.
• Experience in delivering briefings and presentations to a broad cross-section, from junior to senior ranked audiences.

Language:

English – SLP 3333 - (Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing)

Desirable Qualifications / Experience:

• Joint military staff experience, as a military or civilian staff member, preferably in a multi-national environment.
• Experience in working closely with industry.
• Formal Programme & Project Management Qualification.
• Post-graduate qualifications in experimentation-related activities.
• Microsoft SharePoint Designer/Developer training.

Attributes/Competencies:

Personal Attributes:

• A high level of communication skills to staff and brief complex technical experimentation issues up to OF-8 and civilian equivalent levels.
• Highly accomplished inter-personal skills, with a sound understanding of national sensitivities.
• The ability to build and support effective teams drawn from diverse sources including military, non-military, government and non-government organisations, industry and academia.
• The ability to analyse complex problems to reach effective solutions in situations where limited availability of resources, high levels of ambition and pace of demand must be reconciled.
• The ability to develop and deliver concise briefings on courses of action for experimentation designs and objectively derived recommendations for consideration by decision-makers.
• The self-confidence and strength of character to act, within established guidelines, on personal initiative, to quickly identify an optimal course of action and act accordingly while maintaining effective communication.

Professional Contacts:

In order to successfully accomplish the designer function of this post, the Staff Officer (Experiment Design) must be an accomplished networker who is able to draw upon new ideas, lessons learned and best practice from a broad array of sources in order to ensure that NATO experimentation is designed to high standards of cost-effectiveness. The incumbent will conduct regular direct briefings to flag or general officers, national representatives and other NATO and national staff officers (primarily at OF-6 to OF-4 level), and may represent SACT’s position at CD&E meetings and events.

Contribution To Objectives:

This post support the achievement of the Commander’s strategic objectives by contributing to military transformation, developing capabilities to address defence and security challenges and proactively supporting the requirements definition for future military estimates, perspectives and advice, capability requirements, and solutions engineering aimed to improve effectiveness and interoperability.  The incumbent will enact collaboration with Nations, partners and others, sharing best experiment design practices and making use of transformational and innovative approaches to seek multi-national solutions to the needs of the Alliance in terms of capability development.

Security Clearance

The successful applicant will be required to apply for and receive a NATO SECRET Security Clearance prior to final confirmation of contract and commencement of employment.

Contract

Serving NATO International Civilian staff will be offered a contract in accordance with the NATO Civilian Personnel Regulations.  Newly recruited staff will be offered a three year definite duration contract.

Notes for Candidates

The HQ SACT web site gives full details on the eligibility criteria and application processes to be adopted by all candidates.  However, candidates should particularly note:
Please answer each of the pre-screening questions completely in English. Expressions such as: “please see attached CV, please see annex, please see enclosed document, etc” are not acceptable; this is a cause of immediate rejection of the application. 
Particular attention should be given to Education and Experience section of your application form, which should be populated with details of your career to date and educational achievements and certifications as they relate to your application.

The candidature of NATO redundant staff at grade G17 will be considered with priority.

NATO will not accept any phase of the recruitment and selection prepared, in whole or in part, by means of generative artificial-intelligence (AI) tools, including and without limitation to chatbots, such as Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (Chat GPT), or other language generating tools. NATO reserves the right to screen applications to identify the use of such tools. All applications prepared, in whole or in part, by means of such generative or creative AI applications may be rejected without further consideration at NATO’s sole discretion, and NATO reserves the right to take further steps in such cases as appropriate.

NATO is committed to diversity and inclusion, and strives to provide equal access to employment, advancement and retention, independent of gender, age, nationality, ethnic origin, religion or belief, cultural background, sexual orientation, and disability. NATO welcomes applications of nationals from all member Nations, and strongly encourages women to apply.

This vacancy will close on 20 July 2026 @ 17:59hrs (EDT)/11:59hrs (CEST).