Machine Learning Engineer

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.

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Who we are supporting 

The NATO Communication and Information Agency (NCIA) is responsible for providing secure and effective communications and information technology (IT) services to NATO's member countries and its partners. The agency was established in 2012 and is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium.

The NCIA provides a wide range of services, including:

• Cyber Security: The NCIA provides advanced cybersecurity solutions to protect NATO's communication networks and information systems against cyber threats.
• Command and Control Systems: The NCIA develops and maintains the systems used by NATO's military commanders to plan and execute operations.
• Satellite Communications: The NCIA provides satellite communications services to enable secure and reliable communications between NATO forces.
• Electronic Warfare: The NCIA provides electronic warfare services to support NATO's mission to detect, deny, and defeat threats to its communication networks.
• Information Management: The NCIA manages NATO's information technology infrastructure, including its databases, applications, and servers.

Overall, the NCIA plays a critical role in ensuring the security and effectiveness of NATO's communication and information technology capabilities.

The program

Assistance and Advisory Service (AAS)

The NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCI Agency) is NATO’s principal C3 capability deliverer and CIS service provider. It provides, maintains and defends the NATO enterprise-wide information technology infrastructure to enable Allies to consult together under Article IV, and, when required, stand together in the face of attack under Article V.

To provide these critical services, in the modern evolving dynamic environment the NCI Agency needs to build and maintain high performance-engaged workforce. The NCI Agency workforce strategically consists of three major categorise's: NATO International Civilians (NIC)'s, Military (Mil), and Interim Workforce Consultants (IWC)'s. The IWCs are a critical part of the overall NCI Agency workforce and make up approximately 15 percent of the total workforce.

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Role ID – C004854

Role Duties and Responsibilities

• Apply established machine learning and AI techniques to new problems and datasets.
• Build, optimize, and maintain machine learning and AI models and supporting pipelines.
• Evaluate and monitor ML/AI system outcomes, model performance, and data quality; define appropriate metrics and acceptance criteria.
• Identify issues in models, pipelines, and datasets; recommend and implement improvements.
• Design, develop, test, document, refactor, and maintain moderately complex programs/scripts to support ML development and deployment.
• Follow agreed engineering standards, tools, and best practices to deliver secure, reliable, and maintainable solutions.
• Monitor progress, report status, and communicate risks, blockers, and dependencies in a timely manner.
• Collaborate with teammates through code reviews, design reviews, and shared ownership of deliverables.
• Elicit requirements for ML/AI lifecycle practices, working methods, and automation (e.g., CI/CD, testing, deployment, monitoring).
• Select and implement appropriate lifecycle practices for components and microservices within the ML/AI solution.
• Deploy automation to support well-engineered, repeatable, and secure build/release processes.
• Define ML/AI modules needed for integration builds and produce buIld definitions for each release/generation of the solution.
• Validate and accept completed ML/AI modules against agreed functional, quality, and performance criteria.
• Apply data science techniques to new problems and datasets, using specialized programming approaches where needed.
• Identify and implement opportunities to improve training data, features, and model performance.
• Build and maintain data pipelines using data engineering standards and tools (ETL/ELT).
• Support monitoring of emerging technologies and contribute to internal reports, technology roadmaps, and knowledge sharing.

Essential Skills, Experience and Certifications

• 5+ years of hands-on experience building ML/AI solutions in Python, with strong foundations in machine learning concepts, software engineering, and production-grade development practices.
• Proven experience designing, developing, optimizing, and maintaining end-to-end AI/ML pipelines (data processing, training, evaluation, deployment, and monitoring).
• Strong track record in model evaluation and performance measurement, including defining metrics, running assessments, and monitoring model qualitY over time.
• Experience applying and adapting pre-trained models (including Generative AI/LLMs) to solve specific business use cases.
• Solid experience with MLOps practices: version control, experiment tracking, model packaging, deployment, monitoring, and automation.
• Proficiency with CI/CD pipelines and DevOps best practices (e.g., Git-based workflows, build/release automation).
• Practical experience with containerization (Docker, Podman) and orchestration using Kubernetes, including infrastructure provisioning and operationalization in cloud environments.
• Experience with workflow orchestration tools such as Apache Airflow and/or Argo Workflows.
• Strong experience building and maintaining REST APIs, ideally for serving ML models and AI services.
• Experience working with SQL and NoSQL databases. Nice to have
• Experience building production-grade AI agent backends, e.g., using LangChain or pydantic-ai, wrapped in FastAPI services.
• Full-stack experience with TypeScript frameworks such as Next.js.
• Experience working in air-gapped / restricted-network environments.

Working Location

• The Hague, Netherlands

Working Policy

• Onsite

Travel

• Some travel to other NATO sites may be required

Security Clearance

• Valid National or NATO Secret personal security clearance