Contracts Officer

Contracts Officer

EUMETSAT - European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites

Darmstadt, Germany

EUMETSAT is Europe’s meteorological satellite agency, operating satellites that monitor the weather and climate from space - 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The Contracts Division provides contractual and commercial expertise across the organisation and ensures that best value for money is achieved by an efficient procurement process. The Division provides contractual and commercial expertise to the organisation, performs checks and balances to ensure compliance with the procurement rules, and ensures that procurements are timely and well managed.

The division is responsible for both procurements of programme/mission related assets, including related industrial support services, as well of service contracts/consultancies, studies and general supplies.

The Contracts Officer will be located within the Purchasing Group having responsibility for the procurement of general supplies, technical and scientific studies, external consultancy services and a significant amount of skills-centered services.

Duties

• Implement procurements of services, consultancies, general supplies and studies in various contractual settings (e.g. frame contracts, service contracts and works contracts) in line with the EUMETSAT Procurement Procedures, including:
  • Autonomous drafting of tender documentation, ensuring consistency between technical and contractual documents and evaluating the received offers as part of multi-disciplinary Tender Evaluation Boards;
  • Negotiating and finalizing contracts in the area of the Purchasing Group;
  • Ensuring compliance with the procurement, financial and contractual rules and procedures of EUMETSAT;
  • Monitoring the purchase requisitions and generating purchase orders in SAP.
• Commercial management of contracts in their execution phase, which involves liaising with suppliers and technical managers;
• Contribution to the evaluation of contractors’ performance in close cooperation with the internal customer entity;
• Accumulating and maintaining information on possible providers of different types of supplies and services, etc.;
• Accumulating and maintaining statistics on services contracts for reporting purposes by retrieving procurement data from SAP;
• Providing support to the Head of the Purchasing Group and the other members of the Purchasing Group as required.

Skills and Experience

• Expert experience in the procurement of supplies or complex services, and in the negotiation and commercial management of contracts, preferably service contracts; supporting the development and operations of complex high technology systems in the frame of international or governmental public procurement;
• Proven experience in drafting tender and contractual documentation independently;
• Ability to understand complex technical and legal issues and to formulate clear legal texts;
• Considerable experience in negotiating legal provisions and dealing with contractual matters, preferably in the frame of international public procurement;
• Good negotiation skills;
• Experience of the Materials Management module of an ERP System (ideally SAP);
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills with ability to work independently but also in a team;
• Proven professional experience in a multi-lingual environment, with excellent word processing skills and experience in the use of MS Office.

Qualifications

• University degree or equivalent in law, economics or business studies.

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. Working knowledge of the German language would be desirable.

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 A2/A3 on the EUMETSAT salary scales. The minimum basic salary for this post is EURO 6903 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

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. 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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