Planning Officer

Are you looking for a new opportunity to take your career to a higher orbit? To join an international group with a successful track record in Space Engineering? A job adapted to your career ambitions and in which you could have an impact for the years to come?

In order to deploy a brand-new team and offer extra work-force to the Business Control and Management Support Office of the CSC (Directorate of Connectivity and Secure Communications), we are looking for Planning Officers to join us and work at ESA’s ECSAT premises in Harwell, United Kingdom.

About the client and location

The European Centre for Space Applications and Telecommunications is the European Space Agency’s (ESA) base in Harwell, UK. With special focuses on the link between space and telecommunications, ECSAT also hosts ESA’s Earth Observation Climate Office. It is from here that ESA’s Climate Change Initiative programme is executed.

Tasks and activities

The scope of work will include:

• Coordinate project schedule and risk support ensuring common approaches are followed; common tools are used where possible; improvements are suggested, and the service operates as independently as possible under the service work package manager and guidance of the Work Package Technical Responsible as required.
• Perform complex schedule analysis including metrics on quality, critical path analysis, float summary and assess the schedule performance at the required level.
• Provide expert schedule and risk support, inputs, evaluations, and recommendations to project teams during major procurement activities, programmatic reviews and technical reviews.
• Support and assist project teams in their schedule and risk management processes.
• Support the book captain for schedule management at project level ensuring configuration control is maintained on baseline and working schedules SW files and documentation.
• Coordinate and support schedule/risk meetings with the ESA project teams.
• Determine the criticality of schedule activities on CSC projects, evaluate, and suggest alternatives for schedule improvement, recovery, and acceleration to the technical teams for discussion and/or decision. Run simulations and what-if scenarios in support of management and technical teams’ decision process.
• Set up and maintain trend charts, templates for reporting progress, in line with agency best practices.
• Set up and maintain schedule performance indicators and quality metrics for project schedules.
• Prepare periodic quarterly and ad-hoc reports documenting schedule performance status and analysis and communicate on the content to the project team.
• Support to project team in understanding the status of the planning in their work domain and issue recommendations for improvement.
• Proactively track and verify the consistency between the schedules of the Industrial Consortia, interfacing proactively with industrial teams as necessary to get the up-to-date information. Identify potential problem areas and propose relevant mitigation actions.
• Provide expert support to the ESA Project Manager, project controller and project team in the risk management process, including suggestions for schedule recovery or acceleration, definition of mitigation plans and follow-up of actions.
• Assist CSC Project Control in the design and implementation of new schedule and risk control techniques, state of the art tools and procedures and potential AI applications.
• Provide expert advice to PMSO Office on the use or introduction of new schedule and risk management IT tools, reporting and dashboards and coordinate associated development and testing activities.
• Support CSC Business Control and Programme Management Support Office for the QMS audit exercise on Schedule and Risk Management.
• Proactively contribute to the development, maintenance and update of schedule and risk standards, practices, and processes within Agency’s programs.
• Proactively contribute to the Agency’s activities in capturing knowledge and elaborating best practices documentation in schedule and risk control.
• Elaborate training materials and deliver the trainings to the ESA teams.

Skills and experience

The following skills and experience are mandatory:

• University degree or equivalent qualification, with at least 4 years of relevant working experience.
• Expert level knowledge ofESA tools: ESA-p, ESA-Star, EROS, WLMS, ERIS, ECLIPSE (including DCCM and eRID).
• Expert knowledge operating Microsoft Project, Oracle Primavera, Visio, Office Timeline, Sharepoint, SAP, Simbio/Zenith.
• Knowledge of PowerBI.
• Planning and schedule expertise to support the analysis of schedule files and critical paths.
• Definition and maintenance of project schedules.
• Definition and maintenance of milestone trend charts.
• Knowledge of ¨what-if¨ scenarios and risk adjusted schedules.
• Expert level knowledge operating SW using Monte Carlo techniques for schedule risk adjustment (Deltek Acumen).
• Expert technical in all schedule planning, monitoring, and control aspects.
• Experience with project programmatic documentation (Industrial Contract(s), SOW, Management Requirements, Project Plan, Product Tree, WBS, etc.).
• Desire to work both autonomously and as part of a team, in an international multicultural environment.
• Solution oriented mindset, with a customer focused communication skill.
• Fluent in English, both written and spoken.

Why should you apply?

• You will have the opportunity to work within leading space organisations across Europe.
• We encourage everyone to think outside the box and to push the boundaries of traditional knowledge. This role is an opportunity to join a forward-thinking company and allows for a deeper understanding of the industry.
• To be part of a company that values integrity, inspiration, care and collaboration.
• Benefits include: competitive remuneration packages; unique career opportunities, including working in other countries; access to training and development programmes; flexible relocation support.

We welcome applications from people with disabilities, members of ethnic minorities, all genders, LGBTQ+ individuals and ex-service personnel.