Application Maintenance and Operations

Job Introduction

Are you fascinated about Space? Do you have a working experience in the field of Application Maintenance? You could be our new Application Maintenance and Operations Engineer. Come and join talented diverse Serco team at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) based in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. 

Serco is among the leading Space Industry and Services Companies. Serco’s space heritage over the last 40 years has placed us in the Space News Top 50 Space Industry Manufacturing and Services Companies - We work alongside EUMETSAT and the European Space Agency, our employees have been providing everyday their technical, scientific and management skills to support the full range of European cornerstone space missions.  

Role Responsibility

As part of the team at ESA/ESTEC, you will have the following responsibilities:

Maintenance encompasses modifications that fix application problems caused by design, logic, or coding errors. This type of maintenance is often triggered by an explicit service desk ticket or problem report and often involves errors that must be addressed immediately.

• The engineer shall perform corrective maintenance in response to user reported problems for applications in scope, i.e.:

                 - Manage the application lifecycle and evolution.

                 - Implement with highest priority urgent and security related upgrades.

                 - Provide unlimited application software patches, bug-fixes and other updates as part of the maintenance services.

                 - Track application software defects and have software patches released as needed to address these defects.

                 - Address any non-urgent upgrade/migration need in the Monthly Report.

• For Software Problem Reports raised by the users, the engineer shall take immediate action to find and implement the solution in the shortest possible time.
• The engineer shall define the criteria for software problem (bug) criticality.
• The engineer shall define the criteria for bug reporting, fixing and deployment in production environment.
• The engineer shall establish and maintain a software configuration control and operational plan.
• The engineer shall employ clear and comprehensive release plans that enable customers and business plans to align their activities with the plans that minimize unpredicted impact on the production services, operations, and support organization.
• Whenever an action requires a service downtime, the engineer shall request and obtain prior authorisation from ESA Technical Responsible before proceeding.
• Planned downtime for routine maintenance, upgrades or problem resolution shall not be performed during NWH (Nominal Working Hours: 0800hrs to 1800hrs (CET) from Monday to Friday, except ESTEC bank holidays), except for implementation of authorized emergency measures.
• In case of planned downtime, the engineer shall inform the affected users in advance after obtaining prior authorisation from ESA Technical Responsible before proceeding.
• In case of unplanned downtime, the engineer shall inform immediately (i.e. max 1 hour from detection of outage) the users impacted by the loss of service.
• The downtime notification (planned or unplanned) shall indicate as a minimum the services - - The engineer must issue a confirmation note of service restoration after a planned or unplanned downtime shall be issued after the service restoration.

Successful Candidate

Do you think you are the person we are looking for? See below what experience or knowledge you should bring::

• University degree in computer science (or equivalent) with minimum 4 year experience in IT
• Minimum 4 years of experience of system maintenance and/or further development and/or refactoring of existing systems using the relevant technology
• Experience of 3 years as software developer in development of new software, and/or in maintenance of existing applications
• Knowledge of the software development lifecycle
• Experience of working in an Agile environment
• Experience working with work item management tools (e.g. Jira)
• Experience producing and maintaining technical documentation
• Experience in unit testing
• Understanding of Unified Modelling Language (UML)
• Knowledge of Object Oriented Programming (OOP)
• Experience in the development of web applications and databases
• Strong understanding of relational database concepts and data modelling
• Strong Oracle database development experience including SQL, PL/SQL, performance tuning etc. Expert skill level with Oracle’s Application Express framework (Oracle APEX). Some knowledge of Oracle RESTful services programming
• Strong knowledge of HTML5, JavaScript, Ajax, CSS, and JSON
• Knowledge of Microsoft Office package (Word and Excel), in particular merging data with templates
• Knowledge of Data Warehousing principles and concepts, Business Intelligence reporting, dashboard design and ETL processes and industry best practices.

Package Description

What we offer if you join our amazing team:

• Competitive Salary 

• Corporate Benefits Package 

• Exciting relocation package​ (if applicable) 

• Company events

About the Company

Serco is one of the world’s largest providers of public services to Governments employing over 50,000 people in over 20 countries. In Europe, Serco supports governments and international organisations in the delivery of essential public services with operations in Belgium, France and French Guyana, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland.

What connects the ever growing Serco workforce is a passion for delivering great service and to keep ahead we have to constantly evolve and enhance the way we deliver our services and everyone in Serco has a role to play. We have a mandate to execute brilliantly and our people lead and inspire based on our core values, Trust, Care, Pride and Innovation.

As a business which delivers “front-line” public services, employing tens of thousands of people, we are constantly developing and promoting people; our need for skilled professionals is insatiable and few companies can offer as many opportunities for individuals to grow their careers.

A career with Serco offers the chance to work with both inspirational people and innovative contracts, in a dynamic and exciting environment.

If you share our values and want to join a team of over 50,000 passionate colleagues globally we want to hear from you.

Make a difference every day.

Take pride in what you do!

More at:

https://www.serco.com/eu/sector-expertise/space

https://www.serco.com/eu/careers/careers-in-space

Serco European Agencies