Product Owner

Project overview

The Product Owner is responsible for the performance of the building blocks. The role of the Product Owner is directional and critical within the Datacenter department. The Product Owner establishes configuration and maintenance frameworks for the building blocks, advises and reports on building blocks, determines the costs of building blocks, and manages the associated contracts.

As a Product Owner, you will focus on product management direction within the Datacenter Section. Specifically in the areas of Virtualization and Storage, Back-up & Recovery:

The Product Owner is a business-oriented manager who takes a leading role, acts as the link between management and team leaders, and is a reliable sparring partner for colleagues.

Assignment Background

You must realize that the Ministry of Defence is a wonderful large organization, and if something succeeds, it truly has an impact. But sometimes things don't succeed, or take longer. Fortunately, you can handle that well and can easily manage multiple projects simultaneously. One thing is certain if you take on this challenge: it will be an exciting time in which you will truly contribute to the safety of the Netherlands.

We expect the perfect candidate to possess the following characteristics and qualities:

The candidate has demonstrable experience in a leadership role where they have shown they can set the right priorities, manage a team at a high level, and act proactively to achieve the desired end goal. Additionally, the candidate has knowledge of LCM (Life Cycle Management), can provide input and consult with stakeholders (both internal and external) regarding the delivered services concerning usage, costs, and reliability. Furthermore, the candidate is expected to actively contribute to improving service delivery, with analytical and problem-solving skills being a must.

Lastly, but not least, the candidate has a decisive character: they can quickly make decisions when the situation calls for it and know how to convince others of their choice. The candidate can demonstrate this with multiple examples.

You will spend your days on projects where the above qualities are important to make them a great success.

The function is performed within a part of the JIVC, namely: the datacenter services section. The datacenter services section is responsible for delivering, managing, and maintaining physical and virtual server hardware, operating systems, tooling, and storage and backup facilities. With an enthusiastic team of ICT professionals, thousands of servers and various storage systems are managed in different domains. The virtualization and automation of the entire server landscape is an important mission of the section, making extensive expertise in virtualization and automation techniques indispensable.

Requirements eCF Profile: ICT Operations Manager

Reference Area: E.02 Project and Portfolio Management

This assignment is based on the European e-Competence Framework (e-CF). This is a European standard for describing IT competencies and the associated level of responsibility. The eCF profile indicates which competencies and at what level (e-1 to e-5) are expected from the candidate. We expect candidates to clearly demonstrate in their CV that they possess these competencies. This can be done by describing for each relevant assignment or function:

CVs in which the requested eCF competencies are not demonstrably present cannot be fully assessed for suitability.

Candidate has at least 4 years of demonstrable work experience with the chosen eCF profile similar function.

Generic description of competence area and levels:

Summary of task and mission:

• Determine lifecycle management (multi-year) plans and align them with architecture, organize steering for execution through project management or deployment of Senior Product Specialists;
• Manage the annual cycles of execution plans (business/annual plan) and ensure the correct demand for hours for basic management and lifecycles, the lifecycle (investment) budget, and the operational budget;
• Steer the Section to ensure that process-oriented/plan-oriented execution around the building blocks is picked up and organized by the Section;
• Steer the Section to ensure that incident/problem management processes are executed;
• Steer QA files (D/300 information security) and the auditability of the building blocks and execution processes;
• Organize Service Design meetings per building block;
• Participate in the administrative PV team, ensure that building blocks do not become siloed and remain integrated;
• Conduct alignment with the building blocks and the PV steering of other sections;
• Participate in Service Strategy teams with Information Management and in Service Vendor teams with Assortment Management and Procurement;
• Provide direction to the Technical Managers assigned to the Section;
• Represent the Section in the area of product management (where requested) at the GII department level and JIVC chain departments and towards customer forums.
• Participate in steering group meetings for lifecycle and customer projects.
• the role the candidate fulfilled
• the tasks and responsibilities involved
• the extent to which these align with the requested eCF competencies and the level
• Implements plans for a change program.
• Plans and directs a single or a portfolio of ICT projects to ensure the coordination and management of interdependencies.
• Orchestrates projects to develop or implement new, internally or externally defined processes to meet established business needs.
• Defines activities, responsibilities, critical milestones, resources, skills, interfaces, and budget, optimizes costs and time, minimizes waste, and strives for high quality.
• Develops contingency plans to address potential implementation problems.
• Delivers a project on time, within budget, and in accordance with the original requirements.
• Creates and maintains documents to facilitate the monitoring of project progress.
• Manages operations, people, and overall ICT resources.
• Implements and maintains a designated part of an ICT operation to ensure that activities are carried out in accordance with organizational rules, processes, and standards.
• Plans changes and implements them in accordance with the organization's strategy and budget.
• Manages risks and ensures the effectiveness of the ICT infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Coordinate and manage personnel
• Arrange, organize, plan, and monitor activities
• Negotiate objectives and resources
• Manage the departmental budget
• Prepare and monitor management information
• Analyze and propose solutions for continuous productivity improvement
• Manage the implementation and monitoring of IS quality assurance and security
• Communicate with internal business departments and project owners

Requirements

Additional Information:

Hybrid working: The frequency is an estimate, provided the work allows. Arrangements regarding working from home are always made in consultation with the needs assessor. Frequency of days working from home: 3

On-call services: No

• Candidate preferably has demonstrable work experience within the Ministry of Defence.
• Candidate preferably has experience with preparing reports and advice.
• Candidate preferably has demonstrable work experience with Storage.
• Candidate preferably has demonstrable work experience with PAM (Privileged Account Management).
• Candidate preferably has demonstrable work experience with ServiceNow.
• Candidate preferably has more than demonstrable work experience with the requested function within the eCF profile and assignment description.

Project details

• Start: 2026-10-31T23:00:00
• Location: Maasland Zuid-Holland, NL
• Languages: Dutch