Description

The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe's gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe's space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. ESA’s annual budget for 2026 is €8.3 billion, with a workforce of around 6000 comprising staff and contractors.

Under the direct authority of the Director General, the Director of Controlling, Finance, and Operational Procurement is responsible for contributing to ESA-wide management, supporting the ESA Director General in the discharging of all relevant responsibilities and tasks and participating in the pursuit of ESA’s overall objectives. The Director is a member of the ESA Executive Board and supports the Director General’s leadership of ESA at senior management level.

Duties

Under the direct authority of the Director General, and within the framework of ESA's matrix organisation of programme directorates, the Director of Controlling, Finance, and Operational Procurement is responsible for the Agency's controlling, budgeting, forecasting, financial reporting and procurement. In addition, the Director monitors programme achievements in close coordination with the Independent Project Management Authority (IPMA) led by the Inspector General.

The Directorate of Controlling, Finance and Operational Procurement plays a central role in ensuring timely contracting, procurement and cash flow to industry, and best-in-class controlling services and processes. It provides guidance to maintain projects on track in terms of time, cost, quality, and scope. Its responsibilities include:

• Controlling: The Directorate for Controlling, Finance and Operational Procurement hosts the Controlling Hub and is responsible for the provision of best-in-class controlling services to programme directorates, in close proximity to projects. Through the Hub, the Directorate implements a Shared Service Centre for controlling services.
• Financial Governance: monitoring and improving order-to-cash KPls, maintaining relations with Member States on financial matters, managing programme board financial data, conducting financial analysis, and overseeing treasury and financing activities.
• Financial Operations: handling banking relationships, liquidity management, investments, financial planning and analysis, as well as driving budget preparation, forecasting, and performance monitoring.
• Accounting and Reporting: ensuring compliance with IPSAS standards, preparing financial and sustainability reports, and managing relationships with the Audit Commission.
• Sourcing and Procurement: defining procurement strategies, elaborating and defining the Agency's contract rules and policies, conducting negotiations and managing procurements for all activities and programmes with industry, managing relations with industry, ensuring compliance, supporting the evolution of procurement and contractual schemes towards more agility and transparency, reducing complexity and simplifying access to ESA procurement for industry.
• Industrial Policy: drawing up and defining the Agency's industrial rules and policies and implementing them.

Through these functions, the Directorate safeguards ESA's financial integrity, supports effective programme delivery, strengthens accountability across the Agency and fosters the simplification of procurement processes for industry. The Director of Controlling, Finance and Operational Procurement leads the modernisation of systems and provides requirements for the digital transformation of the supervised functions. The Director will participate in the evolution of the Agency in a global context. In particular, this requires the strengthening of the European industrial base to obtain a healthy, competitive industrial ecosystem comprising small, medium and large-scale operators. The director needs to develop strategies and support measures for industrialisation and upscaling to turn one-off technical excellence into market-driven solutions.

As Director, you will actively work to ensure the well-being, motivation, training and career progression of your Directorate workforce, incentivising a spirit of initiative, transparency, information flow and collaboration with other Directorates.
 

You will also be responsible for identifying, assessing, managing, and reporting the health and safety risks in your area of responsibility

Technical competencies

Behavioural competencies

Result Orientation
Operational Efficiency
Fostering Cooperation
Relationship Management
Continuous Improvement
Forward Thinking

For more information, please refer to the ESA Core Behavioural Competencies guidebook

Education

Applicants for this post should have a master's in a financial and/or procurement, and/or economics and/or business administration domain, optimally coupled with a high level of expertise in technical subjects and in-depth knowledge of and proven experience in the execution and management of public spending and programmes, preferably acquired in an international setting.

Applicants should also preferably have academic credentials in management or business administration and experience in management of large industrial procurements.

Additional requirements

Other key qualities required for the post are an innovative spirit and a strategically oriented mind, a proven capacity to lead change and capacity to foster cross-team collaboration, while upholding values of diversity, ethics and inclusive leadership.

In addition, you should have:

• the ability to provide strategic direction to individuals and teams and to relate team objectives to the overall, evolving organisational goals and context;
• the ability to drive performance within and across teams throughout the organisation;
• demonstrated excellent leadership, relationship management and communication skills, both oral and written;
• excellent cognitive, analytical, delegation, planning and organisational skills;
• the ability to anticipate problems, solve complex issues and relate situations to their context;
• the ability to reach solution-oriented, pragmatic and timely decisions of a high standard and with integrity as well as to support others (team members, upper management and other stakeholders) in this process.