VN 25/66 Secretary / Admin Assistant
The Contracts Division (COS) provides contractual and commercial expertise across the organisation, contributing to ensuring that procurements are timely, well managed and follow the EUMETSAT financial and procurement rules, procedures and best practices.
The Administrative Assistant is part of the COS Secretarial Team, which provides secretarial and administrative support to contracts officers in the COS Division and technical contract managers in the business units.
Duties
- Providing administrative and secretarial support to the Division, including scheduling of meetings, support for travel bookings, and preparation, administration and storage of documents and relevant correspondence;
- Processing and handling of contractual documents (e.g. mailing, distribution, handling of incoming and outgoing mail), ensuring contractual documents are correctly formatted and presented, performing relevant corrections where necessary;
- Maintaining the electronic filing and divisional archive of contractual documents;
- Coordinating and monitoring the internal approval of contractual documents to ensure their timely processing, hastening where necessary;
- Monitoring the signature status of contractual documents from Contractors, hastening until completed;
- Supporting Contracts Officers in coordinating administrative aspects of the tender evaluation process;
- Publishing procurement actions and related documentation on EUMETSATโs Invitation to Tendering system (EUMITS), monitoring of EUMITSโ shared e-mail account and queries;
- Dealing with enquiries from EUMETSAT staff and contractors regarding procurement-related activities;
- Monitoring attachments and Purchase Order approval status, and maintaining vendor master data in SAP system;
- Undertaking procurement-related and administrative tasks as required (such as drafting slides and documents, taking minutes of meetings, archive management, providing ad hoc support to Purchase and Contracts Officers, providing reports).
LOCATION Darmstadt, Germany
QUALIFICATIONS
Full secondary education required, professional qualification as a secretary or administrative assistant would be advantageous.
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. Knowledge of German would be an additional asset.
DEADLINE
5 January 2026
Duties
- Providing administrative and secretarial support to the Division, including scheduling of meetings, support for travel bookings, and preparation, administration and storage of documents and relevant correspondence;
- Processing and handling of contractual documents (e.g. mailing, distribution, handling of incoming and outgoing mail), ensuring contractual documents are correctly formatted and presented, performing relevant corrections where necessary;
- Maintaining the electronic filing and divisional archive of contractual documents;
- Coordinating and monitoring the internal approval of contractual documents to ensure their timely processing, hastening where necessary;
- Monitoring the signature status of contractual documents from Contractors, hastening until completed;
- Supporting Contracts Officers in coordinating administrative aspects of the tender evaluation process;
- Publishing procurement actions and related documentation on EUMETSATโs Invitation to Tendering system (EUMITS), monitoring of EUMITSโ shared e-mail account and queries;
- Dealing with enquiries from EUMETSAT staff and contractors regarding procurement-related activities;
- Monitoring attachments and Purchase Order approval status, and maintaining vendor master data in SAP system;
- Undertaking procurement-related and administrative tasks as required (such as drafting slides and documents, taking minutes of meetings, archive management, providing ad hoc support to Purchase and Contracts Officers, providing reports).
Skills and Experience
- Proven secretarial experience in a high-volume multi-lingual environment, with excellent typing skills;
- Excellent proficiency with the full MS Office tool package (in particular Word, Excel and PowerPoint) or similar software programmes;
- Demonstrated experience in using an electronic document management tool;
- Knowledge of ERP-System (SAP would be an advantage);
- Excellent interpersonal and communication skills with the ability to work both independently and as part of a team, combined with a proactive and helpful working style and excellent attention to detail;
- Energetic and conscientious, with a demonstrated commitment to supporting others and a strong interest in improving administrative support and processes, exploring new tools and business ideas.
Employment Conditions
The initial contract will be of 4 yearsโ 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 B2/B4 on the EUMETSAT salary scales. The minimum basic salary for this post is EURO 4,301 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 Europeโs 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.)