Job Specification

Purpose :

To provide authoritative technical advice and leadership to resolve complex systems problems and critical incidents in an Agile and DevOps environment.
To lead systems development including analysis, design and coding. Unit and integration testing and technical documentation services for system development/enhancement for new initiatives, modernization project and their interfaces to other systems, in both legacy, mobile and web-based technology.
To provide administrative and technical direction to programming staff and consultants.

Key Responsibilities :

1. Systems Design and Development:
- Plans for and manages systems development activities including program analysis, design and coding; unit and integration testing and technical documentation services including estimating human resources, software and hardware requirements for multiple major system developments and enhancements.
- Leads or participates in the development and review of system and application designs based on size and complexity and develops innovative approaches and alternative solutions to deliver high quality, efficient services and products that meet client's expectations and needs.
- Leads the determination of test parameters and test cases for unit and integration testing and ensures these tests are conducted and walkthroughs held before promotion to the systems test environment.
- Ensures an efficient development and integration test environment is configured and maintained to enable delivery of accurate and fully tested and documented program design and code, which meets the application requirements, addresses business needs of clients and is in accordance with established strategy, standards and protocols.
- Reviews systems to ensure conceptual integrity, operational status and adequacy of documentation; conducts follow-ups to ensure client satisfaction; and reviews infrastructure services on behalf of clients and service level agreements.
- Ensures that proposed system designs leverage common and reusable components, meet architectural standards and have review board approvals.
- Follows approved change management principles to ensure implementations can be safely backed out in case of major problems.
- Oversees the development and application of application tools and methodologies, research and development, application architecture, integration, analysis, design, construction, unit/system/end-to-end (E2E) performance, testing, accessibility and security.
- Leads the development and implementation of performance measures and metrics, problem resolution protocols and contingency plans to guarantee business continuity and disaster recovery.
- Leads the assessment and evaluation of Open Source Software products, integration with solutions and develop materials to obtain approvals; and performs other technical duties (e.g. producing software code, developing proof of concept (POC) solutions).
- Provides authoritative technical advice to resolve critical incidents and other technical performance issues; and develops protocols and necessary changes to mitigate risk.
- Identifies new technologies and approaches to further develop and sustain the operational quality and life of the platforms over time.

2. Expertise, Consultation and Advice:
- Provides authoritative advice to senior management and the team on developing and managing highly integrated systems platforms to deliver business requirements; including strategies to monitor and optimize applications and infrastructure; to resolve priority, high volume, complex, public facing systems issues; and to identify and demonstrate opportunities for new development.
- Leads consultations with vendors, consultants, and other stakeholders to ensure that the full technical complexity of the solution(s) is understood.
- Leads and/or participates on task forces to identify, assess and recommend strategies and approaches for systems design and development issues.
- Provides regular updates to senior management to keep them informed of product status, problems, need for changes in terms of reference, approved schedules, budgets or staff and to seek approvals.
- Consults with clients to provide advice and help in defining systems requirements and identifying solutions and deliverables suited to client needs, provides technical expertise and makes presentations to product teams and senior management to discuss IT strategies/project status, identify and recommend resolution of complex systems issues and gain approval for new systems development opportunities.
- Develops, fosters and manages effective relationships and partnerships with clients, partners, vendors, suppliers, OPS and private sectors, to facilitate cooperative approach to business.
- Educate stakeholders on Agile Principles and Values.

3. Team Leadership/Guidance:
- Provides authoritative direction, leadership and technical guidance to staff and external service providers on multiple concurrent systems development, delivery and support projects.
- Provides ongoing technical expertise to the evaluation, maintenance and sustainability of major systems platforms.
- Provides leadership and guidance to project teams and consultants retained for specific project activities as well as technical guidance to the team; schedules activities, explains procedures, develops learning plans and monitors work progress.
- Co-ordinates the program analysis, design and coding; unit and integration testing and technical documentation services of projects across ministries and/or with industry to ensure access to required resources.
- Develops partnerships with managers and peers to assess program impacts, ensure integration of programs, use of common components/ services and the delivery of fully integrated technical solutions across multiple technology platforms for the implementation of critical business needs.
- Develops performance measures for project activities and system evaluations and ensures effective review and quality control of results.
- Conducts technical research to identify, assess, evaluate and recommend innovative tools and methods to improve system efficiency, maintains up-to-date awareness of technology trends and developments in software applications and related tools methods and promotes standards, policies, procedures, methodologies, common components and infrastructure for use in application development.

4. Planning and Management:
- Directs planning for all phases of large scale systems implementation including: defining scope and deliverables; establishing priorities and schedules; developing and assessing project budgets and assisting clients to establish multi-year projections; determining project staff requirements including skills mix and when to on-board, assess and acquire staff from technology community, fee-for-service consultants and clients; and, gets approval for overall plan.
- Works within established product priorities, prepares work schedules, allocates work to the team including consultants, maintains a workload balance, monitors work progress and takes corrective action to meet objectives and plans.
- Develops Requests for Proposals (RFPs) or similar vehicles for infrastructure and software acquisition and consulting services, participates in the selection of vendors and suppliers and establishing terms and conditions.

Knowledge / Skill :

Knowledge of and skills in:
- System Architecture, program analysis, design and coding; unit and integration testing; technical documentation and implementation in a large and heavily integrated n-tier application environment (client, mid-tier and data) and mainframe; multi-platform environment with large software distribution to direct the development, evaluation and approval of programs designed by staff and consultants.
- Problem-solving and analysis approaches and techniques to analyse and evaluate key technical impacts of proposed projects on other areas, ministries and industry and assess long-term implications of recommendations, evaluate alternatives and lead technical staff in problem resolution Resource management, including OPS procurement policies/processes to estimate resources, supervise project and consultant.
- Current and emerging I&IT trends, operational methods and technologies, including platforms, software, networks, databases, applications common business systems, technology infrastructure and operational services, testing and implementation methodology, in order to determine and select options for complex platform solutions development for complex integrated environments.
- Current methodologies pertaining to systems analysis, agile design, development, testing and implementation methods, data, applications, networking and security, in order to direct and oversee systems design, development, deployment and maintenance.
- Job has mandatory requirements in areas such as: in-depth knowledge of the information technologies, applications, industry and computer languages specific to the program system(s) currently in use. These mandatory requirements will be specified in the job ad during the recruitment process.
- Business systems life cycle including analysis, design techniques, systems development methodologies (e.g, agile, XP, TDD) and tools, testing and implementation to plan/manage large scale multi-year projects to meet critical client business requirements.
- Communications, interpersonal and consulting skills to establish effective relationships and provide technical advice to systems management. Gain agreement/consensus on project approach and consult with colleagues in other ministries, governments and industry on technical integration and knowledge sharing opportunities.
- Planning, organizing and consultation skills to coordinate deliverables completion within established deadlines and participate in the review of service agreements.
- Multi-platform systems integration, vendor relationship for third party products management and change / release management process to ensure smooth transition from project to operations.
- Monitoring and maintaining application architecture (micro and macro) and application performance through the development of standards and evaluation of new software
- End-to-end solution architecture development, system integration and migration methods; application architecture and design, and optimization of processes.
- Understand the roles and activities on an Agile Team.
- Understand the differences between Traditional and Agile Development.
- Knowledge in various SDLC methodologies including Agile, and iterative approaches
- Four or more years of experience with agile development framework (preferably SAFe), DevOps and Test Driven
Development (TDD).
- Experience with how Automation Testing can enable Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery and DevOps
strategy.

Interpersonal / Influencing Skill :

- Persuasion skills to obtain buy-in for system development, promote systems to senior management and stakeholders and provide advice and recommendations to management/staff regarding system strategies and options.
- Communication skills to present IT strategies and solutions to senior management; advise regarding approaches to contentious systems issues; deliver presentations to clients and stakeholders at major IT events; interview highly skilled IT professionals; chair architectural planning sessions with partners and stakeholders; lead project status meetings and other committees to discuss/determine strategy for systems priorities.
- Leadership and collaboration skills to supervise leads, systems specialists, developers and support staff, provide motivation and foster teamwork.
- Ability and experience to negotiate and influence internal and external stakeholders, including matrix teams and service delivery partners, to agree on cost effective and efficient solutions to solving organization issues and challenges.
- Ability to engage and collaborate with the stakeholders at different levels on getting their buy-in on new and challenging initiatives, and follow through with them on commitments to ensure quality, on time and on budget delivery of work.
- Excellent oral and written communication and presentation skills to collaborate, articulate and communicate effectively with stakeholders and a wide variety of decision makers and prepare and present a variety of reports and make recommendations.

Analyzing / Problem Solving Skill :

Analysing and problem solving skills to:
- Plan and lead all phases of complex projects, including estimating and ensuring availability of technical resources; and resolve competing priorities, conflicting deadlines and resourcing issues.
- Ensure the application of best practices for technology design, development, deployment and operation, for multiple complex system platforms.
- Develop systems integration strategies to ensure that components can be fully integrated to create the required delivery platform; identify and assess the impacts of new solutions or enhancements on existing services and infrastructure for performance, sustainability and robustness.
- Understand, assess and develop solutions for mitigating risk, where system failure would affect high volumes of public access, and create significant negative impact on program delivery and security.
- Assess and resolve critical incidents and develop protocols for dealing with/avoiding future incidents.
- Develop appropriate performance measures for project evaluation, assess/develop contingency plans for problem resolution situations, analyse technical quality of systems design and ensure consistency/compliance of business solutions with OPS directions/standards.
- Evaluate and define project management requirements, identify options or alternatives, make recommendations, coordinate and implement processes for diverse projects and/or project components.
- Lead and manage end-to-end business and technical issues and risks analysis and resolutions.
- Analytical, interpretive reasoning and problem-solving skills to assess issues, identify root causes and coordinate the resolution of technical problems and incidents for multi-platforms and multi-tier information systems; in collaboration with the business stakeholders and service delivery partners.
- Conceptualizing skills, attention to details and results-focus orientation to develop solutions design features and alternatives to ensure effective operation of hardware and software platforms, infrastructure and IT security and quality control systems, (e.g. oversee planning/scheduling of hardware platform and systems software upgrades).
- Judgement and analytical skills to assess clients' needs, determine priorities, determine optimum systems solutions to meet client/user needs, assess risks and develop solutions.

Decision Making / Responsibility :

- Providing leadership/management for concurrent, large scale, multi-year ministry/enterprise wide systems solutions projects.
- Leading, coordinating and managing the program analysis, design and coding; unit and integration testing and technical documentation services for multiple concurrent projects of varying size and impact.
- Identifying most appropriate solutions to ensure needs are met and analysing, evaluating and recommending most effective/efficient alternatives and new technologies.
- Providing input into the planning of projects, estimating budgets, determining and selecting staff and consultant resource requirements, working within established project priorities and ensuring products and services are on time, within budget.
- Identifying and recommending technical solutions, providing input to implementation plans based on technical requirements, ensuring quality of program designs and program code, compliance with organisational directions and effective type and degree of testing.
- Managing and providing technical direction to subordinates and consultants and in making decisions on matters related to selection of staff and consultants.
- Has latitude to determine scope and direction of projects, project budgets and resourcing strategies, establish project priorities/directions to support system design, development, implementation, integration, alignment and compliance with ministry and enterprise IT strategies.
- Decisions are guided by OPS directives and policies governing technology architectures, system development and project management life cycles and security best practices, standards and processes to meet critical client business requirements and provide strategic systems development advice to client and senior management.
- Developing performance metrics and monitoring ongoing system performance, to ensure that solutions continue to perform as required.
- Recognize and evaluate risk in platform design and take the necessary actions through all phases (design, development and deployment) to ensure that risk is minimized/avoided.
- Lead the resolution of critical incidents and develop mitigation strategies and protocols.

Contacts / Stakeholder :

- Clients (directors, managers), to determine program requirements, provide authoritative and persuasive advice and expertise on the design and development of complex systems platforms for delivery of government programs to the public; define technology service requirements; provide authoritative guidance on the best use of current and innovative new information systems, risk and risk management; provide project status updates, discuss and resolve service delivery issues, and provide authoritative advice and expertise to resolve and prevent critical
incidents.
- Senior management to communicate and present IT solutions/strategies, obtain buy-in for funding of new systems development initiatives, identify and assess systems issues and opportunities, provide status updates, and provide authoritative advice and expertise on systems and infrastructure development.
- Vendors, internal and external stakeholders and other public sector jurisdictions to review new products and systems, discuss technology trends, and initiate/build/manage partnerships for participation in integrated projects.
- Management to identify and discuss program analysis, design and coding; unit and integration testing; technical documentation services recommendations, provide advice on applications solutions and negotiate changes to project schedules and deliverables.
- Staff and professionals to provide technical advice and direction.
- Vendors, suppliers and colleagues in the technology industry to maintain awareness of trends and developments in the IT field.
- Architects, security experts, operational staff and other IT specialists to solicit input to planning and activities to ensure overall compliance and minimize risk of compromising the enterprise environment.
- Members of committees, work groups, standards teams, other forums and projects to share information, educate and persuade in support of current project and leverage other experience and expertise.

Guidance / Supervision :

- Provides authoritative technical expertise and guidance to client, senior management and technical teams (including senior architects and designers) to ensure the design, development, integration and deployment of complex systems platforms to meet government program delivery requirements.
- Leads multiple concurrent teams, including defining project parameters, managing resourcing, developing work plans and priorities, assigning work, monitoring performance and quality of services and deliverables, explaining work procedures, and overseeing the development of learning and development plans, coordinating staff training, and resolving issues.
- Provides authoritative expertise and advice to resolve critical incidents and mitigate future risk for multiple complex systems platforms.
- Supervises and provides technical leadership to the team by creating work plans, assigning and tracking work, establishing priorities, monitoring quality of deliverables, explaining work procedures, assisting with learning and development plans, training staff and resolving issues.
- Excellent leadership and project management skills to supervise leads, developers and support staff, provide motivation and foster teamwork, as well as leading and influencing a team of technical and non-technical staff working on various multiple concurrent projects.

Demands / Pressures :

Work Demands :

- Occasionally works longer hours to meet work requirements.
- Routinely deals with unexpected service delivery issues and conflicting work demands.
- Routinely works within tight time pressures and conflicting work demands and priorities.

Mental / Sensory :

- Frequent requirement to concentrate when leading client consultations, defining requirements, assessing options and potential suppliers, analyzing complex IT data, and in ongoing meetings with clients, colleagues, vendors, teams and staff.
- Ability to critically analyse issues, develop solution options and, respond quickly to business-critical applications and technical services challenges, to ensure stable, available, reliable and secure operating environment, in support of projects and operational support activities.
- Emotional intelligence to lead and coordinate stakeholders, with varied interests, facilitate brainstorming and syndicate sessions on major organization challenges and improvement initiatives.

Conditions / Environment :

Work is performed in a typical office environment.