Senior Programmer Analyst - Vancouver, Canada - UBC

Description

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Compensation Range

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Posting End Date

Note: Applications will be accepted until 11:59 PM on the day prior to the Posting End Date above.

Job End Date

At UBC, we believe that attracting and sustaining a diverse workforce is key to the successful pursuit of excellence in research, innovation, and learning for all faculty, staff and students. Our commitment to employment equity helps achieve inclusion and fairness, brings rich diversity to UBC as a workplace, and creates the necessary conditions for a rewarding career.

Job Summary

UBC has embarked on a multi-year journey to transform its academic and administrative support processes and system environments for the entire UBC community. Following the successful completion of major renewal projects related to UBC's Human Resources and Finance systems under the Integrated Renewal Program (IRP) in 2020, work is now underway for the next stage of IRP - to renew the Student information system, anchored by the implementation of Workday Student.

The Integrated Renewal Program vision is to transform the way UBC supports learning and research, and how UBC works, to create a cohesive, integrated, and enriched experience for students, staff, and faculty. The objective of the Integrated Renewal Program - Student is to deliver a renewed, reliable, and secure student information system as a foundation to support UBC's academic mission. IRP Student will leverage the industry-leading cloud enterprise solution, Workday, to replace UBC's current core Student administration systems with a new integrated, user-friendly, mobile-enabled platform.

This project has a high degree of complexity, influence, and impact as our solution is designed for the majority of constituents in the UBC community. UBC is one of the first Canadian institutions to implement Workday for this purpose.

For more information on the IRP Student, please visit

The Senior Programmer Analyst leads the analysis, design and review of existing or proposed system features and requirements and devises computer programs, systems and related procedures.

The incumbent will be part of the IRP Student team but will work closely with UBC IT Enterprise Identity and Access Management team (IAM). The incumbent provides supervision, leadership and technical expertise in the development of strategic application systems including analysis, design, development, configuration, implementation, testing, training and documentation. The position is responsible for ensuring the reliability and high availability of critical applications and for performing problem analysis and resolution. Provides advice on appropriate strategies for ongoing support and upgrade of supported applications.

Organizational Status

The Identity and Access Management function is a combination of business process management and technologies used to manage data on IT systems and applications about Users. The managed data includes user objects, identity attributes, security entitlements and authentication attributes. As UBC's User community continues to grow outside its traditional organizational boarders so does the complexity of the User ecosystem and the need to bolster information security controls. This leads to the need to validate Users with high degree of certainty, their entitlements to our provisioned IT services and access governance. With the increase in the User base the need to auto provision and de-provision with extreme accuracy is also required to ensure a sustainable operating model.

This position reports to the Associate Director, Technical Delivery but may receive guidance from the Senior Manager, Enterprise Identity and Access Management. Works independently and jointly within the IRP Student team while collaborating closely with the IAM team. Collaborates with management and staff from UBC IT and OCIO as well as technology professionals across the UBC community, other administrative and academic units, and faculty to coordinate application support.

Work Performed

Specific Duties:

• Leads the ongoing planning and development of systems enhancements in support of current or new enterprise services. Collaborates with peers/team members to identify, analyze, recommend and implement appropriate system enhancements that will improve performance, increase efficiency and productivity and streamline business processes. This may include leading or influencing the management of the lifecycle of a service or product.
• Investigates, analyzes and remains current with industry technology trends that would benefit Applications implementations
• Provides Tier 2/Tier 3 operational support for production systems including troubleshooting system problem reports, resolving issues with production systems, defining operational support processes, and providing end user support as required.
• Positively represents UBC IT in the community; acts as key resource for collaboration within and across project teams and within the application developer community on campus.
• Works with UBC IT Infrastructure staff to ensure that appropriate environment, hardware and software requirements are purchased, installed and configured to support

Applications projects.

• Provides recommendations and priority setting for on-going enhancements to the UBC IT Applications.
• Builds and maintains good working relationships with other UBC IT groups, teams, colleagues and peers. Builds and sustains good working relationships with customers and understands the customer s business. Builds and maintains good working relationships with IT vendors.

Core Duties:

• Provides technical leadership in the analysis and review of existing or proposed system features and integration, security, scalability and performance requirements with users, business analysts, architects and team members
• Leads the evaluation and selection process for application packages, and advises on options, risk, cost vs. benefits, and impacts on business processes and goals.
• Develops system test plans, oversees testing of new or modified applications and ensures applications meet specifications.
• Develops integration plans and ensures for the incorporation of plans into integration testing process.
• Ensures documentation of functions and changes to new or modified modules, tests activities/results, error handling and backup/recovery procedures.
• Designs, develops and programs specialized custom software, prepares functional specifications, and builds prototypes.
• Provides expert advice on complex system design issues and contributes to ongoing planning and development of systems enhancements.
• Packages in-house developed applications for production or integrates vendor supplied applications.
• May manage small to medium sized projects.
• Provides technical expertise, training, and consultation to other staff.
• Provides ongoing maintenance and operational support for applications.
• Supports software development lifecycle and applies and follows appropriate programming/development methodologies and best practices as instructed.
• Maintains appropriate professional designations and up-to-date knowledge of current information technology techniques and tools.
• Performs other related duties as required.

Consequence of Error/Judgement

Information Technology plays a key role in enabling the University to achieve its goal of becoming one of the world's leading universities. The services supported by Information Technology require reliable application systems in order to provide critical functions that support all students, faculty and staff. These systems must be available on a 7x24 basis.

Decisions and actions taken by the Senior Programmer Analyst will have a direct impact on how efficiently and effectively the systems will perform and function. Errors in judgment, poor analysis, or failure to act decisively could have a detrimental effect on these systems. Unreliable systems or failure to meet contractual obligations for performance and availability will damage the reputation of Information Technology and UBC. This could adversely impact the University community, including students, faculty and staff, and could significantly impact productivity, reputation funding and revenue.

Supervision Received
Works under the general direction of the Associate Director, Technical Delivery and under day to day direction of Application Architects or other senior technical staff as assigned. The Senior Programmer Analyst must be able to work independently as well as contributing actively and collaboratively, and openly as a team member.

Supervision Given
May mentor less experienced staff, and other resources within the team as it pertains to application support and maintenance. May oversee deliverables as assigned to Contractors.

Minimum Qualifications
Undergraduate degree in a relevant discipline. Minimum of eight years of related experience including at least two years of managerial experience, or the equivalent combination of education and experience.

- Willingness to respect diverse perspectives, including perspectives in conflict with one's own
- Demonstrates a commitment to enhancing one's own awareness, knowledge, and skills related to equity, diversity, and inclusion

Preferred Qualifications

Undergraduate degree in Computer Science preferred. Experience designing, developing and implementing medium to large scale software applications is an asset.

• Experience with Java, C, C++, C#, Pyton and Ruby programming languages
• Experience with Identity Brokers, preferably KeyCloak
• Experience with Git, Gradle, IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse, Jenkins, Bash script, etc. development tools
• Experience with REST API development
• Working knowledge of SaaS applications and security frameworks
• Familiarity with IAM services such as Shibboleth / SAML, OIDC, CAS, myVPN, DUO Multi-factor Authentication, CyberArk Privileged Access Management, etc. is an asset.
• Experience working with stakeholders and instructors with the demonstrated ability to:
• Communicate complex technical and business issues in both precise technical terms and approachable plain language
• Troubleshoot technical and business processes issues in time-sensitive, high-value situations on the phone, via email, and through the ServiceNow ticketing system
• Synthesize technical knowledge or resolved incidents into processes and KB articles, and liaise with a Helpdesk team to transition support for known issues to Tier-1.

Competencies

Core Competencies

Collaboration - Consistently fosters collaboration and respect among team members by addressing elements of the group process that impedes, or could impede, the group from reaching its goal. Engages the "right people," within and beyond organizational boundaries, by matching individual capabilities and skills to the team's goals. Works with a wide range of teams and readily shares lessons learned and credit for team accomplishments.

Communication for Results - Converses with, writes reports for, and creates/delivers presentations to all levels of colleagues and peer groups in ways that support problem solving and planning. Seeks a consensus with business partners. Debates opinions, tests understanding, and clarifies judgments. Brings conflict into the open empathetically. Explains the context of multiple interrelated situations, asks searching, probing questions, and solicits expert advice prior to taking action and making recommendations.

Problem Solving - Diagnoses problems using formal problem-solving tools and techniques from multiple angles and probes underlying issues to generate multiple potential solutions. Proactively anticipates and prevents problems. Devises, facilitates buy-in, makes recommendations, and guides implementation of corrective and/or preventive actions for complex issues that cross organizational boundaries and are unclear in nature. Identifies potential consequences and risk levels. Seeks support and buy-in for problem definition, methods of resolution, and accountability.

Role Based Competencies

Accountability - Sets enhanced objectives for self and others. Monitors performance trends and identifies opportunities to improve standards. Provides regular feedback and suggests alternative approaches necessary to ensure that organizational objectives and superior standards are achieved. Delegates responsibility and reallocates resources as needed to ensure that priorities are met for initiatives within area of responsibility.

Information Systems Knowledge - Engineers, coordinates, and submits approval for significant enterprise-wide information system solutions that align with organizational processes and long-term strategies. Recommends large-scale, best practice technological opportunities. Engages appropriate technical consultants, experts, and leaders.

Initiative - Describes future scenarios and related opportunities. Plans potential responses involving resource holders, peers, processes, and technology. Leads a timely response, seeking internal/external advice and consultation, and sustains progress through uncharted territories.