Who: South Puget Sound Community College
Position: IT Specialist
Where: Olympia
What: The IT Specialist 5- Programmer reports to the IT Applications and Systems Director and supports the College mission by collaborating throughout the college community to design, deploy, maintain and enhance the campus technology infrastructure in support of student success and the improvement of college business services.
This position works directly with users, either independently or in a lead role, to perform analysis, application design, development, maintenance, programming, project management, quality assurance, trouble shooting, problem resolution and/or consulting tasks for a wide range of highly complex computing systems, applications, data access/retrieval and multi-functional databases. The position directly supports interfaces between the State Board administrative systems and other vendor-supplied applications and several custom applications.
At the expert level, and/or as a team or project leader, applies advanced technical knowledge and considerable discretion to evaluate and resolve highly complex tasks such as planning and directing large-scale projects; directing or facilitating the installation and/or maintenance of complex systems, hardware, software, application interfaces; quality assurance and testing; planning, administering and coordinating organization-wide training; acting as a liaison on the development of applications; representing institution-wide computing standards, policies and philosophy at meetings; developing and maintaining security policies and standards.
Responsibilities:
Serve as a consultant and technical support expert for all major applications of the college, both purchased software solutions and in house developed solutions. Participation in all phases of the software development life cycle as an expert web/database software application developer. (50%)
• Meet regularly and as required with assigned administrative users at the supervisor and director level to determine user requirements. This includes analyzing needs/problems and giving advice to users as to the technical feasibility of solutions.
• Collaborate with other system analysts, application developers, users, and managers in the planning and prioritization of projects and support cases. Provide accurate estimates of planned work and collaborate with the team on meeting deadlines.
• Consult with system administrators in troubleshooting hardware and software problems.
• Design, code, test, implement, and maintain web/database software applications and modify existing ones.
• Participate in staff meetings, technical work sessions, user/technical groups and presentations.
• Communicate with the IT Management on a regular basis to review and plan projects and support cases, provide technical consultation and summarize completed work.
• Monitor and respond to problems with computer systems in production.
Responsible for establishing technical standards, evaluating and recommending technical direction and environments used for software development and training staff in the development and maintenance of software applications. (25%)
• Shared responsibility with other developers and the database administrator in the support and maintenance of all production and test environments including database instances.
• Develop technical specifications for the development of software applications and the modifications of existing ones. This includes the development of specifications for databases, forms, reports, interfaces and batch processes.
• Prepare technical documentation for computer programs, systems, operations, and users. Present designs, code and technical documentation in walkthrough sessions for various audiences.
Serve as an expert in the following areas: (20%)
• SQL and enterprise database applications (e.g. MS SQL Server, Postgres, MySql, etc.)
• Operating systems (e.g. Windows and Linux) and scripting languages — must work well in a heterogeneous environment
• Applications design and development methodologies and best practices
• Business Analysis
• Web application development languages (e.g. PHP, HTML, XCSS, XML or others, including development environments)
• Data analysis and reporting
• Technical documentation
• Quality assurance and testing
• Project management
• Version control and bug tracking
Requirements:
• A Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer information systems, business administration, mathematics, science or equivalent education/experience.
• Four (4) years of professional work experience as a systems analyst/programmer OR web applications software developer OR database developer.
• Demonstrated commitment to high level customer service.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including good
listening skills.
• Ability to communicate and present oneself in a professional manner.
• Ability to exercise good judgment in evaluating situations, solving
problems and making decisions.
• Ability to build and maintain relationships with faculty, staff, and students in a professional, courteous manner; maintain good working relationships with other college departments and personnel.
• Ability to work well with others and function as a team member.
• Strong organizational skills, ability to work independently and prioritize multiple tasks, work under pressure, meet deadlines and accommodate numerous interruptions while performing multiple tasks.
• Strong aptitude for attention to detail and accuracy of information.
• Ability to work effectively with a diverse population of students, faculty, administrators and support staff in accomplishing tasks.
