Apptad - Specialized IT Consultant - Intermediate

Responsibilities:

• Works in partnership with clients, advising them on information technology in order to meet their business objectives or overcome problems, work to improve structure and efficiency of an organization's I&IT systems.
• The I&IT Consultant may be used to provide strategic guidance to organizations with regard to Information Management & IT technology, IT infrastructures and the enablement of major business processes through enhancements to IT.
• Provides subject matter expertise in their field and highly expert technical assistance.

General Skills:

• Acts as the technical advisor/expert on all aspects of a specific deliverable
• Provide the quality assurance/quality control of specific deliverables
• Anticipates and resolves problems to ensure that the deliverables are completed within budget, to the highest quality, meeting or exceeding expectations
• Develops processes and procedures for implementing deliverables
• Prepares reports and presentations including options, recommendations, implementation plans, etc.
• Works with clients to define the scope of a project and to determine requirements
• Defines software, hardware and network requirements
• Analyzes I&IT requirements giving independent and objective advice on the use of I&IT
• Designs, tests, installs and monitors new systems and develops solutions and implementation of new systems
• Familiar with change-management principles and methodology
• Knowledge and understanding of Information Management principles, concepts, policies and practices

Key deliverables to be performed by the consultants include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Participating in the analysis, design, development and testing on assigned projects;
• Participating in project design and code walkthroughs;
• Perform knowledge transfer to designated Ministry staff, providing expertise and training to business users;
• Establishing relationships with client management and client subject matter experts and staff of the ministries to build knowledge of business directions, issues and operations;
• Participating in the creation of detailed plans and accurate estimates towards development, testing, and implementation of the project or program;
• Participating in and/or leading Joint Application Design sessions with the business and IT teams;
• Contributing to successful project completion by identifying risks and developing/ recommending mitigation strategies;
• Liaising with IT specialists and unit leads and working closely with support team members and relevant stakeholders;
• Facilitating defect, issue and risk resolution by following up with the business to confirm design decisions as required;
• Participating in discussions with the business analyst regarding any changes required to business and/or system requirements, as well as requirement gathering sessions;
• Working closely with the subject matter experts, managers, and staff of the ministries on issues and business needs;
• Creating and/or updating data processing overview, technical design, source to target mapping, operation manual and other technical documentation;
• Providing input into and/or completing required architectural/development artifacts; Consulting with clients, analyzing their business needs and assessing their problems/opportunities, promoting I&IT services, solutions and approaches and ensuring the cluster adds value in supporting business needs
• Systems and Quality Assurance Testing
• Analyzing requirements;
• Creating test strategy test plan, test case documentation and test scripts;
• Documenting expected testing results;
• Creating and modifying complex data-sets for testing purposes;
• Executing functional, regression and performance testing based on the test cases and scripts developed;
• Reporting on the status of test execution and testing results, documenting defects;
• Preparing for, supporting and participating in System Integration (SIT) testing, System Acceptance (SAT) testing and User Acceptance (UAT) testing;
• Implement the automation of new and existing testing scripts using Quick Test Pro v10.0; Creating and executing detailed test cases to support DB2 to Oracle migration of ETL code and data
• Lead and mentor junior QA analysts on the test framework and test execution
• Business Intelligence/Data Analysis and Profiling
• Analyzing business needs and participate in design of the overall project; Leading data analysis and profiling tasks
• Analyzing data in source and target systems to identify data cleanliness issues (e.g. missing values, duplicate meanings, and invalid data)
• Developing complex SQL queries to extract, analyze and validate key business data from a wide-range of data repositories (relational and multi-dimensional data stores, flat files, structure and unstructured)
• Developing automation extraction, validation, cleansing and load scripts
• Developing and supporting the use of Business Intelligence tools and best practices within the branch;
• Providing planning advice to the project team on the use of data, and building capacity within the Ministry on performing advanced analytics and data analysis; Providing direction on the statistical relevance of data to the project team;
• Supporting the analysis of existing business processes, design and recommending process improvements to effectively harness the benefits of using the application(s);

Skills and Experience:

Based on the scope, the consultant must have a minimum of 8 years of the following skills and experience:

• Analytical problem solving and decision making capabilities;
• Working collaboratively with client organizations and with multiple teams representing various areas in delivering the project;
• Working with multiple teams representing various areas in delivering the project;
• Ability to communicate clearly in both written and verbal formats, to both technical and nontechnical audiences
• Demonstrated ability to work collaboratively, with the ability to coordinate multiple projects with competing priorities and a track record for meeting strict deadlines
• Demonstrated experience with SDLC processes, Agile and Waterfall methodologies; Demonstrated analytical, problem-solving, decision-making skills, interpersonal and negotiation skills;
• Working with solutions built on Oracle, SQL Server, and IBM DB2;
• Demonstrated experience eliciting requirements, developing/consulting on options and solutions, and providing effective guidance to Ministry clients;
• Demonstrated experience providing detailed documentation for the tools that are developed, such as business requirements, system requirements and technical requirements; Demonstrated experience working with both the business users and IT development teams to ensure business requirements are properly reflected in the system design and technical specifications;
• Systems and Quality Assurance Testing
• Testing a Business Intelligence Solution, including database, data warehouse, presentation layer and reports;
• Executing different types of software testing processes and testing methodologies; Using HP Quality Centre (HPQC) and Team Foundation Server (TFS) to document, track and report on testing progress;
• SQL scripting, manual testing, testing automation (using a tool like Quick Test pro v10.0) and performance testing (using a tool like Load Runner);
• Writing test strategy, test scripts, test cases and test scenarios, testing web applications and reporting defects;
• Testing of authorization and authentication mechanisms that support single sign-on; Creating test data for a complex system, based on business requirements; Preparing data, conducting and supporting SIT, SAT and UAT;
• Business Intelligence/Data Analysis and Profiling
• Demonstrated experience in working with and analyzing large and diverse data sets, identifying relationships and themes;
• Demonstrated experience with statistics and modelling techniques such as econometrics and with analytical tools such as R/SAS/SPSS;
• Demonstrated experience with advanced data visualization tools and techniques, designing high quality interfaces to present information in a meaningful way;
• Demonstrated experience constructing complex query statements and enhancing performance of SQL Queries;
• Demonstrated experience manipulating and analyzing complex, high-volume data from structured and unstructured sources;
• Demonstrated experience working on projects involving multiple highly inter-dependent applications and/or data sources;
• Demonstrated experience working with star schema multi-dimensional models and Slowly Changing Dimensions (Type 2 dimensions);

Quality Assurance Testing and Technical Skills - 60%

• Strong skills in manual testing to complement automated tests, ensuring comprehensive coverage.
• Experience in automation tools like Selenium and Playwright to create and run automated test scripts.
• Experience in writing and troubleshooting test scripts, and familiarity with JavaScript/TypeScript for testing Angular applications.
• Experience reporting on QA activities and performing defect management in MS Azure DevOps, especially experience working with Test Plan.
• Experience leading and mentoring junior QA team members in the preparation and execution of test cases
• Knowledge and understanding of Accessibility for Ontarians with Disability Act (AODA) and related WCAG AA compliance in web application testing using tools such as AXE, NVDA and Narrator
• Experience creating complex SQL scripting for data analysis, profiling and testing
• Experience analyzing and testing solutions built with Oracle (19c) and SQL Server (2017, 2022)
• Experince with testing of Cyber Security Risk using tools such as Burp Suite
• Skills in testing RESTful APIs using tools like Postman or SoapUI.
• Experience scripting for testing ETL Code and data migration from Oracle to SQL Server
• Experience profiling and testing data stored within Databases, XML, CSV, JSON, and Excel files

Business Intelligence/Data Analysis and Profiling - 25%

• Experience analyzing and testing data warehouses, data marts, and data extracts;
• Experience designing and testing Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) process flows designed to process data for a data warehouse and reporting solution Demonstrated experience with developing complex SQL queries to extract, analyse and validate from both source and target systems across wide-range of data repositories(relational and multi-dimensional data stores, flat files, structure and unstructured)
• Experience developing and testing presentation layer and business intelligence reports;
• Experience with Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions (e.g. SSIS, SSAS, SSRS, Power BI) together
• Experience working with Star schema multi-dimensional models and Slowly Changing Dimensions (Type 2 dimensions)
• Experience with additional reporting solutions such as IBM Cognos and R Shiny

General Skills - 10%

• Experience working in Agile/Scrum environments, participating in sprint planning, stand-ups, and retrospectives.
• Experience with the use of desktop tools such as Visio, MS Office, MS Project, and MS Outlook
• Experience problem solving and decision making
• Experience coordinating multiple projects with competing priorities Demonstrated experience working with multiple teams representing various areas in delivering the project
• Experience communicating clearly in both written and verbal formats Demonstrated experience producing deliverables on time and on schedule Demonstrated experience leading and conducting knowledge transfer sessions to project team members (both IT and Business clients)

Public Sector Experience - 5%

• Previous experience with Public Sector methodologies and standards would be an asset Understanding of government priorities would be an asset.