GENERAL PURPOSE\:
The IT Applications Lead is responsible for leading projects that apply new or existing technologies and solutions to solve business needs. Works with the IT and business management teams to define overall technical direction. Partners with the business to determine system needs, influencing and guiding the change process from concept to implementation. Coordinates the efforts of internal and external staff, and of key business partners in the support of existing production systems and in the execution of new system projects. Serves as a functional and/or technical expert in one or more disciplines.
ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:
- Leading the activities of providing new capabilities and driving value existing capabilities.
- Managing projects throughout the entire systems development lifecycle, ensuring that requirements are defined accurately, systems are designed/coded or purchased that meet the defined requirements and that execute efficiently. Creating detailed project plans, coordinates team resources and manages to overall project time line. Ensuring that test plans and training plans are designed and executed successfully, all required system and user documentation is created accurately, projects are completed on time and under budget and anticipated business benefits are achieved.
- Supporting existing production systems, coordinating related support and enhancement activities. Defining and prioritizing problems and requests. Ensure proper testing and business change management practices and procedures are followed. Ensuring all support activities are executed on time and on budget.
- Takes a leadership role in analyzing the use of new and existing technology to meet current and future business needs. Investigates new tools, applications, and technologies and determines how these can be used to solve business problems. Understands business trends and the need for competitive advantage.
- Recommends, designs, and oversees development of application solutions. Works with senior members of the IT organization to create and enforce architectural standards. Ensures the architectural integrity within the enterprise. Technical resource across multiple platforms and systems.
Provides technical training to programmers and programmer analysts on the use of new technologies. Provides working prototypes and development environments for other programmers to experiment with. Works with other leads on large projects, either as a lead or a team member. Expected to perform business design and analysis, internal consulting, application testing, and application design reviews.
COMPETENCIES
- Customer Focus
- Integrity & Trust
- Problem Solving
- Written Communications
- Dealing with Ambiguity
- Composure
- Listening
- Organization Agility
- Strategic Agility
- Time Management
QUALIFICATIONS AND SPECIAL SKILLS
Required Skills and Qualifications
- At least 5 to 10 years’ experience supporting RDBMS systems.
- Demonstrated career progression in technical depth and breadth, and project complexity. Ability to quickly become proficient in new technologies.
- Undergraduate degree or equivalent work experience in information systems, computer science, or a related technical discipline.
- Technical orientation balanced by project management discipline. Able to supervise internal programmers, analysts, consultants, non-technical business resources and external vendor resources.
- Demonstrated track record managing technical application projects.
- Experience working for a national retailer with multiple stores
- Demonstrated ability to manage staff remotely, across multiple time zones
- Strong analytical, problem solving, and debugging skills.
- Demonstrated ability to execute basic financial analysis, such as ROI.
- Ability to effectively communicate at all levels of the organization.
- Some travel may be required
Preferred Skills and Qualifications
- Working experience with Microstrategy, IBM Netezza, HADOOP and Retek application suite,
- Experience with the Microsoft Office Suite, Microsoft Project and Visio
- Experience with (Sun Solaris) UNIX and Windows operating systems
- Experience with relational databases – specifically Oracle, SQL Server and Non-STOP SQL
- Experience with computer languages such as C, Visual Basic, PL-SQL and JAVA
- Some Management Consulting experience
- Graduate degree
Personal Characteristics/Motivators
- Motivated by the desire to make a difference in the business, to work with a highly talented set of peers, and to work on interesting projects
- Outstanding work ethic; displays a high sense of urgency to resolve issues quickly and efficiently
- A high sense of responsibility – to our customers, our business partners, our colleagues, and to the quality and timeliness of one’s own work; a willingness to “do what it takes” to support our company’s systems – sometimes during non-standard work hours
- Outstanding verbal and written communication skills; outstanding listening skills
- Able to articulate issues, build consensus around recommendations, and define next steps
- Professional presence
- Displays business and organizational maturity
- Team oriented, yet able to work independently; very self-motivated
- Customer focused
- A continual desire and capability to learn
- Highly organized and detail oriented
- Natural leader
SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES
- Supports management in the recruitment, retention, and career development of internal staff
- Managing, mentoring, and leading internal and external staff as defined in project structures