Arc Senior Systems Analyst

The Senior Systems Analyst will play a significant role in leading the service design of products for the research community at UBC and should be familiar with a design thinking approach:

Research and Analysis:

• Review service recommendations from the Ideas Incubation Task Force (IITF)

• Check if ideas are viable and ready for projectization

• Determine if there are gaps that result from an incomplete or inadequate research and development process and send back to the IITF for further investigation

• Conduct user research to understand the needs, behaviors, and pain points of customers

• Analyze service processes and systems to identify areas for improvement

• Use various methods such as interviews, surveys, and observation to gather data
  

Journey Mapping:

• Create detailed user journey maps that outline the steps users take when interacting with the service

• Identify service breakdown points (service failures), determine what is missing and what remedial actions are required

• Identify touchpoints where users interact with the service and highlight areas of friction or difficulty.
  

Service Blueprinting:

• Develop service blueprints that map out the service process from behind-the-scenes operations to customer interactions

• Document how different parts of the service work together, including people, processes, and technology.
  

Prototyping and Testing:

• Develop prototypes of service components or experiences to test and validate ideas

• Conduct usability testing to gather feedback and iterate on designs
  

Collaboration:

• Work closely with stakeholders, including designers, developers, marketers, and business analysts, to ensure a cohesive service design

• Facilitate workshops and co-design sessions with stakeholders to generate ideas and build consensus
  

Implementation Support:

• Lead the implementation of new or improved services, ensuring that designs are effectively translated into practice

• Provide guidance and documentation to teams responsible for service delivery
  

Continuous Improvement:

• Monitor and evaluate the performance of services after implementation

• Gather ongoing feedback and make adjustments to improve service quality and user satisfaction
  

Strategic Planning:

• Align service design efforts with the organization's strategic goals and objectives

• Identify opportunities for innovation and new service offerings.

• Develop, implement and maintain database architectures for complex applications, ensuring scalability, high availability and reliability

• Provide guidance on database design best practices, including normalization, indexing, partitioning and clustering

• Writes and maintains documentation in accordance with prescribed standards.

• Liaises with Digital Research Alliance of Canada, UBC IT and other research service partners and its programs to implement research solutions that support interoperability and scalability.

• Leads and supervises the technical delivery of projects undertaken, ensuring effective use of technical resources.

• Manages medium to large sized projects and related budgets.

• Maintains appropriate professional designations and up-to-date knowledge of current information technology and research techniques and tools and provides input to strategies for ongoing support and upgrade of these systems.

• Performs other related duties as required.

Core Duties:

• Plans and manages the development of the overall vision for applications and ensures all application projects, functions and operations align with University, IT strategy, mission, vision, principles, goals and objectives and the business needs of customers.

• Leads medium and large-scale applications integration design and development projects, manages assigned project staff, and creates project implementation plans.

• Analyzes and reviews systems features and requirements.

• Researches, develops, configures and supports applications infrastructure.

• Contributes to the introduction and management of technical change to the University's systems infrastructure.

• Analyzes emerging industry technology trends and standards that benefit University systems infrastructure.

• Collaborates with key technology teams across the University.

• Makes presentations at local, regional, national or international conferences and workshops and to partner institutions.

• Integrates development of best practices, standards, procedures and quality objectives across systems infrastructure or platforms.

• Provides technical guidance and leadership, coaching, and mentoring to team members.

• 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

Errors in the implementation and support of advanced research computing systems could cost the University many hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost productivity in research time and could impact the timely delivery of services to research community [e.g. faculty, staff, students, and the general public]. Poor management or improper decisions could compromise the success of Advanced Research Computing efficiencies and have a negative impact on the credibility of the portfolio and the reputation of the university. Errors in implementation and support leading to breaches of security involving research systems or data could compromise the privacy and confidentiality of research subjects as well cause severe reputational damage to the University and could also feasibly terminate all existing and future data sharing agreements and research partnerships with collaborators and providers locally, nationally, and internationally.

Supervision Received
Works under the general direction of the Manager, Research Innovation Solutions Engagement. Must be able to work independently and carry out work to completion. Works on tasks to meet deadlines on various projects. Work is reviewed in terms of achievement of desired results.

Supervision Given
This position works as a member of the ARC Research Innovation, Solutions & Engagement team. This position may require the training of newly hired staff on advanced research computing services resources and may be responsible for supervising staff directly and indirectly in relation to the delivery of research projects, services, platforms, and systems.

Minimum Qualifications
Undergraduate degree in a relevant discipline. Minimum nine years of related experience, or the equivalent combination of education and experience.

- Willingness to respect diverse perspectives, including perspectives in conflict with one's own

• An advanced degree in engineering, computer science, or a computational science field highly preferred.

• Programming Skills: Proficiency in multiple programming languages such as Python, R, Julia, Perl, or Bash and experience with parallel computing frameworks (e.g., MPI, OpenMP, CUDA) and version control systems.

• High-Performance Computing: Strong background in utilizing HPC resources and familiarity with cluster computing, grid computing, machine learning or cloud computing platforms.

• Proficiency in Systems Analysis Tools and Techniques such as UML, BPMN, and data modeling.

• Curiosity toward technology, open to trialing new technology, open to others' ideas and willing to experiment in support of user experiences

• Experience working directly with research pipelines or as an IT admin in support of similar environments.

• Strong project management skills with demonstrated experience leading cross-functional teams as a technical project lead and delivering large or complex projects

• Excellent written and verbal communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively with researchers and technical staff. This includes documentation of research consultations and should be comfortable making presentations to a small and large audience.

• Understanding of networking and IT infrastructure and ability to analyze and design systems integrations is required

• Experience implementing cloud services such as AWS, Azure or Google Cloud Platform

• Demonstrated experience with designing solutions is highly desired

• Experience with business analysis and understanding of business processes, especially in higher education is an asset

• Adaptability and Flexibility to adjust to changing project requirements and environments

• Ability to think critically and make decisions is a must

• Time management skills is required