IT App Development - Expert

State of Washington•Olympia, WA

49d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) seeks to fill an IT Application Development - Expert. This full-time permanent position is based in Olympia, Washington. This position may be eligible for partial to near full-time telework. Telework is a combination of in-building and off-site days. During onboarding, there will be occasional in-person expectations to support your training and integration into the team. After onboarding, this role typically requires 1-2 days per week in the office to stay connected with your team and participate in trainings and meetings. While we're happy to offer this balance of in-office connection and telework flexibility, this isn't a fully remote position. To be eligible, you'll also need to reside in the state of Washington. We encourage interested candidates to visit the OSPI website to gain insight into our agency. The objective of this position is to independently ensure that the Schools Accounting and Financial System (SAFS), a custom application used for financial processing and system management, is efficient, scalable, and accurate to support the financial team's operational and strategic goals. Enhance financial operations, support financial decision making, ensure compliance with legislative requirements and timelines, improve system performance, facilitate integration with other applications, drive innovation and industry practices, and manage application and process risks. This position reports to the Application Development Supervisor and is responsible for communicating plans and activities with the supervisor. Communicate with staff and programs and implement the supervisor's direction. This position is responsible for the oversight of application development for operation, design, and development of the SAFS suite of applications utilized by 9 Educational Services Districts, over 295 Local Educational Agencies, and over 3000 Schools statewide. These custom applications, designed and developed in-house, support Washington Education in setting policy and distributing over $12 Billion (52% of the Washington State Government Budget) in support of over 1.2 million students. This position is also responsible for coordinating work efforts with technical teams to meet or exceed customer expectations for data collections, security, and application architecture. The application development team provides critical and complex software support and maintenance programming to state and federally mandated data processes for Washington State K-12 education. This includes but is not limited to architecture, design, maintenance and operation, framework management, technology policy and process within the Agency.

Requirements

Eleven years of progressive professional IT experience, including two years developing financial applications with a focus on complex application development and financial transactions that flow through the system and concepts such as accounting, budgets and budget codes, general ledger accounts, and weighted averages.
A post-secondary (four year) degree in computer science, mathematics, or other closely aligned software development field can be used year-for-year for experience. Doctorate - up to 7 years, Masters - up to 5 years, Bachelors - up to 4 years, and community college up to 2 years.
At least four years of experience that includes each of the following that can occur concurrently:
Developing with .NET and SQL technologies using object-oriented practices or common code with a focus on maintainability and re-use of common code.
Debugging, tracing, and otherwise troubleshooting existing code bases
Managing common functions and tools utilized by a suite of applications supported by a team of developers.
This role requires spending at least two days in the office each month, along with participating in scheduled trainings and team or all-staff meetings.

Nice To Haves

At least two years of experience that includes each of the following:
Senior level professional experience in some or all of the following technologies:
Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) or other reporting processes
Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) or other
Writing and executing Unit Tests and other Software Testing Methodologies.
XML & XSLT
Webforms
Windows Services
Web Services / SOA Messaging services
Writing and executing Unit Tests and other Software Testing Methodologies.
Source control management, tracking, reviews, and troubleshooting.
Professional experience in continuous improvement business processes:
Lean principles and continuous process improvement
Data Warehousing
ITIL, DevOps, Agile
Project Management
Experience working within an Educational Agency at the State or Local level.

Responsibilities

Serve as the highest-level developer responsible for the development and maintenance of the SAFS application code base to support the OSPI financial processes that support school districts.
Use advanced concepts and skills in software architectural principles, development patterns, tools, and techniques like SOLID, Microsoft Visual Studio, and component builders to create and maintain custom application code that will perform well for production use of the Schools Accounting and Financial System (SAFS).
Research and develop creative and innovative solutions to emergent problems that may require new methods, procedures and approaches. Develop secure, scalable, and maintainable code for a multifaceted application suite that automates complex financial rules, processing $12B of state funds with SAFS. Coordinate code deployments with other developers.
Use a deep understanding of complex financial rules and creative solutions to resolve highly complex technical issues that impact business processes, and application infrastructure issues that result in functioning software.
Provide technical consulting and oversight for the most complex and precedent setting issues. Leads technical initiatives and mentors lower-level staff, ensuring alignment with organizational goals.
Communicate with decision makers, customers and users about processes and issues, link efforts with strategic guidance, reach an understanding, define fine goals and outline a plan or roadmap for SAFS.
Collaborate with cross-functional teams to gather and analyze requirements. Ensure the application is working according to the requirements obtained from the finance staff.
Document the application configurations to assist with troubleshooting and maintenance of the SAFS.
Negotiate priorities and schedule work with program staff. Schedule deployments with technical deployment teams and respond to any issues that arise during deployment. Make work assignments for contractors and provide direction regarding software development practices.
Work with the Application Development Supervisor to bring practices in alignment with Application Development Standards.
Make work assignments for contract developers and direct them on OSPI processes.
Analyze legislative laws and agency regulation and determine development requirements.
Enhance the SAFS application infrastructure using advanced code and tools such as EntraID, NuGet, SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and message queues. Ensure the accurate and timely processing of financial records.
Integrate SAFS with external applications such as Workday and WINS to create secure transactions and efficiently send and receive application data that facilitates financial reporting.
Interpret and code the SAFS application requirements to meet federal and state regulatory compliance.
Document the application architecture to assist with business processes.
Assist the finance team and auditors in conducting and completing annual audits of the SAFS.
Assess system and process risks to identify potential failures and update critical components.
Develop and use a network of developers and learning opportunities to understand relevant development practices in the industry and continuously learn advanced development techniques to improve personal performance.
Apply new learnings to the SAFS application suite and enhance performance for the finance team to meet their objectives.
Provide guidance to the OSPI development teams. Strengthen unity and coordination amongst the developers.

Benefits

Washington State offers a generous benefit package including health, dental and life insurance, retirement and an optional deferred compensation program.

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