Solution Validation Associate

City of Toronto • Union, NJ

6d • Onsite

About The Position

The Chief Financial Officer's Office, Strategic Enterprise Integration & Mod is seeking a Solution Validation Associate for a full-time, temporary position until December 2027. This role involves implementing plans, conducting research, administering budgets, and designing/developing testing scenarios for enterprise workforce and payroll systems. The associate will perform quality assurance, integration testing, regression testing, and user acceptance testing, ensuring system behavior aligns with business rules and compliance requirements. They will analyze system and process issues, identify root causes, and recommend corrective actions. The position also involves developing and maintaining test scripts, supporting defect resolution, and providing production support for system enhancements and releases. The role requires validating the end-to-end schedule-to-pay lifecycle and assessing the impact of system changes. Collaboration with various stakeholders, including business analysts, technical teams, and vendors, is essential. The associate will also analyze organizational changes and handle confidential testing data in SAP and SuccessFactors, interpreting legislation such as the Employment Standards Act and Income Tax Act. Additionally, they will review collective agreements and analyze trends in grievances, attendance, and overtime to identify systemic issues and support the development of controls for confidential information.

Requirements

• Post-secondary degree or diploma in Human Resources, Business Administration, Information Systems, Computer Science, Payroll Administration, or a related discipline.
• Minimum 5 years of experience supporting, testing, implementing, or sustaining enterprise Human Resources, Workforce Management, Payroll, or related business systems.
• Demonstrated experience with SAP, SAP SuccessFactors, Workforce Management, Payroll, Human Capital Management (HCM), or comparable enterprise platforms.
• Strong knowledge of software testing methodologies, including integration testing, regression testing, user acceptance testing (UAT), pay comparison testing, defect management, and quality assurance practices.
• Experience developing, executing, and maintaining test plans, test scripts, testing scenarios, and test documentation for complex enterprise systems.
• Proven ability to analyze system, process, and data issues, identify root causes, assess business impacts, and recommend effective solutions.
• Experience supporting system implementations, enhancements, releases, and post-production sustainment activities.
• Knowledge of workforce management, payroll practices, organizational structures, employee data management, and end-to-end schedule-to-pay processes.
• Strong understanding of legislative and regulatory requirements affecting payroll and human resources systems, including employment standards, privacy legislation, pension administration, and taxation requirements.
• Demonstrated ability to assess impacts of system changes on business processes, integrations, operational activities, and organizational structures.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and troubleshooting skills with the ability to manage complex issues involving multiple stakeholders.
• Strong communication and relationship management skills with the ability to collaborate effectively with business leaders, project teams, technical specialists, vendors, and operational partners.
• Proven ability to handle highly confidential employee, compensation, payroll, and organizational information with discretion and professionalism.
• Strong organizational and project coordination skills with the ability to manage multiple priorities, meet deadlines, and support continuous improvement initiatives.

Nice To Haves

• Experience working in a unionized environment with knowledge of collective agreements and labour relations considerations is considered an asset.
• Relevant certifications such as SAP SuccessFactors, Payroll Compliance Practitioner (PCP), Certified Human Resources Professional (CHRP), Certified Testing Professional, or related credentials are considered assets.

Responsibilities

• Implements detailed plans and recommends policies/procedures regarding program specific requirements to support business objectives, operational requirements, legislative compliance and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Conducts research into assigned area including workforce data ensuring that such research takes into account developments within the field, corporate policies and practices, legislation and initiatives by other levels of government.
• Provides input into and administers assigned budget, ensuring that expenditures are controlled and maintained within approved budget limitations.
• Designs and develops testing scenarios across end-to-end processes and performs quality assurance activities for enterprise workforce and payroll systems, exercising judgment in determining testing scope, risk priorities and business impacts.
• Conducts components of integration testing, regression cycles, user acceptance testing activities, coordinating efforts, monitoring progress and supporting release readiness for enterprise payroll and human resources systems.
• Enhances quality and reliability of testing outputs.
• Validates system behaviour against business rules and compliance requirements, process requirements and expected system functionality.
• Conducts analysis of system, process and data issues.
• Identifies root causes and recurring trends and assesses operational and organizational impacts.
• Recommends corrective actions, updates to system processes and testing approaches to management and project stakeholders.
• Develops and maintains test scripts and provides input on gaps impacting multiple users or transactions, ambiguities or inconsistencies within business requirements, process documentation and test scenarios.
• Identifies and analyzes root causes of system, data and production issues through investigation and troubleshooting activities.
• Supports defect prioritization and issue resolution within technical teams, escalating issues based on complexity and impact.
• Ensures completeness of the defect lifecycle, from identification through resolution, validation, retesting, documentation and closure.
• Validates full end-to-end schedule-to-pay lifecycle ensuring system results, employee records, scheduling transactions and payroll outcomes align with approved business rules and operational requirements.
• Provides production support and sustainment readiness for successful implementation of system enhancement and releases.
• Provides support in resolving operational issues, workforce management and payroll solution validation, providing guidance to management, project teams and operational partners on system behaviour, compliance requirements and operational impacts.
• Develops and maintains integration and regression test assets to support operational readiness.
• Assesses impacts of system changes, enhancements, releases and configuration updates on upstream and downstream processes, integrations and operational activities.
• Supports discussions with business analysts, service representatives, technical teams, project partners, vendor partners and operational leaders to resolve issues and provides guidance to team members as needed.
• Conducts analysis to distinguish system functionality issues from process related issues and explains outcomes, defects and behaviours.
• Supports knowledge transfer activities by maintaining documentation.
• Prepares analysis related to organizational changes, position impacts or workforce planning that could impact employees.
• Handles confidential testing data in SAP and SuccessFactors that include employee records, compensation and organizational structures.
• Exercises discretion and maintains strict confidentiality when accessing sensitive workplace matters and supporting organizational initiatives, including restructuring, workforce planning, position management and other employment-related changes before finalization.
• Searches and may interpret information on provisions of the Employment Standards Act, Income Tax Act, OMERS requirements, privacy legislation or collective agreements to determine system configuration or payroll processing requirements.
• Supports management by reviewing collective agreement language and past practices, reviews applicable legislation, policies, procedures to support the facts and circumstances of testing and quality assurance activities and to inform operational decisions.
• Reviews proposed organization structure information to identify potential collective agreement implications before implementation.
• Analyzes trends in grievances, attendance, overtime or scheduling to identify systemic issues and recommends corrective actions including projects that may have labour relations, compensation, organizational effectiveness or operational impacts.
• Supports the development of controls to prevent inappropriate access to confidential payroll, pension or employee information.
• Liaises with both People & Equity staff and client divisions when validating organizational structure, position data and labour relations initiatives.

Benefits

• The City is an equal opportunity employer, dedicated to creating a workplace culture of inclusiveness that reflects the diverse residents that we serve.
• The City of Toronto is committed to creating an accessible and inclusive organization.
• We are committed to providing barrier-free and accessible employment practices in compliance with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA).
• Should you require Code-protected accommodation through any stage of the recruitment process, please make them known when contacted and we will work with you to meet your needs.
• Disability-related accommodation during the application process is available upon request.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: Associate degree