Reporting to / Student & Teaching Solutions Manager
Overview of role / This role exists as a Senior Student Solutions Analyst focused on Student & Teaching Solutions. The post holder will deliver innovative Student & Teaching solutions that represent good value in line with the College strategies and architecture design. The Post holder will act as a change agent to transition quality solutions to IT Services and the various departments that use services.
The post holder will also be expected to play a key role in SITS solutions delivery by leading in the gathering and documentation of requirements through to eventual user guides and service transition. As part of this role, you will be expected to pay a key part in ensuring SITS solutions are designed, implemented and adopted to create excellent value.
The post holder will be responsible for a full range of solutions activities which help ensure the operational effectiveness and excellence of the organisation. The post holder will support the implementation of new IT solutions or significant change by improving, designing and documenting technical integrations and supporting processes. The post holder will make appropriate recommendations that will positively impact operational effectiveness and the design and implementation of IT systems.
Working in a small team, you will be expected to act as an agent for innovation and change and help the organisation exploit IT to secure advantage.
Accountabilities /
- Provide professional application life-cycle management, business process improvement and semi-technical information provision to users of the college’s student records system (SITS) and a range of other enterprise application services and business systems.
- Ensure that SITS development is part of the strategic IT infrastructure plan where quality control metrics are adopted and applied.
- Responsible for delivering student and teaching solutions for projects - ensuring the Projects design goals and the strategic architectural design goals are met and that all appropriate development frameworks as directed by the IT operating model are complied with;
- Develop and maintain a productive working relationship with people at all levels at the College, providing guidance and disseminating relevant information as required.
- Work closely with other team members through facilitating open communication and discussion between stakeholders through regular meetings with members in other areas of IT to solve any issues which require collaboration.
- Actively engage in the department change decision-making processes and the planning and implementation of change.
- Provide knowledge and support for various development tools and protocol (See person specification for examples).
- Identify ways of achieving objectives that result in service improvement and make better use of resources; anticipates future demands and develops appropriate plans to meet them.
- Validate decisions appropriately to ensure consideration and processes are robust.
- Capable of business analysis and requirement gathering using industry standard framework to design, model and document business systems requirement for delivering appropriate solutions.
- Ensure that development plans take into account of problems, delays and new priorities; anticipates possible implementation difficulties and identifies practical ways of overcoming or preventing them.
- Engage the experience and views of others, use own judgement and own specialist expertise to resolve issues; involves others appropriately in developing solutions to resolve new problems.
- Provide well-informed advice, typically within a specific technical specialism - ensuring that services are properly understood and appropriately exploited, to enhance the effectiveness of significant activities.
- To implement, manage and test new developments of new processes to enhance the college’s services ensuring the validity of data, processes and functionality and ensuring new features are communicated to users and incorporated into processes and documentation.
- To implement / roll out new or enhanced system functionality in support of the business goals of the college.
- Responsible for ensuring that appropriate documentation and schematics for student and teaching solutions are maintained and are in an auditable condition;
- Responsible for the management of the risks associated with student and teaching solutions designs that integrate seamlessly to all aspects of College architecture;
- Provide a 3rd line consultative service to support IT Services support operations with domain specific knowledge where required and participate in any necessary major incident processes to ensure rapid incident resolution;
- Provide a consultation service to the business and other IT teams, impartially assessing options and contributing to decisions relating to the initial direction of projects and service improvements;
- Responsible for tracking emerging student and teaching solutions ensuring that appropriate technologies and services are considered against the colleges overall strategic goals;
Key skills and experience required
(E) – Essential
(D) – Desirable / Education / qualification and training
- Education to degree standard and/or equivalent qualifications/experience (E)
- ITIL qualification (D)
- Good working knowledge or experience of supporting/developing at least one of the student administration systems in a premise managed or cloud environments at a senior level (e.g. SITS) (E)
- Experience of using SITS e-vision and developing content for SITS e;Vision (E)
- SITS student lifecycle development experience e.g. admission, enrolment, assessment, student data, research (E)
- Demonstrated skills in developing reports and/or analytical applications, using one or more industry standard reporting tools (D)
- Hands-on experience of XML, HTML, CSS, Web technologies & JavaScript (E)
- Hands-on experience of Bootstrap or similar responsive framework (D)
- In-depth expertise of designing and implementing Student and Teaching solutions/technologies on premise, managed and cloud environments (D)
- Experience of developing, configuring and implementing complex packaged software solutions based on relational database (E)
- Ability to resolve issues without clear or pre-defined solutions (E)
- Knowledge of IT service management, including change and problem management (D)
- Proficiency with SQL or related database query languages (E)
- Experience of the student and teaching solutions marketplace, working with key suppliers (D)
- A strong understanding of the full lifecycle of software development gained from previous employment in a software development environment or major software implementation project. (E)
- Well-developed analytical and problem solving skills, seeking cost effective solutions to suit changing priorities (D)
- Demonstrated flexibility and positive attitude towards delivery of services in a fast-paced environment with inherent risks and a number of stakeholders with differing views of success (D)
- Ability to identify and manage priorities (E)
- Excellent relationship and interpersonal skills(E)
- Ability to articulate ideas to both technical and non-technical audience in a clear and concise way (E)
- Innovative and proactive approach to solutions and work (E)
- Excellent written and oral communication skills (E)
- Ability to set and achieve goals for self and the team / department (E)
- Ability to communicate effectively with staff at all levels (E)
- Willingness to update professional knowledge and a commitment to continuous improvement (E)