Description:

Application Services Specialist _ SaaS

or

Senior Application Services Specialist – SaaS

Technology Services

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Technology Services provides campus-wide technology solutions that support the teaching, learning, and research missions of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. We partner with other departmental IT staff to serve nearly 60,000 faculty, staff, and students.

We invest in our staff to enable them to do their best work and prepare for inevitable changes in the technology landscape. We encourage and provide opportunities for continuous learning and development.

In this role, you will work across the organization and collaborate with vendors and other campus units to support cloud-based and on-premise services. Duties include troubleshooting, creating documentation, interacting with customers, ensuring security compliance, and planning future upgrades and feature roadmaps.

The services managed and supported in this role are directly used by prospective and current students, faculty, staff, and research partners.

PRIMARY POSITION FUNCTION/SUMMARY for Application Services Specialist - SaaS:

Play a significant role in creating, deploying, and maintaining production level SaaS services that are robust, high-quality, and reliable, meeting the needs of Technology Services’ customers. Assume primary or secondary responsibilities for one or more services within Technology Services. Primarily support medium scale applications with limited audiences.

PRIMARY POSITION FUNCTION/SUMMARY for Senior Application Services Specialist - SaaS:

Play a significant role in creating, deploying, and maintaining production level SaaS services that are robust, high-quality, and reliable, meeting the needs of Technology Services’ customers. Assume primary or secondary responsibilities for one or more services within Technology Services. Primarily support large scale, complex applications or newly implemented applications that are widely visible and/or have substantial audiences.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES for Application Services Specialist - SaaS:

Manage and Administer SaaS services

• Manage multiple SaaS services offered to campus, ensuring all University and organizational process and procedures are addressed.
• Coordinate with security responders to provide details, data, and response measures to identified threats.
• Provide end-user instruction and knowledgebase articles that include client installations as well as service feature/functionality and instructions for use.
• Work across the organization to define use-case scenarios that outline the value of managed SaaS services in relation to other offered services to assist end-users with selecting the service that best meets their needs.
• Test and document functionality and interoperability of SaaS services across multiple devices and operating systems.
• Participate in continuing education and training.

Manage day-to-day IT service operations.

• Implement appropriate monitoring processes for a target service.
• Recognize the need for and implement appropriate infrastructure components to support security policies and procedures including but not limited to SSL certificates, privileged accounts, and firewalls. Develop scripts in at least one programming language and manage source code with best practice processes and available tools.
• Administer web applications either locally or in cloud hosted environments.
• Understand web application containers, such as Tomcat or jboss, and web services technologies, such as HTTP or SOAP, applicable to service offering.
• Communicate with vendors or other third parties using predefined methods for ticket submission, support, and enhancement requests.
• Search user forums, knowledge bases, and other related resources online for related items and appropriately applies knowledge gained.
• Participate constructively in meetings with relevant, concise and reasoned analysis of topical matter. Generate analysis documents of technical issues.
• Understand the applicable processes and procedures of the organization and make recommendations in the continuous improvement of those processes and procedures, providing for management analysis and recommendations on improvements.
• Work non-traditional hours and respond to on-call requests to provide 24 x 7 service availability. Monitor and respond to key service metrics to ensure service performance and all service level requirements.

Ensure excellent Customer Service throughout Technology Services:

• Partner with the Technology Services Help Desk by setting and managing the expectations of customers. Act as an advocate for Technology Services customers in service planning and deployment across the organization.
• Resolve customer satisfaction issues.

Support applications of medium scale: defined number of end users less than 10,000, medium risk, or moderate infrastructure complexity such as application layer, database layer, storage layer, and network layer as separate components.

• Demonstrate effectiveness with problem, incident, change and release management, and testing processes including the use of testing tools.
• Provide input to business plans, system design product evaluations, and capacity planning in a structured manner.
• Adhere to interoperability standards and best practices as adopted by the organization.
• Understand the need for and demonstrate knowledge of data stewardship in areas applicable to position.
• Be aware of major business cycles that impact service offerings.
• Train backup and other staff as necessary.
• Aggregate and write reports of project or service team work.
• Create and maintain service based documentation for various audiences.
• Develop and maintain key service performance metrics for meeting all service level requirements and provide ongoing monitoring and regular reporting.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES for Senior Application Services Specialist - SaaS:

Support applications of large scale: greater than 10,000 end users, high risk, or complex infrastructure such as web server clusters, load balancing, and message broker services.

• Demonstrate effective use of service life cycle management best practices such as change and release management, incident and problem management, testing, and financial management.
• Incorporate usability and accessibility considerations into IT service planning, development, and operations.
• Create business plans and IT system/architecture designs.
• Plan for disaster recovery and business continuity as deemed appropriate to the visibility, importance, and risk factors of the IT service.
• Adhere to interoperability standards and best practices as adopted by the organization.
• Proactively plan for capacity of the IT service.
• Understand the need for and demonstrate knowledge of data stewardship in areas applicable to position.
• Responsible for IT service requirements gathering and analysis.
• Be aware of major business cycles that impact service offerings.
• Conduct product evaluations.
• Mentor and train backup and other staff as necessary.
• Manage IT service projects of defined scope.
• Create and maintain a three month rolling project/activity/task plan for IT services.
• Aggregate and write reports of project or service team work.
• Develop and maintain key service performance metrics for meeting all service level requirements and provide ongoing monitoring and regular reporting.

Manage day-to-day IT service operations.

• Implement appropriate monitoring processes for a target service.
• Recognize the need for and implement appropriate infrastructure components to support security policies and procedures including but not limited to SSL certificates, privileged accounts, and firewalls. Develop scripts in at least one programming language and manage source code with best practice processes and available tools.
• Administer web applications either locally or in cloud hosted environments.
• Understand web application containers, such as Tomcat or jboss, and web services technologies, such as HTTP or SOAP, applicable to service offering.
• Communicate with vendors or other third parties using predefined methods for ticket submission, support, and enhancement requests; escalate issues with those parties in an agreed upon manner. Effectively leverage online resources, user forums, and knowledge bases in support of service, as well as, contribute to these communities.
• Generate analysis documents of technical issues.
• Understand the applicable processes and procedures of the organization and make recommendations in the continuous improvement of those processes and procedures, providing for management analysis and recommendations on improvements.
• Work non-traditional hours and respond to on-call requests to provide 24 x 7 service availability. Monitor and respond to key service metrics to ensure service performance and service level requirements.

Manage and Administer SaaS services

• Manage multiple SaaS services offered to campus, ensuring all University and organizational processes and procedures are addressed.
• Integrate SaaS services into the University’s environment in a manner that addresses University business needs.
• Assist in the creation of vendor Service Level Agreements and implement appropriate monitoring to effectively manage.
• Manage the SaaS vendor relationship and serve as a liaison between the vendor and the University. Engage campus stakeholders to collect feedback on business needs, identify potential SaaS services that could address those needs, and provide recommendations on the future of the SaaS-based service portfolio.
• Coordinate with security responders to provide details, data, and response measures to identified threats.
• Provide end-user instruction and knowledgebase articles that include client installations as well as service feature/functionality and instructions for use.
• Work across the organization to define use-case scenarios that outline the value of managed SaaS services in relation to other offered services to assist end-users with selecting the service that best meets their needs.
• Test and document functionality and interoperability of SaaS services across multiple devices and operating systems.
• Participate in continuing education and training.

Ensure excellent Customer Service throughout Technology Services:

• Partner with the Technology Services Help Desk by setting and managing the expectations of customers. Act as an advocate for Technology Services customers in service planning and deployment across the organization.
• Resolve customer satisfaction issues.

QUALIFICATIONS for Application Services Specialist – Saas:

Education:

Required: See required experience for education information.

Preferred: Bachelor's degree in a relevant field, including Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or other relevant field.

Experience:

Required: Two years of progressively more responsible work in IT-related profession.

College course work in Information Technology (IT), IT Management, or a closely related discipline may be substituted as follows: 60 semester hours or Associate’s Degree equals one year, 90-120 semester hours or Bachelor’s Degree equals two years.

Preferred: Experience may be concurrent:

1. Four years of experience in information technology field.

2. Demonstrated experience administering applications or services using IT Service Management processes and principles.

3. Experience administering a SaaS service.

Training, Licenses or Certifications:

ITIL 3 Foundation or ITIL 4 Foundation certification preferred.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Ability to effectively communicate and interact with others.
• Ability to identify and resolve technical problems.
• Demonstrated knowledge and understanding of service life cycle management processes including but not limited to incident management, change management, root cause analysis, monitoring, and testing. Demonstrated ability developing scripts to automate processes.
• Ability to create and maintain appropriate service management documentation.
• Demonstrated commitment to customer service.
• Ability to use good judgment and work with limited supervision.

QUALIFICATIONS for Senior Application Services Specialist – Saas:

Education:

Required: See experience required for education information

Preferred: Bachelor's degree in a relevant field, including Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or other relevant field.

Experience:

Required:

• Five years of progressively more responsible experience in an information technology field, including two years of experience administering a SaaS service.
• Demonstrated experience administering applications or services using IT Service Management processes and principles.
• College course work in Information Technology (IT), IT Management, or a closely related discipline may be substituted as follows: 60 semester hours or Associate’s Degree equals one year, 90-120 semester hours or Bachelor’s Degree equals two years.

Preferred: Experience administering ESRI-ArcGIS Cloud, Adobe Cloud, EndNote, Qualtrics, Zoom, Comsol, R-Studio Cloud in an enterprise environment.

Training, Licenses or Certifications Preferred

ITIL 3 Foundation or ITIL 4 Foundation certification preferred.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Demonstrated knowledge and understanding of service life cycle management processes including but not limited to change management, monitoring, testing, release management, security, capacity planning, business continuity, and disaster recover.
• Demonstrated knowledge of accessibility and usability standards.
• Basic project management skills and knowledge.
• Proven creative problem solving skills.
• Demonstrated ability in effective communication and collaborating in a high performance team environment.
• Demonstrated commitment to customer service.
• Knowledge of programming in at least one scripting language.
• Ability to use good judgment and work with limited supervision.
• Knowledge of IT environments in University settings.

SALARY AND APPOINTMENT INFORMATION

This is a full-time Civil Service IT Technical Associate position appointed on a 12-month service basis. The expected start date is as soon as possible after August 5, 2019. Salary is commensurate with experience.

To Apply:

Applications must be received by August 5, 2019. Apply for this position using the “Apply for Position” button below. If you have not applied before, you must create your candidate profile at http://jobs.illinois.edu. If you already have a profile, you will be redirected to that existing profile via email notification. To complete the application process:

Step 1) Submit the Staff Vacancy Application using the “Apply for Position” button below.

Step 2) Submit the Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability forms.

Step 3) Upload your cover letter, resume (months and years of employment must be included), and academic credentials (unofficial transcripts or diploma may be acceptable), and names/contact information for three references.

In order to be considered as a transfer candidate, you must apply for this position using the “Apply for Position” button below. Applications not submitted through this website will not be considered. For further information about this specific position, contact Rhonda Miller at 217-333-4222 or questions about the application process, please contact 217-333-2137.

The University of Illinois conducts criminal background checks on all job candidates upon acceptance of a contingent offer.

The University of Illinois is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action employer. Minorities, women, veterans and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply. For more information, visit http://go.illinois.edu/EEO.

College Name or Administrative Unit:Office of the CIO Category:8-Technical Title:Application Services Specialist/Senior Application Services Specialist – SaaS - Technology Services (116385) Open Date:07/11/2019 Close Date:08/19/2019 Organization Name:Technology Services - Services