Senior Application Specialist - Payroll

Description

Why join our client

• An award-winning culture! They are rated a Top Workplace by the Chicago Tribune (past 10 years) and Employee Recommended award by the Globe & Mail (past 6 years).

• Competitive pay and discretionary or incentive bonus eligible.

• Comprehensive benefit package including medical, dental, vision, life, a 401k plan with a generous company match and tuition reimbursement to name a few.

• Promote from within culture.

Why join this team

• This position has the opportunity to interface with and have a positive impact on multiple areas of client's business

• We hold ourselves accountable to high standards, share wins, operate ethically, and have fun

Position Overview

The Senior Application Specialist is a senior level position and serves as a subject matter expert across the business domains they support. They are accountable for ensuring the day to day operations of the systems under their charge and for supporting and implementing change and configuration management, including testing and defect management relating to new product implementations, development, development releases, upgrades, patches, and other system maintenance as required. Application Specialists will work closely with Business resources and stakeholders, internal Technology teams, and various vendors and third-party consultants and implementers. They must understand their application's interdependencies with other applications and infrastructure both internally and outside the corporate network.

What You'll Do

• Support the enterprise change management and software development lifecycle (SDLC) process including providing testing, defect management, peer review, and release management ensuring appropriate segregation of duties

• Write and maintain system documentation, process maps, test scripts, use cases, user stories, root cause analysis, and high-level integration and data flows as needed. Author complex system reports and data integration/migration templates

• Support and lead complex acquisition and conversion teams to ensure acquired entities data and/or systems are accurately migrated over to the new environments. Support corporate compliance, regulatory and both internal and external audit examinations and reviews

• Provide Tier 2 application level support and troubleshooting, escalation and complex problem solving

• Provide technical and operational guidance on application configuration and data analysis

• Provide leadership, mentoring and training implementing best practices. May include management of a team or other Application Specialists

• Must be willing to provide support 24x7x365

Qualifications

• 7-10 years of relevant experience with an emphasis on applications implementation, testing, maintenance, configuration, customization, and support

• Advanced understanding of data at both a functional and technical level in order to troubleshoot and identify potential issues

• Working knowledge and understanding of hardware and systems software technologies, network infrastructure, and understands issues and details of integrating diverse technology to deliver scalable, robust, and high-performance solutions.

• Experience building complex workflows and business process maps required

• Advanced level experience in the following technologies or similar a plus:

  • Payroll processing systems and ERP platforms, especially Lawson, and ancillary systems such as BSI Tax Factory and Bottomline Transform

  • Proficiency in one or more database system (SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, etc.)

  • Java and other development languages and technologies, familiarity with COBOL would be ideal

  • SQL Server (SSIS, SSMS, SSRS, and SSAS) to support reporting and integration

  • Crystal Reports for additional reporting

  • Microsoft technologies (SQL, Azure, Office 365, .NET)

  • Application Programming Interfaces (API) and micro services technologies

  • Representational state transfer (REST) architecture

  • Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

  • Salesforce

  • ServiceNow

  • Mulesoft middleware

  • PowerShell or other scripting technologies

Education Required: Bachelors degree highly encouraged

Years of experience: 7-10 years or more

Systems/Applications: Lawson, COBOL, MS SQL Server development, overall database maintenance experience.

Must Have Requirements

Nice to Have Requirements

Lawson experience would be ideal, but willing to train (COBOL)

SQL Server experience

Pre-screen questions:

1. Find out about the development experience and dig out to find just how much experience they have. This requires a lot of application programming experience. Questions like: Explain a larger project you've worked on requiring you to do hands on development work.

2. Describe your experience working with SQL server.

3. Did you do stored procedure development work? Did you do table design work?

4. Did you interact with the end users of the system you developed or supported?

5. Have you interacted with the brand users for the development work including business leadership?