Job Description

In partnership with the Department of Revenue, the IT Application Support team is responsible for the support of applications that fulfill the mission of timely, courteous, and prompt collection of all revenue due to the City of Philadelphia. This includes the billing and collection of water and sewer charges. The Water Revenue Bureau provides all billing and collection functions for water and sewer charges, ensuring that the Philadelphia Water Department has the financial resources needed to provide reliable, high-quality water to Philadelphia residents, businesses, and communities. 

The Senior Application Support Specialist acts as the technical lead for sets of technology implementations within the Department of Revenue. In partnership with the business unit, the project management team, and/or designated vendor relationship, develop an understanding of the business processes around specific technology, provide expertise in the technology solution(s), and analyze use cases and technical capabilities to recommend changes to both the technical implementation and business process making the best use of IT solutions.  The Senior Application Support Specialist also provides guidance, mentoring, training, and support as needed to other Application Support Specialists on the team and acts as one of the primary liaisons between central OIT and the business unit for the defined set of technology implementations. 

As a member of the Revenue IT team, the Senior Application Support Specialist is expected to uphold the department’s mission and contribute positively to a collaborative, human-centered, innovative, accountable, transparent, and inclusive culture within Revenue IT.

Essential Functions

Technical Solution Management

•    Act as the technical expert in specific technology solutions and the technical lead for the unit. 

•    Oversee and validate the writing, collecting of solution specific technology standards (i.e., define interface/protocol specifications), documentation (i.e., diagram solutions), and other materials needed to ensure consistent design, implementation, and use of technology across the Department of Revenue.

•    Work closely with development and support teams (whether City staff or vendors) and lead in prioritization of research, investigate, and promote the use of existing and emerging technologies to support or enhance Revenue’s operations and/or work.

•    Oversee and, where necessary, perform initial testing of enhancements, such as server upgrades, and provide feedback to developers as needed.  Coordinate with Revenue subject matter experts on secondary testing.

•    Debug complex system software issues using analyzers and other hardware debug tools.

•    Develop flowcharts, layouts and documentation to identify requirements and solutions.

•    Perform server administration tasks, such as the management of user/group, security permissions, group policies, research event-log warnings and errors.

•    Monitor data-center health using existing management tools and respond to software issues as they arise.

•    Assist in testing and maintaining servers when needed.

•    Manage Microsoft Active Directory, including managing user accounts, groups, and access permissions to ensure appropriate access to server resources while maintaining security and compliance with organizational policies

•    Installing public and local certificates on various systems and firewall management.

•    Ask questions, manage risks, and champion new ideas.

Relationship Management 

•    Build and maintain collaborative and consultative relationships with other members of the team, Revenue, central OIT areas, including help desk personnel, network and system administrators, and vendors related to specific technology solutions being managed.

•    Serve as primary point of contact for IT coordination of services, communication, and planning around those systems.

•    Gain an in-depth understanding of Revenue’s processes and requirements as they relate to the supported systems.

•    Conduct regular reviews, priority-setting, and planning sessions with Revenue areas and other stakeholders.  Serve as an advocate for those priorities, plans, and other technology needs within Revenue IT and OIT.

•    Monitor, evaluate, and regularly report to Revenue IT leadership on business process-related IT projects, services, and support; the delivery of services according to service level agreements; and levels of client satisfaction.

Competencies, Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

•    Proven analytical and problem-solving abilities, including ability to anticipate, identify, and solve critical problems.

•    Ability to organize work effectively, conceptualize and prioritize objectives, and exercise independent judgment based on an understanding of organizational policies and activities.

•    Ability to work with end users to understand business processes, define requirements, assess technologies to determine fit for client needs, and translate those requirements into appropriate technical specifications.

•    Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to communicate technical concepts and information to non-technical audiences in a compelling and empowering way.

•    Deep commitment to delivering and supporting modern, user-centered, and value-producing technology products, systems, and services in a collaborative way.

•    Ability to build effective relationships and strong commitment to working collegially and collaboratively with constituents at all levels in a diverse and distributed environment.

•    Willingness to mentor staff and provide technical leadership for teams.

•    Experience working with TCP/IP v4 and v6 protocol, DHCP, DNS, SNMP, SMTP, FTP, HTTP, HTTPS, ICMP