Corporate Application Technical Leader Python Developer

Corporate Application Technical Leader Python Developer at City of Toronto

Join the Open Data team within the new Enterprise Data and AI unit of the Technology Services Division. You will be joining a growing team that includes developers, service designers, business transformation leads and the communications leads who all drive the modernization and vision for Toronto’s world class Open Data program.

The Toronto Open Data program has a mandate to publish data from within the City – anyone who can access the site can access any published dataset without even making an account. This data is aggregated, organized, and maintained by open-source technology (CKAN) that the successful applicant to this Python Developer role will help to enhance and maintain.

This is a primarily backend role. Succeeding in this will not only require a solid grasp of writing scalable and clean Python code, but also an understanding of moving, storing, managing, and presenting data in a variety of contexts. In addition, the developer will need to be comfortable with version control, basic Unix terminal commands, the basics of HTTP requests, and ideally be comfortable with basic SQL. To boot, the ideal candidate will have experience working with data in a number of both geographic and nongeographic formats.

As the team services the public and each of the city bureaucracy’s various divisions, an ideal candidate will be comfortable working in teams with a variety of skillsets and backgrounds and should be able to understand and articulate technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.

Operations that the developer will contribute to include the enhancement of our Open Data catalog and its metadata, upgrades to the ways we provide data, upgrades to our API, and maintenance of the portal’s various dependencies. This role comes with the opportunity to contribute work to the broader CKAN and Open Source community, as most of our code is publicly available.

Major Responsibilities

• Directs business and technical inter-divisional staff and professional services to deliver and sustain complex, critical enterprise business applications and information through the application life cycle and reports progress to manager, stakeholders and team members and ensures successful delivery of solutions adhering to project management methodology.
• Directs the day-to-day work output of staff and resources including the scheduling, assigning and reviewing of work tasks to ensure a continuing and consistent service by sustaining complex, critical enterprise business applications and information.
• Negotiates amongst divisional business and technical stakeholders with multiple points of view to drive consensus for corporate-wide solution designs.
• Brings together multiple stakeholders from across all divisions and provides expert advice within the context of corporate architectures, standards, policies, procedures and emerging technologies.
• Determines project requirements, analyzes and recommends feasible options, designs, builds and/or codes, acquires, tests, and implements enterprise information structures and applications, and sustains information technology solutions to meet critical City-wide and divisional business objectives and to provide scalable enterprise solutions.
• Applies technical expertise to recommend, develop and maintain corporate policies, procedures and standards that are consistent with legislation to ensure enterprise information and applications integrity.
• Applies technical expertise to ensure security, privacy and quality assurance requirements are implemented in a manner that delivers business requirements and is consistent with MFIPPA and legislation, thereby ensuring the integrity of complex enterprise information and applications.
• Applies project management expertise to lead and/or input to project management and procurement processes including the evaluation and recommendation of complex technical solutions and professional services.
• On a project basis, provides direction and assigns work to non I&T positions e.g. divisional unit staff (management & bargaining-unit).
• Applies technical expertise to develop and/or input to procurement and project management documentation. Examples include business cases, RFI/P/Qs, Sole Sources, statements of work, service level agreements, project charters, project plans, status reports, issue logs, change orders, resource plans, budgets, migration plans, contingency plans and risk assessments.
• Communicates effectively e.g. leading and facilitating meetings, preparing and delivering presentations and reports. Audiences include business/project managers, project team members and other orders of government and external parties.
• Develops and/or applies complex business and application models, information structures, data models, data schemas, technical program code, network and security interfaces, data and application design as governed by architectural frameworks, technology standards, information policies and legislative requirements.
• Applies a strong understanding of information and technology industry and City priorities over both the short and longer term to advise, develop and maintain City infrastructures, methodologies, tools and techniques; ensures conformance and adherence in daily practice among business and technical teams.
• Actively participates in corporate and cross-divisional initiatives to design, construct and implement business and application infrastructure solutions, such as data warehousing, document management and electronic service delivery.
• Analyzes and recommends changes to current business practices, business and information processes, data flows, performance measures, information delivery and knowledge utilization toward a more efficiently managed and coherently integrated information environment for all divisions in the City.
• Generates the plan and directs the project team in the execution of software upgrade activities.
• Applies technical expertise to perform analysis, development and testing for new or enhancements to existing complex, critical enterprise business applications and information.
• Applies technical expertise to support the development and testing environments of complex computing solutions.

Key Qualifications

• Post-secondary education in Computer Science or a related discipline or an equivalent combination of education and/or experience.
• Experience writing readable, scalable, and tested Python code.
• Experience with unix-like systems.
• Experience with SQL RDBMS like Postgres, MySQL, Oracle or SQLServer.
• Experience with ETL and task orchestration tools, such as Airflow, NiFi, and FME.
• Experience with Data Management systems such as CKAN.
• Proficient at using git for version control, and familiar with common GitOps (creating/reviewing PRs, merging/rebasing, resolving conflicts, tagging, CI/CD, etc.).
• Knowledge of data management principles like Glossary, Lineage, Hierarchy, Catalog and Metadata.

You Must Also Have

• Highly developed leadership, interpersonal, conflict resolution, negotiation, facilitation, and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to work collaboratively with others in a multidisciplinary team environment and to work independently as required.
• Strong written and oral communication skills, including the ability to present and compose written documents to senior IT and business stakeholders and to document code and apps.
• Knowledge of a variety of software packages, including MS Office (e.g., Word, Excel, PowerPoint), process design software (e.g., MS Visio).
• Ability to elicit, drive and/or develop application requirements to ensure that business needs and requirements have been adequately defined and documented, and/or the root cause of the problem accurately stated.
• Advanced time management and estimation capabilities and ability to perform several tasks and projects concurrently.
• Knowledge of current and emerging technologies, and skills to evaluate and recommend new technology for introduction into a complex technical environment.
• Ability to develop, maintain and execute both test plans and disaster recovery plans.

Key skills/competency

• Python Development
• Backend Engineering
• Data Management
• CKAN
• SQL Databases
• Git Version Control
• Unix Systems
• ETL Tools
• API Development
• Project Leadership