Principal Cloud Administrator

Principal Cloud Administrator

About VTA

The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority employs more than 2,000 people dedicated to providing solutions that move Silicon Valley. Unique among transportation organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area, VTA is Santa Clara County's authority for transit development and operations (light rail and bus), congestion management, transportation-related funding, highway design and construction, real estate and transit-oriented development, and bicycle and pedestrian planning. With local, state, and federal partners, VTA works to innovate the way Silicon Valley moves and provide mobility solutions for all.

Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) is an independent special district that provides sustainable, accessible, community-focused, innovative, and environmentally responsible transportation options promoting the region's vitality. VTA provides bus, light rail, and paratransit services and participates as a funding partner in regional rail services, including Caltrain, Capital Corridor, and the Altamont Corridor Express.

To learn more, go to: vta.org

About the Technology Department:Divisions - Home (sharepoint.com)

The Technology Department strives to provide the highest quality technology-based services and solutions, in the most cost-effective manner, to facilitate the needs of our customers within VTA and the customers VTA serves.

To meet the needs of our customers we will:

1. Provide effective technology support for personal computers, CCTV, audio/visual, ERP-SAP, records management, communications and web-based applications, enterprise infrastructure and services to all areas of VTA.
2. Promote and facilitate the effective integration of technology into the basic fabric of VTA through planning, programming, training, consulting, and other support activities.
3. Develop, enhance, and manage the VTA enterprise wired and wireless networks to provide high speed, reliable, and highly functional connectivity among all information resources.
4. Develop and maintain highly effective, reliable, secure, and innovative information systems to support all business functions across VTA.
5. Facilitate the printing, collection, storage, security, proper destruction and integrity of electronic data while ensuring appropriate access.
6. Provide capabilities including the ability to develop and manage the distribution (and marketing) through broadcast, narrowcast, broadband, software, web and other telecommunications technologies VTA programs, products and services both within and beyond the VTA mission.
7. In partnership with the Innovation program, promote new uses of information technology within VTA through the support for exploratory and innovative applications.
8. Enhance our customer's experience using VTA's services via the use of innovative Technology programs and systems (CLIPPER, Wi-Fi, digital signage, Blue Tower Phones, RTI etc)
9. Provide leadership for effective strategic and tactical planning in the use of technology, and Chair the Technology Working Group and Technology Steering Committee in support of our effort to deploy the best solution possible.
10. Provide fast and reliable access to all required information systems.

Technology maintains a Help Desk during normal business hours 7:00 am to 5:00 pm Monday through Friday and Emergency support services for Mission Critical services after hours, on weekends and holidays. Behind the help desk is a dedicated professional staff that maintains and continuously upgrades the data centers, servers, computers, network, and the 50 plus business applications. It is our VTA employees that make the difference in bringing VTA quality and reliable service each and every day. The Help Desk phone number is (408) 546-7401.

The key parameter in Technology is change. To properly manage change we implemented a Program Management Office in 2010, trained our senior technical staff on program management skills, and in 2006 put in place the Technology Working Group committee (TWG) and the Technology Steering Group (TSC). Any and all new business applications or new technology is to be reviewed by the TWG prior to it becoming an active project, this ensures knowledge sharing across all divisions and departments, recognition that technology comes with a cost and technology impacts the business process. The TSC is made of every division chief and helps to guide Technology decision making in meeting VTA's mission and goals.

Our Community

Santa Clara County, sometimes referred to as "Silicon Valley", is unique for its innovation, natural attractions, and social diversity. With numerous amenities and perfect weather, it has long been considered one of the best places in the United States to live and work. calendar of festivals and celebrations supports the community spirit. Nearby open space provides easy access to mountain parks, trails, lakes, streams, and beautiful coastal beaches. San José has received accolades for its vibrant neighborhoods, healthy lifestyle, and diverse attractions from national media, including Business Week and Money magazines.

The county's population of 1.9 million is the largest in Northern California and is rich in ethnic culture and diversity. Enjoy access and the option to explore our closely neighboring counties of San Francisco and Alameda.

The ideal candidate will be a hands on Principal Cloud Administrator who will collaborate with staff and consultants to design, build, and maintain cloud services for VTA in an innovative manner. The Principal Cloud Administrator must have extensive knowledge of VTA's technology infrastructure, understanding of public cloud security, and deployment methodologies in alignment with customer driven cloud initiatives. The candidate will also need to identify opportunities for automation and efficiencies in support the Technology Department's mission.

Definition

Under direction, the Principal Cloud Administrator is responsible for overseeing and administering the existing technology systems and networks, and exploring and integrating new computing infrastructure and application components, ensuring that they meet all the requirements regarding inter-operability, resilience, security, performance, availability and scalability.

Distinguishing Characteristics

This advanced professional classification is responsible for planning, designing, implementing, administering, maintaining, and evaluating VTA's enterprise information systems, business systems applications, and support services. The incumbent also evaluates, recommends, and implements new information systems designed to meet the operational and informational needs of the divisions at VTA, and oversees technical support of cloud computing enterprise information systems. Focusing on cloud-based systems deployed by the organization, the incumbent helps grow and maintain the infrastructure on the production side of VTA's technology ecosystem.

The incumbent provides technical leadership to and coordinates with other Technology staff in designing, developing, implementing, upgrading, expanding, and maintaining VTA's portfolio of on-premise and cloud-based enterprise information systems for technology infrastructure and business applications. The Principal Cloud Administrator works together with technical and solutions designers and infrastructure and applications systems staff to define how these systems must be engineered and implemented to ensure sure that these systems are successfully deployed and operate well in an integrated computing environment.

Classification Bargaining Unit: ASFCME

Typical Tasks

• Develops, plans, manages, organizes, evaluates and implements VTA's cloud computing strategy;
• Analyzes the technology environment, documents requirements, and sets the collaboration framework for cloud solutions;
• Designs cloud environments, playing a vital role in the production, staging, QA and development of cloud infrastructures running in 24x7x265 environments;
• Analyzes enterprise specifics and creates a cloud solution prototype;
• Participates in the vendor selection and procurement process, recommends integration technologies, and coordinates the procurement, deployment, administration and maintenance of software, controlling solution development and supporting project management;
• Develops and implements goals, objectives, policies and priorities for assigned services and programs;
• Identifies resource needs and recommends, implements and enforces policies and procedures, including standard operating procedures;
• Selects project technology stack including platforms, programming languages, and tools to ensure compatibility and interoperability of solution components;
• Identifies and accounts for project limitations and constraints including technology, scope, cost, time quality, and resources and identifies risks associated with said limitations and constraints;
• Reviews and evaluates work products, methods, and procedures, and identifies and resolves issues;
• Serves as the information systems lead in the evaluation of enterprise information systems and business system applications;
• Manages and controls VTA's cloud database structure to maintain database integrity, accuracy, security, confidentiality and performance efficiency;
• Ensures system compliance with functional requirements and with non-functional requirements or quality systems attributes including security, performance, maintainability, scalability, usability, and reliability of product;
• Prepares reports on development projects and other activities;
• Documents procedures and manuals for cloud computing strategy design;
• Defines and manages project scope, deliverables, schedules, budgets, and task lists and tracks projects from initiation to successful completion;
• Selects, supervises and organizes training for staff to support new systems;
• Maintains technical and functional competency and keeps up with industry best practices;
• Supports internal customer business needs and serves as a technical point of contact for the user community;
• Communicates project status and resolves project issues, problems, and changes;
• Performs related duties as required.

Interested applicants may only meet some of the requirements. We encourage applications from any person who believes they can thrive and grow within VTA. While we're welcoming to a variety of different candidates, this position could be an excellent role for a number of different profiles, including those who:

· Want to be team players with strong interpersonal skills, working within the community and VTA to help elevate and integrate equitable transit initiatives throughout our work

· Are passionate, adaptable, and innovative team players who want to learn and contribute to the development of a visionary transit network through an equity lens

· Are interested in collaborative and impactful, transformative change; working with supportive diverse teams to help grow our service and lead our region.

Employment Standards

Sufficient education and increasingly responsible experience to demonstrate possession of the required knowledge, skills, and abilities.

Development of the required knowledge, skills, and abilities is typically obtained through a combination of training and experience equivalent to graduation from an accredited college or university with a four-year degree in computer science, business information systems, management information systems, database information systems or a closely related field and a minimum of eight (8) years of professional experience architecting, designing, implementing and managing enterprise IT Infrastructure on-premise and in the cloud.

Knowledge Of:

• Technical cloud architectural structures;
• Current hardware and software solutions for cloud computing;
• Infrastructure migration methodologies and techniques including mass application movements into the cloud;
• Cloud solutions security and compliance best practices;
• Enterprise scale cloud security platforms and tooling;
• Cloud and infrastructure components (server, storage, network, data, and applications) to deliver end to end cloud infrastructure, architectures, and designs;
• Enterprise applications, solutions, and data center infrastructures;
• Principles and practices of systems and database analysis;
• Designing, programming, testing and implementing highly complex programs;
• Principles and practices of systems and software engineering;
• Operational characteristics of various computer systems, applications, and peripheral equipment;
• Principles and practices of project development, administration, and management;
• Principles of hardware and software configuration and installation;
• Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and Change Management (CM);
• Emerging technologies and software, including multi-platform applications;
• Database concepts such as data warehousing and data modeling;
• Business analytics.
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Ability To:

• Research and recommend new hardware and software components consistent with the needs of system users and VTA priorities;
• Analyze and assess the cost effectiveness of system improvements and enhancements;
• Nurture cloud computing expertise internally and externally to drive cloud adoption;
• Act as key stakeholder for validation of new cloud solutions as they adhere to the architecture roadmap;
• Engineer information systems and software applications;
• Meet schedules and timelines;
• Implement required systems, solutions, and processes needed to manage cloud cost, monitoring, scalability, confidentiality, and redundancy;
• Analyze business requirements to design and implement appropriate sys...