Business Systems Manager

Title: Technology Manager
Specialization: HR and Finance Related Technologies
Reports to: Sr. VP, Information Technology
Department: Information Technology
Location: Boston, MA
Type: Full time

CLIENT OVERVIEW
Our client is one of the world's leading private investment firms with over $37 billion in assets under management. Their funds includes private equity, public equity, leveraged debt assets, venture capital, and absolute return capital. Their competitive advantage is grounded in a value-added investment approach that enables the firm to deliver industry-leading returns for its investors. Headquartered in Boston, Client has offices in New York, Chicago, London, Munich, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tokyo.

DESCRIPTION:

This position will be working directly with the shared resources business unit that is made up of HR, Finance, Legal and Compliance. The person will be responsible for all technology related projects from inception to implementation and support. Through in-depth knowledge of the business, this position will document business processes, develops needs analysis, functional specifications and technical requirements around hardware and software implementations.



RESPONSIBILITIES:
• Consult with business users on technology needs
• Create documentation in support of technology requests
• Develop and mange project plans for technology implementations
• Manage technology vendor relationships


TECHNOLOGY EXPERIENCE:
• Strong understanding of relational databases
• Exposure to HR, and financial investment technologies preferred


QUALIFICATIONS:

• MBA with concentration in finance or technology preferred
• Strong Project management skills
• 5-7 years experience in the financial field
• Analytical skills including ability to produce applications specs
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills
• Experience working with external vendors and consultants including negotiations on price
• Ability to deliver technology projects on time and within budget
• Previous experience working in an investment management environment preferred

Please contact Albert Barsoumian with qualified resumes via email at albert@collabstaff.com or via phone at 508-872-7402.

Support Analyst - Financial Applications

Full time position at a well respected investment firm in Boston.

Full background check required.


Client is a Boston based, 40+ person firm that specializes in managing alternative and index-oriented investments for institutional clients. Client is currently seeking a bright Support Analyst to serve as a liaison between our business users and the IT Application Development Team. The person filling this role will work directly with traders, fund managers and research personnel to understand current and future production application requirements. The individual will use technical and analytical expertise to identify and resolve problems support our suite of applications. Additionally, the role will involve change management functions including release testing and software configuration and deployment.

Principal Role and Responsibilities:

This is a multi-function job role that requires time to be split between production support and systems analysis.

1.) Production Support:
• Provide support for our various trading, fund management, and investment decision applications.
• Monitor applications for production issues. Help troubleshoot any production issues that arise.
• Participate in setup and configuration of new and existing applications.
• Serves as initial point of escalation for all data related issues; analyze performance, pricing, benchmarking, risk, compliance and other data issues within existing applications
• On-call responsibilities

2) Analysis
• Understand and evaluate end-users needs from a trading, fund management perspective
• Be involved in all aspects of change management.
• Work closely with fund managers, traders and application development team to determine opportunities to automate business processes and functions;
• Posses strong knowledge of systems analysis, design, development, quality assurance, and integration methodologies
• Translate high level business requirements into written functional specification and manage changes to those specifications.
• Assist with end-user testing
• Assist in requirements gathering for new or existing applications.
• Manage code release and deployment cycles

Required Competencies:
• Qualifications: BS in Computer Science or equivalent.
• Experience Required: 2+ years of IT work experience.
• Knowledge of at least one programming language (Java/C/C++/C#/VB)
• Knowledge of UNIX and/or Linux preferred
• Prior experience in the financial industry with high exposure to fund management and trading applications.
• Solid technical understanding of databases and SQL language. This entails, apart from simple select statements; the ability to create complex joins across multiple tables. Must have the ability to understand database tables, column schemas, and stored procedures
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Have strong business knowledge of mutual and/or alternative fund industry in order to articulate and understand requirements of fund managers, traders and others.
• Ability to bring both business and technical experience and expertise to bear on new efforts
• Ability to gather requirements for reports and analysis
• Experience in finding and resolving technical problems preferred.
• Capacity to anticipate future application needs
• Strong troubleshooting and general problem-solving abilities. This role requires an ability to understand and trace through program code at a basic level. Prior software development experience a big plus.


Please contact Albert Barsoumian with qualified resumes via email at albert@collabstaff.com or via phone at 508-872-7402.

QA Analyst with Quality Center

Long term Quality Assurance contract at financial firm in Boston

In person interview required
Full background check required

Requirements:
Experience using Quality Center.
3-5 years experience testing .NET applications
Mutual fund and hedge fund processing experience

Candidate will be working on a new custom developed shareholder services application.

Please contact Albert Barsoumian with qualified resumes via email at albert@collabstaff.com or via phone at 508-872-7402.

.NET Consultant - WPF and WCF

Financial firm in downtown Boston

Background check required
In person interview required
Preference given to local candidates out of financial services firms

Overview:

The Senior NET Applications Developer will participate in a development capacity on an existing rewrite project of a line of business application dealing with client order processing.
The project team consists of four other developers out of Boston, a full-time project manager,
The candidate will need to hit the ground running with minimal technical training, and should be familiar with the Microsoft technology stack in general, and .NET in particular (see requirements below).
Mandatory requirements:

· Several years of .NET experience, including 1-2 years of working with .NET 2.0
· Experience with .NET Rich Client technologies such as Windows Forms or WPF (WPF = Windows Presentation Foundation)
· Strong object-oriented design and patterns in .NET
· Familiarity with distributed enterprise applications (systems that span several physical machines)
· Strong preference for experience with .NET 3.0 technologies: WPF, WCF, WF (WCF = Windows Communication Foundation, WF = Windows Workflow Foundation)
· Familiarity with .NET 3.5 + C# 3.0 nice to have but not required
· Experience with automated unit testing
· Advanced database proficiency in Microsoft SQL Server (2000 or preferably 2005/2008)
· Undergraduate degree in technology discipline
· Web experience (ASP.NET or otherwise) is not needed for this project

Primary Responsibilities:
· Propose and design technical solutions
· Create new system components
· Enhance existing components
· Provide remediation for existing system issues
· Participate in peer reviews (both code and design reviews)
· Produce effective technical documentation where

Please contact Albert Barsoumian with qualified resumes via email at albert@collabstaff.com or via phone at 508-872-7402.

CRM – Business Analyst

Client is a world renowned Private Equity firm headquartered in downtown Boston

Location: Boston, MA
Type: Full time - no sponsorship

DESCRIPTION:

This position will be working with all of the business units fulfilling CRM support and analysis. The person will participate at various levels in all technology related initiatives from inception to implementation and support. Through an in-depth knowledge of the business, this position will elicit the business processes, gather business and functional requirements develop needs analysis, document functional / technical specifications and perform system / user acceptance testing around CRM inititatives.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Provide level one and two support for CRM (Salesforce.com) technology across multiple Business Units
• Act as liaison between business users and Salesfore.com Premier Support department to facilitate large scale changes and complex problem solving.
• Define reporting needs, build customized reports and define/build analytic dashboards by functional role for all business units
• Maintain user roles, security, profiles and workflow rules
• Creation and modification of page layouts and field values
• Responsible for maintaining data integrity across multiple business units
• Identify opportunities to improve business processes and operational efficiency within CRM Application.
• Analyze user requirements and issues; provide the best fit solution, while maintaining the integrity of existing applications
• Document and communicate changes throughout the user organization, supporting change management and compliance
• Work closely with Risk and Compliance teams to ensure data is protected and actively recertified.
• Assist in running the CRM Steering Committee to ensure that CRM usage is standardized across the firm
• Maintain Sandboxes for UAT and Proof of Concept situations
• Perform QA and UAT testing throughout all future CRM iterations.
• Gather, validate, document, and facilitate implementation of business requirements for technology initiatives (includes business/data requirements, data flows, data modeling, workflow context and design, and user interface designs)
• Provides direction and support to application developers when application changes require knowledge of or changes to system functionality
• Represent all CRM changes in front of IT Change Advisory Board
• Form strong working relationships with internal users - both business and technical - to facilitate application support and adoption
• Act as liaison to internal development team to maintain custom developed applications and SFDC pages utilizing VisualForce and Apex
• Maintain Workflow and Triggers to ensure Integrity and sequencing
• Manage External and Internal application integration (API)
• Drive quality control, to maximize value of the CRM system as a key business development tool.
• Provide data access reports to Compliance and Security ensuring that data and roles are properly defined and transparent.
• Work in conjunction with in house training team to perform end user training sessions and best practices sessions
• Create documentation in support of technology requests and overall CRM usage


QUALIFICATIONS:

• In-depth knowledge and hands-on experience in supporting & implementing Salesforce.com solution preferred
• Formal Salesforce.com training required, Salesforce.com certification preferred
• Experience with Unlimited Edition integration tools, DataLoader, and APIs preferred
• Exposure and experience in data migration and integration aspects of the product
• Experience in training and documentation around business applications
• Able to explain complex concepts in a clear and concise manner
• Ability to manage multiple projects and iterations within the CRM application
• Understanding and ability to follow a well defined project lifecycle
• A proven resource in defining systems strategy, developing systems requirements, designing and prototyping, testing, training, defining support procedures, and implementing practical business solutions under multiple deadlines.
• Exposure to private equity and hedge fund concepts and terminology is a plus
• Experience with a large, functionally diverse, and informed user base that demands high quality applications
• Self-motivated and willing to work in an energetic, fast pace team environment
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills



Please contact Albert Barsoumian with qualified resumes via email at albert@collabstaff.com or via phone at 508-872-7402.

Senior Microsoft Office Solutions Developer - VBA

Client is a leading global financial services firm headquartered in Boston.

Permanent position but would consider contract or contract to hire.

Candidate must pass a complete background check.


Overview:

Working for a global investment management firm, this individual will work within the Application Development Group for Investment Control Systems to build and enhance user productivity solutions using Microsoft Office. This person will be assigned to work on a wide variety of projects, primarily as an individual contributor.

Responsibilities:

• Work with in-house staff, consultants and external parties to develop and document Microsoft Office solutions.
• Participate in the design of long-term group strategies to implement the IT needs of various business groups.
• Work with in-house staff to specify and develop application technical architectures.
• Write application code which is technically sound and easily maintainable, and that effectively employs all corporate programming standards.
• Participate in the QA process and certify the quality of production code.
• Coordinate availability of test environments and lab configurations.
• Support production code on a scheduled basis.
• Provide technical support and enhancements for existing Excel and Access-based applications


Required Skills:

• 3 – 5 years relative work experience. Financial Services industry preferred.
• Experience with Microsoft Office development technologies (VBA, Office Object Model).
• Experience with Microsoft Excel.
• Experience developing database applications required, with a preference for experience with SQL Server.
• Ability to understand and manipulate pre-existing code.
• Experience with Visual Studio Toolkit for Office (VSTO) preferred.
• Experience in the financial services sector preferred.
• Extremely strong interpersonal skills.


Additional Skills and Competencies:

• Ability to learn new concepts, systems, and software independently and quickly.
• Ability to provide quality documentation of processes – ITIL preferred.
• Attention to process and procedures to comply with internal/external audits
• A demonstrated track record handling demanding user groups in a time critical environment.
• Flexible/on call hours to support project and production support issues.


Character:
• High energy, positive attitude, professional and mature
• Ability to prioritize multiple tasks, set goals and meet deadlines

Please contact Albert Barsoumian with qualified resumes via email at albert@collabstaff.com or via phone at 508-872-7402.