Manager Application Services

Overview

The City of Toronto is the fourth largest city in North America and the fourth largest government in Canada, with a highly diverse and multicultural population. In addition, the City of Toronto has several agencies and corporations including the Toronto Police Service, Toronto Public Library, and the Toronto Transit Commission, which make up the broader municipal organization.

Consistently ranked one of the world’s most livable cities, Toronto is home to more than 2.9 million people whose diversity and experiences make this great city Canada’s leading economic engine and one of the world’s most diverse and livable cities.

Toronto is a global leader in technology, finance, film, music, culture and innovation, and consistently places at the top of international rankings due to investments championed by its government, residents and businesses.

In its pursuit of modernizing City services through strategic investment, digital transformation, and a culture of innovation, the Technology Services Division collaborates with all City Divisions, agencies, boards and corporations to deliver client centric business solutions and secure, reliable IT infrastructure.

Embarking on a transformative journey, the Technology Services Division is reshaping its culture and service delivery approach, focusing on four key priorities:

Build Resilient Foundations: Establish a robust, reliable, and secure technology infrastructure.
Deliver User-Centric Solutions: Provide enterprise-grade modern solutions with a focus on user experience.
Harness Data Power: Utilize data to drive operational processes and informed decision-making Citywide.
Empower Stakeholders: Engage and empower stakeholders to foster a culture of agility and innovation.

The Technology Services Division provides leadership in modernizing City of Toronto services through strategic investment, digital transformation, and management of the City’s technology systems. The Division acts as a coordination point for driving business improvements by partnering with all divisions in re-designing business operations, translating business needs into innovative technology solutions, and implementing those solutions. As a key member of the Business Solutions Services unit, you will play a pivotal role in supporting the delivery of City programs and services through such innovative business solutions as well as secure, reliable, and dependable technology applications.

Reporting to the Director, Business Solutions Services, and leveraging your ability to provide insightful IT service management and agile software application development, you will provide technical leadership, operations support, strategic planning, and IT service delivery to maintain a high level of performance for a large portfolio of business applications that touch every aspect of City life from public works to human services to community development. Working with the Business Application Services teams and senior leadership, this will see you leading and addressing matters related to delivering IT service in a complex environment, managing incidents and service requests, in addition to enabling key transformation initiatives in collaboration with our partners to accelerate the modernization of the City as a digital government.

Specific Skills

Among other strengths, your profile for the role Manager Application Services will include the following key qualifications:

Post-secondary education in computer science or a related discipline paired with over ten years of progressive experience in leading IT delivery and development teams or the equivalent combination of education and experience. Experience in municipal government or technology industry is an asset.
Considerable experience in leading development teams through, solution planning, designing, implementation, and sustaining applications with cross functional teams, including partners and vendors.
Considerable experience collaborating, consulting, and coordinating with business unit and senior leadership in a large-scale organization or a complex multi-stakeholder environment.
Considerable experience leading change and delivering complex initiatives with minimal direction, while balancing political, community and other stakeholder interests. Experience in Scrum and other agile software development methods is an asset.
Considerable experience in preparing IT service metric reports and the application of relevant information to support business analyses and decision-making.
Demonstrated knowledge and technical proficiency with application development platforms, front-end frameworks, Web App & Mobile, cloud-native integration services and architectures (IAS, SaaS, PaaS), cybersecurity and identity standards such as OIDC and SSO authentication.
Considerable experience in IT Transformations and migrations strategies, such as 7-Rs (Refactor, Replatform, Repurchase, Rehost, Relocate, Retain, Retire) and Domain-Driven Design (DDD).
Ability to work in a highly demanding and rapidly changing work environment with many competing priorities and deadlines.
Ability to effectively develop and cultivate internal and external relationships/partnerships to support organizational priorities.
Demonstrated proficiency in issues management, conflict resolution, facilitation, problem solving, and negotiation in complex, multi-stakeholder situations, including the ability to negotiate and achieve consensus among parties having different objectives.
Demonstrated proficiency in supervising, coaching, mentoring and leading high-performing teams in a fast-paced environment, which includes performance management, work assignment and quality control, and professional development.
Excellent communication and presentation skills, including ability to effectively communicate service delivery levels and project status to multiple streams of business, technical stakeholders, and senior leadership for assigned projects.
Strong written and oral communication skills, including the ability to present and compose written documents to senior IT and business stakeholders.

Responsibilities

Manage delivery, development, and lifecycle of IT-enabled solutions to ensure applications are available, well maintained, and satisfy business requirements, not limited to: recording all change requests whether driven by business (including business error corrections), application (including software patches), and performance, procedures, processes or technical platform; monitoring and tracking new business solution requirements; assessing impact, classifying, prioritizing; seeking authorization for changes; supporting business continuity of critical application solutions and application environment components in the event of service disruption or disaster.
Establishes effective and sustainable working relationships with the City divisions other City organizations and external organizations for the delivery of IT services and development of applications, integrations, and process optimization across business teams to improve service quality and efficiency.
Manages large teams of internal multi-divisional and external technical and business specialists in developing and maintaining enterprise software infrastructures and business applications and supporting services to client business units to meet business objectives.
Manages, motivates, and trains the unit's staff, ensuring effective teamwork, high standards of work quality and organizational performance, continuous learning and encourages innovation in others.
Manages the delivery of solution-specific development/acquisition activities that may include scoping, modeling, requirements, design, development, component acquisition, configuration, integration, testing, reuse harvesting and documentation. Coordinates with other l&T service providers and corporate groups such as Legal, Purchasing and Human Resources to ensure efficient and effective application management and business solution delivery.
Develops and implements initiatives and service requests including the determination program specific requirements such as project scope, action plans, and identifying critical success factors.
Supervises the day-to-day operation of all assigned staff including the scheduling, assigning, and reviewing of work. Authorizes and controls vacation and overtime requests. Monitors and evaluates staff performance, approves salary increments and recommends disciplinary action when necessary.
Develops, recommends, and administers the annual budget for the team, and ensures that the unit's expenditures are controlled and maintained within approved budget limitations.
Recommends and ensures alignment of activities with governing frameworks, standards and methodologies that support business requirements and enterprise-scale efficiencies including, but not limited to those regarding: purchasing, security, privacy, enterprise architecture, application solution architecture, information architecture, project management, database naming, RUP, application management lifecycle, quality assurance, change management, release management and service level management, and respecting management control, audit and legislative requirements.
Prepares briefing notes and reports to Council on related technology and administrative issues, attending Committee meetings to answer questions or provide clarification as required by Members of Council.
Ensures compatibility and security of data and compliance with legislated regulations including MFIPPA, Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), and other City policies and standards.
Provides leadership in the implementation of policies needed to improve processes and increase effectiveness and efficiencies, delivering value to client.
Considers service delivery priorities and deadlines communicated by clients and builds cohesion among competing priorities.
Manages research, feasibility studies, evaluations, and testing of new information and business application architectures, standards, and technology solutions to recommend enterprise strategies/policies to senior leadership.
Establishes effective partnership with other sections of Technology Services for full alignment and integration with their programs, performance measurements, client services framework, portfolio and project management.
Promotes culture of open government. Supports Open Data program ensuring all data is open when permitted by legislation. Collaborates with City Clerk's Office and other City divisions to develop practices and initiatives for pro-active dissemination of data, retention of records and disposal.
Cooperates with internal and external experts on projects associated with implementation of information management framework, information architecture designs with a goal to minimize duplication of efforts in data management and promote use of data from authorized sources only.
Prepares the RFP's and RFQ's for acquisition of data. Participates in evaluations and vendor contract negotiations. Manages vendor performance and ensures deliverables are in compliance with payment schedules.
Conducts negotiations and implement service level agreements, memoranda of understanding and other partnership agreements facilitating acquisition and dissemination of data critical to a wide range of business applications and decision-making functions across the City.
Maintains up-to-date knowledge in information technology, information architecture, cloud environments, and implementations in diverse service delivery areas.
Provides professional advice on application trends, architectures, models, services and needs as related to municipal service delivery.
Cultivates an innovative workforce of high-performing professionals in a positive service delivery culture.
Participates in enterprise and divisional committees, task forces, inter-disciplinary teams, inter-jurisdictional and working groups.

One Team: Cultivating a sense of unity where each member understands their purpose and impact with a focus on excellent customer service and experience
Performance & Resiliency: Building high performance and resiliency through modeling standards, trust, transparency, and respect.
Creativity and Innovation: Encouraging creativity and innovation by welcoming diverse perspectives, promoting healthy debate, and questioning the status quo.
Equity and Accountability: Respecting each other's ideas and leaning into equity and accountability, creating a sense of independence and ownership.

Job Nature

Full Time

Educational Requirements

Post-secondary education in computer science or a related discipline paired with over ten years of progressive experience in leading IT delivery and development teams or the equivalent combination of education and experience. Experience in municipal government or technology industry is an asset.