Principal Solution Development Officer at the African Development Bank (AfDB)

Reference: ADB/17/228
Location: Côte d’Ivoire
Grade: PL4
Position N°: 50000571/50000584

The Complex

• The Vice-Presidency, Human Resources and Corporate Services Complex ensures the delivery of efficient, people-centered, client-oriented, corporate services to ensure overall institutional effectiveness in all aspects of the Bank’s corporate services.
• The Complex leads efforts to ensure the competitiveness of the Bank as the employer of choice and is responsible for providing leadership in the formulation and implementation of Bank’s strategies on people, IT, general services and institutional procurements, language services, business continuity, and health and safety strategies.

The Hiring Department/Division

• The Corporate Information Technology Services Department’s mission at the Bank is to align the IT delivery strategy along with the Bank’s business strategy to increase the organizational effectiveness through efficient use of the Information Systems.
• Under the leadership of the African Development Bank’s Information Systems Director, the Information Technology Systems Department is mandated by the Bank to deliver best possible IT services for Bank Staff, and help achieve the results that gets the Bank closer to accomplishing its poverty reduction goals in Africa.

The Position

• The objective of the Principal Business Solution Development Officer will be to understand Business functionalities needed by the Bank’ staff to provide an innovative, accurate, effective and performance technical solution that permit the Bank Staff to meet the Bank tactical and strategic objectives.
• The activities of the job will be to use managerial and technical expertise and to manage the identification, evaluation, development, testing and transfer to production of a solution or a data-processing problems that fully meet Business requirements, cost, quality and strategic target.
• The incumbent will ensure that all organization’s systems, capabilities, expertise and opportunities are well combined to support the adequate solution.

Duties and Responsibilities
Under the supervision and guidance of the Division Manager Corporate IT Services, the Principal Solution Development Officer will:

• Work closely with the Project Management Office and CHIS Management by providing information for business cases, programs and project programming, in line with the Bank’s strategy and IT strategy.
• Collect business requirements from Business Units and users and negotiates the IT systems scope and priorities.
• Proposes technical alternatives and validate choices with users and enterprise architecture staff.
• Defines technical solution architecture that maximize effectiveness, including security/authorization, data modeling, interfaces with other systems and integration in the Bank’s IT infrastructure.
• Follow up systems development, implementation or configuration with internal developers, consultants or external providers.
• Ensures that the developed solution follows the defined Bank’s Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) procedures.
• Ensures the source code and other standard configurations are properly archived in the Bank’s source code management systems.
• Prepare test plans and follows up tests, including coordination of technical tests and user acceptance tests.
• Ensure all information are provided for deploying systems into production; this include all information necessary for approval by the Change Advisory Board, all technical configuration required for system engineers and Database Administrators (DBAs), documents for user support specialists and user signoff.
• Prepare or coordinates documentation writing, including user documentation and technical documentation. Ensures the documentation is properly archived.
• Guide and give advice to other IT staff and makes recommendation for management in technical expertise area.
• Manage communication on new Governance, Standards, methodologies and tools to adequate public and train them for the use of applicable components to ensure these are adhered to.

Selection Criteria
Including desirable skills, knowledge and experience:

• Have a minimum of a Master's degree or its equivalent in Computer Engineering, Computer Science or closely equivalent degree in related field of study.
• Have a minimum of six (6) years of experience as a System Analyst or Business Analyst or Solution Architect or Solution Developer.
• Candidates with technical Certification will have an added advantage.
• Must have an experience in IT solution delivery and be an expert in Application Development and Deployment.
• Having private sector experience will be an added advantage.
• Good proficiency in Web Development, Quantitative Analysis, Project Planning, Project Delivery, Project Evaluation and impact assessment
• Must be aware of Enterprise Architecture and Business Intelligence Software
• Ability to communicate effectively (written and oral) in English or French, preferably with a working knowledge of the other.
• Competence in the use of standard Microsoft Office Suite applications; knowledge of SAP is an added advantage.