JavaScript Job: Technical Lead

Are you an IT professional who wants to make a real-world difference by helping to keep Canada safe? Are you someone who challenges the status quo and sees challenges as opportunities? At CSIS, our people are our strength. You can become part of a dynamic team of talented individuals working towards a common goal: leveraging technology to keep Canadians safe at home and abroad.

Our IT professionals across the organization are undertaking exciting and transformative initiatives that you can take a lead role on. We are seeking candidates with a passion for technology to embark on this journey. You will be working with industry experts and collaborating with various business areas within CSIS, and in other organizations within Canada and beyond.

We have Technical Lead positions available on several teams. Employees in this role are the senior technical resources entrusted with creating innovative and transformative technology solutions and defining future roadmaps and capabilities within their technical domains.

We are hiring highly qualified individuals in the following specialized streams:

• Stream 1 – Systems
• Stream 2 – Data Management and Analytics
• Stream 3 – Application Development, Integration and Verification
• Stream 4 – Network Infrastructure and Security
• Stream 5 – IT Security
• Stream 6 – Server, Storage, Backup and Cloud Infrastructure
• Stream 7 – Telecommunications

If you have the technical experience to lead cross-functional and cross-domain development teams and oversee the successful implementation of new systems or solutions, then you’re in the right place!

What We Offer

• Ownership of your projects, the risks and the rewards
• Space to innovate, succeed or fail, and support when things go wrong for the right reasons
• Professional development through experiences, training and mentoring
• Partnerships with teams across the organization (and other Canadian and foreign organizations)
• Opportunity to contribute to the CSIS mission and have purpose in everything that you do!

What You Will Do

• Be part of a work culture that values diversity, team spirit, and collaboration
• Work directly with stakeholders to understand their needs, and develop technology or applications that will shape our organization’s future
• Develop and provide assessments, briefing material, plans and other supporting documentation in order to identify solutions to address business challenges
• Provide technical advice to management, key stakeholders and interdisciplinary, inter-agency, and possibly even international, working groups
• Support your teammates by providing technical guidance, bringing the members together to work towards common goals, and mentoring junior team members
• Design and implement systems, infrastructure, and/or applications to deliver on architectural strategy/requirements
• Plan and guide the development of systems or software development activities including design and related technical documentation
• Identify evolving business requirements and plan future technical capabilities
• Maintain in-depth knowledge of trends and best practices in system and/or software design, implementation practices and architectural strategies
• Ensure that methodologies comply with established industry standards and the organization’s System/Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) guidelines and governance.

What You Will Bring

• Your exceptional problem-solving and analytical skills
• Top-notch communication and collaboration skills
• A mission-oriented mindset and a desire to never stop learning
• Specialized technical domain expertise
• Your leadership!

Graduation from a two-year program of study from a recognized post-secondary institution with acceptable specialization in

• computer science;
• information technology;
• software engineering;
• electrical or computer engineering;
• telecommunications engineering;
• another specialty relevant to the position to be staffed; or,
• an acceptable combination of education, training, and experience.

The educational program needs to be from an accredited learning institution recognized in Canada. If you completed a program outside of Canada, we will work with you to obtain the required proof of Canadian equivalency through a recognized credential assessment service. Note: Any higher level of education (i.e., Masters, Doctorate) in a related field of study could be recognized as experience.

Seven (7) years of recent* and significant** experience for all streams

• Designing, developing, evaluating and testing new technologies, tools and procedures/processes in order to support the development, evaluation, and planning of technical capabilities
• Providing expert advice and recommendations on complex technology issues to senior managers, and business and technical stakeholders through written and oral communications
• Participating in cross-functional initiatives, and collaborating with stakeholders outside your work unit
• Providing technical leadership for the implementation of complex infrastructure, software or systems development projects, which may include producing design documentation, coordinating and leading the development of technical solutions or enhancements, developing user training, and completing the analysis of client / business requirements
• Participating in or leading the delivery of projects / capabilities according to a defined Software / System Development Lifecycle (SDLC)  Participation in IT maintenance activities related to software, hardware and/or infrastructure

• Recent is defined as experience acquired within the last ten (10) years.

**Significant is defined as the depth and breadth of experience that would normally be acquired by a person in a position where the performance of these duties constitutes their main functions over that period.

Additional Stream-Specific Requirements

We are looking for candidates who have experience and skills in at least one (1) stream.

Stream 1: Systems

Five (5) years of experience designing, implementing, operating, configuring or troubleshooting in a multi-system traditional data centre or private / public cloud environment a minimum of three (3) of the following:

• Network directory services
• Backup / restore applications, configurations and databases
• Monitoring and alerting software
• Email systems
• Desktop hardware
• Application software
• Office collaboration systems (SharePoint, Skype, M365)
• Webservers (e.g., Tomcat, Internet Information Services (IIS), WebSphere, Weblogic etc.)
• Server and desktop operating systems (Microsoft Windows, Red Hat Linux)
• Microsoft device management and installation tools (e.g., System Centre Configuration Manager (SSCM), Microsoft Installer (MSI), Flexera InstallShield, etc.)
• Mobile device management solutions (e.g., Intune, BES, UEM)
• Telephony systems
• Advanced scripting (e.g., PowerShell)

In addition to the above requirement, candidates must have experience dealing with manufacturers, sales representatives, services providers or customer support engineer teams.

Stream 2: Data Management and Analytics

Five (5) years of experience administering, monitoring, analyzing, designing/developing, optimizing and supporting Database Management Systems (DBMS) in a corporate environment that utilizes multiple DBMS technologies. In addition to the above requirement, candidates must possess a minimum of five (5) years of recent experience:

• Performing technical consultations with other IT teams in a lead DBA or Data Engineer role to ensure best practices are followed
• Providing technical leadership in ensuring data integrity and availability in at least one of the following DBMS: SQL Server, Oracle, DB2 or MySQL
• Conducting investigations, troubleshooting and implementing strategies for solving complex data problems
• Designing and optimizing semantic models, data transformations, ETL operations and improving query performance
• Working hands-on with database design, structured query language such as T-SQL, stored procedures and shell scripting

Asset(s):

• Experience in the implementation of data governance strategies, master data and reference data solutions.
• Experience in delivering data visually by using business intelligence tools
• Experience in the design and application of data management concepts including, but not limited to, management of data security, data lineage, data warehousing and metadata management

Stream 3: Application Development, Integration and Verification

Five (5) years of experience in programming with at least one language such as, but not limited to, Java, Javascript / Typescript, C, C++, C#, Python, or other modern language. In addition to the above requirement, candidates must possess a minimum of five (5) years of experience in a lead role performing a minimum of three (3) of the following activities:

• Building rich web-based applications using React, Angular, NodeJS, .NET or other frameworks
• Performing system integration with COTS software
• Using at least one of the following technologies: Hadoop, Spark, HBase, Solr, TensorFlow, PySpark, Jupyter Notebook, AI Models and/or Scala
• Developing on mobile platforms (iOS/Android) with one or more mobile application focused programming languages (e.g., Java, Kotlin, Objective C, Swift)
• Storing and retrieving data from a relational database in a multi-tiered application or system following industry best practices
• Data design, data modeling, creation of ETL jobs
• Building web services and data integrations following the micro service design pattern
• Performing quality assurance of systems or software, by writing and executing test cases for functional requirements and regression testing, testing edge cases, critical / sensitive areas, and exploratory testing
• Automating manual testing scenarios in support of regression testing
• Implementing, configuring, supporting, maintaining, or administrating components of a development environment (e.g., Artifactory, Kubernetes, Jenkins, Team Foundation Server, Gitlab, Jira / Confluence)
• Microsoft Azure administration, implementing security controls, implementing IaaS or IaC tools (e.g., Terraform, Ansible)
• Working in an agile scrum methodology environment

Stream 4: Network Infrastructure and Security

Five (5) years of experience leading the development of secure, high performance, scalable network architectures and designing, supporting, maintaining, configuring, troubleshooting or validating a minimum of five (5) of the following technologies in an enterprise network:

• Campus access network solutions (LAN switching and routing)
• Wide Area Network solutions (WAN routing, multi-tenancy and encryption)
• Data Centre Networking (DC switching and routing, high availability and scalability)
• Firewalls
• Network packet capture / analysis solutions (e.g., Wireshark)
• Internet edge security solutions (Web filtering, proxy servers, IDS/IPS)
• Network and application load balancing (F5)
• Network management solutions (Extreme Management Center, Cisco Prime)
• Network Access Control (Extreme Control, Cisco ISE)
• Cross-domain solutions  Software encryption, VPNs and Virtual Private Servers (VPS)

Asset(s):

• Networking certification (e.g., CCNA, CCIE)
• Experience assessing offensive and defensive security capabilities of technologies
• Experience assessing, configuring and troubleshooting IP-based networks, network security (switches, routers, firewall, IDS / IPS, PSPs) and conducting network protocol analysis
• Experience writing scripts (UNIX / Linux, MacOS, Windows)
• Experience creating statements of work and managing vendors through development projects

Stream 5: IT Security

Five (5) years of experience designing, implementing, operating, configuring or troubleshooting in a multi-system traditional data centre or private/public cloud environment a minimum of three (3) of the following:

• Identity Management
• Privileged Access Management
• Multi-factor Authentication
• Public Key Infrastructure
• Access Management
• Directory Services
• Desktop, server and mobile Operating Systems (Microsoft Window operating Systems, Red Hat Linux)
• Internet edge security solutions (Web filtering, proxy servers)
• Vulnerability Management (Azure Security Center, Rapid 7, Tenable, etc.)
• Penetration testing (Kali Linux, Metasploit, etc.)
• Network Intrusion Detection / Prevention systems (NIDS / NIPS)
• Host Intrusion Detection / Prevention Systems (HIDS / HIPS)
• File and email security
• Security information and event management (SIEM) systems
• Endpoint threat detection and response (EDR) systems

In addition to the above requirement, candidates must possess three (3) years of experience in the last five (5) years interpreting and applying one or more of the following:

• ITSG-33
• Policy on Government Security
• Directive on Service and Digital
• Canadian SIGINT Security Standard on SIGINT Protection and Control (CSSS 100)
  
  Note: Demonstration of equivalent experience with similar policies, directives, and standards will be considered.

Stream 6: Server, Storage, Backup and Cloud Infrastructure

Five (5) years of experience designing, implementing, operating, configuring or troubleshooting in a multi-system traditional data centre or private / public cloud environment a minimum of three (3) of the following:

• Server hardware
• Server operating systems
• Backup/restore systems
• Enterprise storage (SAN) hardware
• Storage fabrics (iSCSI or Fiber Channel)
• Disaster recovery, high-availability, or business continuity technologies and infrastructure
• Server virtualization (VMware, Hyper-V etc.)
• Azure and AWS Cloud technologies (SaaS, IaaS etc.)
• IT Automation and orchestration (e.g., Application / OS containers, shell scripting, etc.)

Asset(s):

• Server middleware applications (IIS, Apache, Java Runtime Environments)
• Microsoft device management tools (e.g., SCCM, Microsoft Group Policies, Intune, etc.)
• Directory services (Active Directory Federation Services, Azure Active Directory

Stream 7: Telecommunications

Five (5) years of experience configuring, designing, supporting or validating a minimum of three (3) of the following technologies:

• Cellular communication systems such as CDMA, GSM, GPRS, UMTS, HSPA, LTE, or 5G
• Telephony communications systems such as PSTN, VoIP, IMS, or satellite
• Broadband networks technologies such as cable, HFC, ADSL, or PON
• Communication protocols such as SIP, SCTP, DOCSIS, SS7, MPLS, Bluetooth, Infrared
• Network Protocols such as TCP/IP, RADIUS / DIAMETER, DHCP, DNS, IPv4, or IPv6, and routing protocols such as BGP or OSPF

Asset(s):

• Experience creating statements of work and managing vendors through development projects

Applying

To assist us in the selection process, please clearly articulate the following in your cover letter:

At CSIS, we understand our employees’ need for a healthy work/life balance and we provide flexible work arrangements. We believe that a healthy workplace is key to helping us deliver on our mandate and is also the birthplace of creative ideas. Our organization has some of the best benefits and support available, providing several paid family-related days per year for when you need to take your kids, parents or immediate family to appointments or care for them when they are ill. We offer paid sick leave, competitive holiday leave, and an amazing pension plan so you won’t have to worry about how you will afford to retire one day, our own in-house health services and psychology services, and career growth and personal advancement opportunities. We take care of our people, and we take care of each other.

Submit your application to join the CSIS family today and expand your professional IT career into something more than just a job!

• Collaboration
• Analytical Skills
• Behavioural Flexibility
• Communication

During your competency-based interview and/or written task you will have the opportunity to demonstrate your skills in these areas.

Upon appointment, an employee shall remain in their position for a minimum of one (1) year.