The Ford Foundation’s Information Technology department is seeking dynamic individuals from all industries to join their team as an Analyst, Applications Development. The Analyst collaborates with the Associate Director, Integrations and Development and the business liaison to create innovative solutions intended to propel us into the future state of technology stack and aid operational efficiencies at the Foundation.
The Analyst will translate software requirements into technical specifications, produce a conceptual design and configure or develop applications accordingly. They will also serve as an escalation point for user application issues and problems reported to the IT Help Desk.
This is an exciting opportunity for someone looking to apply their strong technical and analytical skills in a mission driven environment dedicated to social justice and positive change.
This position reports to the Associate Director, Integrations and Reporting.
How You Will Contribute:
Develops pilots of potential transformative solutions utilizing new technologies
Develops small scale web and mobile applications to fill gaps in existing Enterprise solutions
Conduct pilots of Generative AI solutions with new techniques and evaluate feasibility for specific projects
Train generative models on prepared datasets while monitoring performance metrics (e.g. speed and accuracy)
Partners with the Data & Analytics team on the data aspect of advanced analytics
Adept at data operations such as extracting, cleaning, and preprocessing data from structured and unstructured sources.
Understands and translates the software requirements and goals into technical systems requirements and develops designs accordingly
Performs unit testing and participates in system and user acceptance testing efforts in collaboration with QA analysts.
Partners with IT Operations Team to develop and enhance knowledge base to facilitate “first call resolution” of application issues and problems reported to IT Help Desk.
Partners with end-users, application owners, and QA analysts to diagnose and resolve critical application usage related challenges and problems escalated from IT Help Desk in a manner consistent with incident management procedures.
Works with application stakeholders to ensure accuracy and completeness of enhancement requests and bug reports.
Performs effort estimates and basic cost-benefit assessments of alternatives, interdependency analysis and prioritization of work related to system changes.
What You Will Need:
Bachelor’s degree, (or equivalent experience) with 4 years of work experience in programming and analyzing business solutions is helpful
Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills, including an aptitude for complex and detailed work and ability to adapt quickly to new technologies and changing business requirements.
Strong critical thinking, communication and listening skills along with independent judgment and strong initiative combined with ability to collaborate in a team environment and juggle multiple time-sensitive priorities
Ability to quickly develop prototypes
Adept in Python, R, JavaScript, SQL and JSON
Strong experience with Databases
Experience in building business solutions with ML/AI
Experience in utilizing SOAP, RESTful API, and SFTP
Experience with version control systems like Git
Strong interest in learning advanced concepts and technologies
Knowledge of iterative development methodologies (Agile, Prototyping)
