Job Description

Vacancy Announcement

ETHIOPIAN AGRICULTURAL TRANSFORMATION AGENCY

Position:             Business Analyst

Term of Employment:  One Year with possibility of extension

Duty Station(s):             Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Required Number:        One

Salary & Benefits:          Competitive

Application Deadline:   May 29, 2021

BACKGROUND

The Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) is a strategy and delivery-oriented government agency created to help accelerate the growth and transformation of the country’s agriculture sector. The ATA envisions that smallholder farmers are commercialized with greater incomes, inclusiveness, resilience and sustainability, contributing to transformed agriculture by 2030.

The agency focuses on two primary national approaches to catalyze agricultural transformation. First, we support the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), and its federal and regional affiliate institutions, and other partners to identify and address systemic bottlenecks within sector’s development plan. Second, we support Regional Governments to accelerate the development of high-priority commodity value chains in clearly defined geographic clusters, through the Agricultural Commercialization Clusters (ACC) Program.

Our major activities include conducting strategic and analytical studies, providing technical implementation support, coordinating platforms to better integrate partners and projects, and designing and directly leading a number of implementation projects. Our headquarters are in Addis Ababa, with regional office representations in Amhara, Oromia, SNNP, and Tigray regional offices, allowing us to work closely with a wide range of public, private and development sector partners across the country.

Our Culture

We have an exceptional team of highly competent employees with a proven track record of success in managing complex activities and achieving transformational results. Our culture is one where talented, dedicated and adaptable individuals are committed to doing their best and exhibit great teamwork to achieve excellent results. 

At ATA, we provide an exceptional platform for people who want to achieve their highest potential and make a meaningful contribution in changing the country’s agricultural sector. We offer rewarding work in a young, fast-paced growing organization with passionate, committed, motivated colleagues and excellent career development and training. We recognize our most valuable assets are our staff and are committed to providing our employees with the tools, training and mentorships necessary to achieve their career goals. 

POSITION SUMMARY:

Under general supervision from the Application and Database Development Technical manager, the Business Analyst will be responsible for analyzing and overseeing:- requirement analysis, designing, development, deployment, testing, quality assurance, UAT, training, maintenance, support, and documentation processes of in-house-developed as well as outsourced systems, applications, databases, and interfaces within a Linux, windows environment, open-source community, standards, the latest and greatest technologies and protocols.

MAJOR DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Serve as the first point of contact for all development requests and clearly understand user requirements.
• Analyze user requirements and interpret requirements in such a way that programmers are able to capture the request precisely.
• Implement and manage IT's standardized ERP applications in a mid-scale multicultural environment.
• Responsible for the evaluation, testing, implementation, and customization of open-source components, modules, and plug-ins for the IT Department's centrally managed web environment.
• Be a liaison between the organization and the open-source web development community.
• Identify upcoming trends and innovations, translating this into recommendations and ideas for improving the application environment.
• Work with IT Management to develop strategic plans and vision for the standardized open-source web environment. This includes short- and long-term budgeting-, short- and long-term strategic planning, and the creation of policies and procedures.
• Responsible for developing various standard documents (such as SRS, Designing, Technical, Training, User Guide and Help manuals).
• Manage & Administer IT Support requests based on the SLA using a standard Project Management Tool (such as Jira, ..).
• Technical document bid review.
• Responsible for troubleshooting, testing, deploying, migrating, facilitating UAT, provide training & prepare /update/ quick users for the existing & newly developed applications.
• Responsible for managing team development & testing environments using well-known source code/version control tools (Such as TFS, Git hub, ...).
• Web application design, development, and maintenance as requested and assigned.
• Designs new applications, databases, and interfaces as requested and assigned.
• Supports and maintains existing applications, databases, and interfaces.
• Sets standards for and reviews existing databases and application development projects.
• Database development/administration/troubleshooting.
• Designs database models and implements them; writes custom SQL code.
• Integrates application front ends with database back-ends.
• Participate in end-user IT induction process and other IT-related capacity building activities.
• Website, intranet, web application administration and general user support.
• Create custom documentation and procedures and DRP documentation.
• Develop methodology documents based on self-initiated interviews, diagrams, surveys and workflow analysis.
• Research and analyze all aspects of existing business practices and procedures.
• Communicate with heads of all functional units about common frustrations, hindrances and other issues that interrupt their workflow.
• Oversee the life cycle of changes to organizational systems and prepare detailed reports for decision-making.
• Contribute as a technical team member on IT projects managed by a Project Manager.
• Actively learns and continues education on the management applications based on open portal development technologies in use.
• Perform other duties as requested and assigned by the supervisor. 

Job Requirements

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• BSc or MSc in Information Technology, Computer Science, Software Engineering or a related field having significant equivalent experience with the following skillsets: 
• Analyzing Information, Problem Solving, Attention to Detail, Software Design, Software Debugging, Software Development Fundamentals, Software Documentation, Software Testing, Software Requirements, Software Development Process, Database development and administration and Software support.
• Minimum of 6 years for BSc or 4 years for MSc in system analysis or system development and application support.
• Minimum of 5 years experience in ERP or other enterprise systems analysis, testing and quality assurances.
• 3 years minimum end-to-end programming experience, including C#, PHP, ASP.Net, MVC, Java, or Mobile Apps.
• 2 years minimum experience working with relational database systems such as MySQL, MSSQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Oracle and a good working knowledge of SQL.
• Solid experience in gathering, analyzing, interpreting, and documenting complex system requirements.
• Solid experience in system/application testing and quality assurance.
• Strong experience in conducting UAT, provide training and support to end-users.
• Strong experience in preparing a standard technical & user guide manual.
• System Design & Development experience using known IDE’s which integrate with source code version control system.
• Experience in task management and version controlling systems like Jira or TFS.
• Comfortable working with open source as well as proprietary software & hardware technologies.
• Familiarity with continuous integration and customization with a knack for benchmarking and optimization.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Experience in managing IT/ICT/IS projects that support large-scale users found in different geographical locations.
• Experience building applications from scratch as well as troubleshooting existing code developed by somebody else.
• Participated in projects that involve a wide range of stakeholders.
• Self-starter with strong self-management skills.
• Ability to organize and manage multiple priorities.
• English Proficiency is required.

How to Apply

APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS

We invite all candidates meeting the required qualifications to send (i) a cover letter and (ii) CV (maximum 5 pages) at the website

Also, please DO NOT submit scans of certificates with your application form.

Women are highly encouraged to apply.

NB. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.