Senior Technology Support Specialist Full-time Job

This position is a part of the Non-Academic Staff Association (NASA).

This position offers a comprehensive benefits package which can be viewed at: Faculty & Staff Benefits.

Location - Work primarily takes place at North Campus, Edmonton. This role is hybrid with a mix of remote and in-person.

Position Summary

The University of Alberta Library Specialized Technical Support Team provides comprehensive support for the library's specialized devices, equipment, and endpoint-based software. The team identifies, evaluates and recommends emerging technologies to meet the diverse technology needs of Library and Museums staff and the Library’s Digital Scholarship Services. Those technologies include 3D printing and scanning, laser cutting, Virtual and Augmented Reality, media production, interactive visualization, digitization scanning, and the Museums’ exhibition equipment. Additionally, the team manages internal service desk operations, covering a wide range of library applications, technical support, and procurement processes. They coordinate procurement and licensing, troubleshoot issues, and provide tier-one support for library-specific requests.

The Senior Technology Support Specialist, reporting to the Lead, Library Specialized Technical Support, plays a pivotal role in solution research and analysis. Their duties include collaborating with key stakeholders to identify and analyze opportunities to meet Library and Museums’ emerging staff and user needs, supporting the Lead in conducting research and investigating technical solutions, gathering information, and recommending options that are secure, robust, scalable, and sustainable. Furthermore, this position requires actively assisting the Lead in providing guidance for others in the team and solution research and recommendations.

Another area of focus for the Senior Technology Support Specialist is to support Library’s Digital Scholarship services. The Specialist will collaborate closely with colleagues in DSC and Sperber Library to enhance, configure, and create tools and workflows supporting digital research and learning. The Specialist installs, configures, and supports specialized devices like 3D printers, visualization walls, and VR/AR equipment.

As part of the System Operations Team, the Specialist manages Active Directory that supports the public workstations used in Digital Scholarship services, participates in system operation projects, and provides on-call support and backup for other team members.

The Specialist is expected to work in a collaborative team environment, engaging with stakeholders within the portfolio, campus and external partnerships. The Specialist should thoroughly document design and implementation decisions, and follow team practices for documentation and knowledge sharing. The position combines highly technical skills with knowledge of library digital services, business needs, user experiences and requirements, and library operational processes. The incumbent needs excellent interpersonal and relationship abilities.

In all aspects of this position, our commitment is to integrate and promote the University's values of equity, diversity, and inclusivity.

This position understands, fulfills, and promotes the health, safety and environment responsibilities identified in university policy.

Duties

• Collaborates with staff in the portfolio to understand use cases and share technical expertise in supporting specialized devices, equipment and applications to meet service needs.
• Is responsible for keeping current on emerging technology and standards to recommend and implement hardware solutions.
• Analyzes existing systems and processes to determine how to evergreen and maintain them as sustainable architectures to ensure a reliable ecosystem.
• Work with the team to standardize, streamline and automate (when possible) workflows to ensure the support is reliable and sustainable.
• Provide technical expertise and support for a wide range of library and museums specialized devices and equipment.
• Work with third party vendors and suppliers to identify technical solutions to support specialized devices and equipment, and to coordinate support as needed.
• Manage the existing specialized devices and equipment for the Digital Scholarship service locations (Digital Scholarship Center -DSC and Sperber Health Sciences Library) such as the interactive touch wall, Nureva Projector, Ideum Touch Table, Whisper Room, 3D printers and scanners, Virtual reality/Alternative reality, AV production studio and high-performance computers.
• Manage high-performance computers in DSC such as user management. Work with DS Librarian to test virtualization solutions on HPCs for use cases that do not qualify for Computer Canada parameters
• Collaboratively works with the Digital Scholarship Technologies Librarian on researching and proposing technical solutions to research questions, such as text mining, web scraping, data analysis, storage, and other functions.
• Work with DSC Academic staff to research, document, and analyze technical solutions to grant-funded projects as they are brought to the DSC.
• Keep thorough and up-to-date documentation of specialized devices and equipment.
• Provides technical training, coaching and escalation support to other team members.
• As a member of the cross-function Digital Library Operations Team to perform system administration tasks, and participate in on call rotation and projects in support of library technical infrastructure.
• Manage Active Directory for the workstations used in Digital Scholarship services.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computing Science, Computing Engineering, relevant technical field, or equivalent combination of education, training, and experience.
• Demonstrated experience, knowledge, or keen interest in emerging technology such as 3D printers and scanners technology, VR/AV technology, AV production equipment, and visualization wall.
• Proven ability to conduct in-depth research on emerging technologies, industry trends, and best practices, and ability in synthesizing research findings into clear and actionable recommendations.
• Demonstrated ability to analyze intricate technical issues. Creativity in devising innovative solutions to unique and challenging technical problems.
• Demonstrated interest to experiment with emerging technologies and methodologies. Eagerness to expand technical skills and knowledge through continuous research, self-directed learning and on-the-job training.
• A minimum of four years’ experience working in a network support environment of unix and windows servers of similar size and complexity to the University of Alberta Libraries. At least three years experience with UNIX administration.
• Cloud management skills will be considered an asset.
• Previous experience with Windows Active Directory will be considered as an asset.
• Strong analytical, diagnostic and communication skills, both written and oral.
• Strong interpersonal skills for effective communication.
• Demonstrated ability to document procedures for team members and users.
• Ability to work effectively both independently and collegially in a team environment and under pressure.