Job Description

Agency Description:

The New York City Department of Housing Preservation (HPD) promotes quality and affordability in the city’s housing, and diversity and strength in the city’s neighborhoods because every New Yorker deserves a safe, affordable place to live in a neighborhood they love.

- We maintain building and resident safety and health.
- We create opportunities for New Yorkers through housing affordability.
- We engage New Yorkers to build and sustain neighborhood strength and diversity.

HPD is entrusted with fulfilling these objectives through the goals and strategies of Housing Our Neighbors: A Blueprint for Housing and Homelessness, Mayor Adams’ comprehensive housing framework. To support this important work, the administration has committed $5 billion in new capital funding, bringing the 10-year planned investment in housing to $22 billion the largest in the city’s history. This investment, coupled with a commitment to reduce administrative and regulatory barriers, is a multi-pronged strategy to tackle New York City’s complex housing crisis, by addressing homelessness and housing instability, promoting economic stability and mobility, increasing homeownership opportunities, improving health and safety, and increasing opportunities for equitable growth.


Your Team:

Housing Preservation & Development Technology (HPD Tech) is the IT division within HPD. The Office of HPD Tech leads the agency’s effort to transform HPD through technology by promoting productivity and eliminating manual processing, shrinking costs, and increasing the pace of work. HPD Tech works to improve effectiveness of business processes using core applications for flawless execution. HPD Tech empowers decision makers with access to quality (complete and accurate) information to anticipate and pro-actively react to building, neighborhood and market conditions.

The Office of HPDTech is composed of 7 units: CIO (Chief Information Office), CTO (Chief Technology Office), CPO (Chief Product Office), Budget, Enterprise Architecture, Planning & Compliance, and Information Security.

Your Impact:

As a Business Analyst in HPD Tech, reporting to the Executive Product Director and working with stakeholders, you will be integral in shaping requirements for the areas of HPD which plan, produce, and oversee the development of affordable housing in New York City.

Your Role:

HPD seeks an experienced professional to serve as a Business Analyst. Your role will be to elicit, analyze, validate, specify, verify, and manage the real needs of the project stakeholders, including but not limited to project managers, asset managers, attorneys, inspectors, property developers, property managers, seekers of affordable housing, and landlords. The business analyst serves as the conduit between these users and the software development team through which requirements flow.

Your Responsibilities

- Develop an in-depth knowledge of business operations, document business processes and work with stakeholders to design new processes to achieve strategic goals. Understand on a broad level how operations between different business units interact and flow together. Lead technology team discussions concerning business requirements.
- Develop an in-depth understanding of enterprise data objects and attributes. Work with business stakeholders to define functional data needs for the creation of data marts.
- Represent business as a subject matter expert in technical discussions. Must be able to convey requirements to developers, UI/UX, quality assurance testers and information modelers through process flows, user stories, and use cases. The BA will be responsible for working with vendors, to provide oversight during requirements analysis and User acceptance testing, to ensure that the solution based on the requirements meet end user needs and achieve business objectives.
- Identify ways to assist other Business Analysts and the Executive Product Director through requirements development and analysis. Propose new product features and updates. Lead and facilitate ongoing requirements prioritization.
- This position will include all the incumbents’ duties.

Required Skills:

- 4+ years of demonstrated experience working directly with business leaders, subject matter experts and stakeholders, eliciting business and functional requirements for translation and documentation for software development and QA teams.
- Excellent communication skills, particularly being able to discuss business needs to both technical and non-technical staff.
- Excellent people skills and the ability to provide leadership in a collaborative, team-driven approach, and motivate others towards a common goal.
- Ability to work independently, take initiative, and work effectively with others.
- Analytical by nature with the ability to critically evaluate information and make the abstract simple to understand.
- Organized and comfortable working with the vast array of information gathered during elicitation and analysis and to cope with rapidly changing information.
- Familiarity with Agile and Waterfall software development life cycle approaches.
- Familiarity with UML process diagramming, including experience with Microsoft Visio.
- Advanced degree in a relevant field is strongly preferred (e.g., Business Administration, Public Administration, Public Policy, Computer Science, Information Systems, Urban Planning, Law, etc.).

Preferred Skills:

The strongest candidates will demonstrate an intellectual curiosity and/or experience in public policy, affordable housing, real estate development, urban planning, and/or city government. Experience defining business solutions involving transformation from legacy platforms is a plus.

NOTE: Only those candidates under consideration will be contacted. This position is open to applicants who filed for an exam or those who are already permanent in the Computer Specialist (Software) title.

Please indicate in your cover letter whether you have filed for an exam or are already permanent in the Computer Specialist (Software) title. Applicants who filed for an exam will be required to produce a copy of their Order Confirmation Receipt at time of interview for verification.

Only those candidates under consideration will be contacted. This position may be eligible for remote work up to 2 days per week, pursuant to the Remote Work Pilot Program agreed to between the City and DC37.

Qualifications

(1) A baccalaureate degree from an accredited college, including or supplemented by twenty-four (24) semester credits in computer science or a related computer field and two (2) years of satisfactory full-time software experience in designing, programming, debugging, maintaining, implementing, and enhancing computer software applications, systems programming, systems analysis and design, data communication software, or database design and programming, including one year in a project leader capacity or as a major contributor on a complex project; or
(2) A four-year high school diploma or its educational equivalent and six (6) years of full-time satisfactory software experience as described in “1" above, including one year in a project leader capacity or as a major contributor on a complex project; or
(3) A satisfactory combination of education and experience that is equivalent to (1) or (2) above. College education may be substituted for up to two years of the required experience in (2) above on the basis that sixty (60) semester credits from an accredited college is equated to one year of experience. A masters degree in computer science or a related computer field may be substituted for one year of the required experience in (1) or (2) above. However, all candidates must have a four year high school diploma or its educational equivalent, plus at least one (1) year of satisfactory full-time software experience in a project leader capacity or as a major contributor on a complex project.
NOTE: In order to have your experience accepted as Project Leader or Major Contributor experience, you must explain in detail how your experience qualifies you as a project leader or as a major contributor. Experience in computer operations, technical support, quality assurance (QA), hardware installation, help desk, or as an end user will not be accepted for meeting the minimum qualification
requirements.
Special Note
To be eligible for placement in Assignment Level IV, in addition to the Qualification Requirements stated above, individuals must have one year of satisfactory experience in a project leader capacity or as a major contributor on a complex project in data administration, database management systems, operating systems, data communications systems, capacity planning, and/or on-line applications programming.