Supply Chain Application Engineer II

POSITION SUMMARY:

The Application Engineer II role provides leadership and guidance relating to the company’s technical assets. They are responsible for building solutions, the use of management tools, defining and architecting solutions to meet the company’s business needs. Application Engineering leaders will also facilitate the definition of processes, methods, and standards for governing solution transformation within Les Schwab, with a focus on enhancing customer experience, increasing productivity in stores, and enabling aggressive business expansion within a product/service operating model. 

Les Schwab’s solution landscape has a number of technical subject areas that require expertise and focus. Therefore, Application Engineers will vary greatly by specific solution knowledge and/or area of technical interest (subject matter expert - SME). This role is designed to support most technologies and domains represented within the organization. 

PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES/FUNCTIONS

Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions/primary responsibilities.

35% - Escalated Operational Support  

• Provide and/or coordinate level 2/level 3 support as required through incident resolution based on incidents reported and escalated by:

  • Identifying and resolving solution related issues (code, data or architecture).

  • Addressing production issues by root cause determination and resolution.

  • Responding to questions and suggestions from other IDS teams.

• Support activities include investigation (such as root cause analysis), diagnosis, incident/problem resolution or issue recovery, identification of acceptable workaround, and following proper incident/problem closure procedures for knowledge and reporting/metric purposes, ensuring system stability and performance that underpins customer experience and productivity.

35% - Improvements: Solution Development

• Defining, designing and developing solutions; ranging from custom application development, multiple solution orchestrations and advance solution support, specifically to improve customer experience, increase productivity in stores, and support business expansion.

• Responding to requests from the business, leveraging appropriate solutions and tools.

• Identifying approaches to meet business requirements/needs, confirming appropriate controls and driving approach and architecture decision making.

20% - Improvements: Solution Architecture

• Evaluate options for addressing business needs through technology improvements and managing overall solution technical lifecycle, aligned with the strategic vision of customer experience, productivity, and aggressive growth, and integrated into the product/service operating model.

• Establishing and improving the solution architecture (application, data, etc.) in alignment with the Les Schwab Enterprise Architecture framework and methodologies.

• Defining standards, policies and procedures where appropriate for Les Schwab’s solution architecture.

• Ensuring documentation of enterprise artifacts and assisting Enterprise Architecture in artifact management, as needed.

5% - Improvements: Solution Quality & Governance

• Monitoring and adhering to solid technical application practices including company governance and guiding principles

• Perform administration (data or solution) activities, as needed

• Defining and governing standards for implemented solutions

5% - Service Levels: Stakeholder Relationship & Vendor Management

• Work with the business and other IDS teams to understand and enable needed business capabilities. Facilitating discussions regarding technology and information needs with business stakeholders, to ensure solutions meet the strategic objectives of customer experience, productivity, and business expansion.

• Engage with vendors to understand product roadmap and lifecycle to better future proof and disposition Les Schwab’s solution portfolio.

Educational/Experience Requirements: 

• Four-year college degree in a related field, preferably in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or equivalent experience

• Minimum of 5 years’ IT experience in required domain for this position

• A minimum of 2 years experience architecting and implementing enterprise solutions; examples include customized program development, enterprise data Integration, business intelligence & governance process efforts

Required Technical Skills/Knowledge: 

• Exhibiting a moderate breadth/depth of experience and knowledge in all areas involved in solution development and implementation (focus area based on specific solution area; such as coding & development, database & business intelligence, etc.).

• Basic knowledge of productivity applications (Google Applications, MS Office, etc.).

General Knowledge and Abilities: 

• Analytical Skills: Strong analytical and problem-solving skills 

• Communication: Ability to communicate technical and non-technical information clearly and professionally (both verbally and in writing) while ensuring that the quality and content of the message are relevant to the circumstances; ability to be an active-listener; the ability to draft, proofread, and send written communications effectively; the ability and willingness to carefully listen to others by asking appropriate questions and avoiding interruptions

• Confidentiality: Ability to work confidently, effectively and with discretion with all staff levels

• Flexibility: Willingness to work in an ever-changing environment with the ability to positively adapt to organizational, process, and technology changes

• Initiative: Ability to work effectively with moderate supervision with proven ability to execute high complexity and diversity of work assignments

• Multitasking: The ability to perform two or more tasks simultaneously or to shift back and forth between two or more activities or sources of information without difficulty

• Organization: Ability to manage work assignments though prioritization, paying attention to detail, and optimal time management

• Service Excellence: Exhibit the willingness to be stakeholder-focused by anticipating and understanding stakeholders' needs; collaborate with them to reach a suitable solution; then consistently meet and deliver on those expectations, ensuring solutions contribute to improved customer experience and productivity.

• Teamwork: The ability to establish and maintain rapport, interact comfortably, and work well with coworkers. This includes cooperating, being supportive of others, willingly helping others, considering others’ ideas and opinions, sharing information, giving proper credit, and fulfilling team responsibilities

Physical Requirements: 

Primarily desk position; regularly required to sit, occasionally required to stand and walk. Requires frequent and repetitive use of hands and fingers to operate computer, mouse, keyboard, and office related equipment and the ability to reach with hands and arms. Position requires lifting no more than 10 pounds  on a regular basis. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close visual acuity and the ability to adjust focus. Requires the ability to communicate verbally and exchange information over the phone and in person.

Work Environment: 

Office, non-manual work; the worker is not substantially exposed to adverse environmental conditions. Working on-call is required for this position, including but not limited to: evenings, weekends, and holidays.