Business Application Support Specialist

Company Description:
At CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, physicists and engineers are probing the fundamental structure of the universe. Using the world's largest and most complex scientific instruments, they study the basic constituents of matter - fundamental particles that are made to collide together at close to the speed of light. The process gives physicists clues about how particles interact, and provides insights into the fundamental laws of nature. Find out more on http://home.cern.

Job Description/Introduction:
Are you passionate about problem solving as well as troubleshooting and resolving application issues raised by business users? Do you care about improving legacy systems, and leveraging your analytical and technical skills to investigate and propose solutions to automate the resolution of common problems? Are you at ease with producing ad-hoc reports at business demand by extracting and aggregating the relevant data from multiple systems? Then join an agile team of talented software developers and contribute to application software for CERN's Corporate Information Systems. CERN, take part!

You will join the Business Computing (BC) group in the Finance and Administrative Processes (FAP) department (http://fap-dep.web.cern.ch/), where 70+ talented international colleagues are responsible for delivering information systems for all of CERN's business functions. The PSS section is responsible for the operation and the further development / evolution of CERN's core logistics, supply chain, and financial systems supporting the entire organisation.

The product management driven group is working for clients across the whole Organisation (HR, Finance, Planning, Safety, Security, Purchasing, Logistics, and Accelerator Operations). The type of products under the group's responsibility ranges from custom-made solutions for a few users to large and widely integrated systems with 15,000+ users. Hence, working for the BC group provides numerous perspectives for being in touch with different technologies and business areas.

Functions:
As a Business Application Support Specialist, you will join a self-organised agile product team and provide end-user support to some of the group's core logistics and financial systems. More specifically, you will take on the following responsibilities:
- Provide 3rd level user support, maintenance, and consultancy to business users with everyday issues in the form of support tickets or meetings, ensuring business continuity.
- Implement and test on-demand business reports, requiring the extraction and aggregation of data from multiple systems.
- Identify areas of improvement in existing applications, and pro-actively recommend solutions, particularly in the area of automation of repetitive tasks, and mitigation of recurring problems.
- Contribute to the continuous improvement of existing systems in close collaboration with internal clients/users and possibly external partners/suppliers.
- Work in an agile DevOps environment based on a toolchain that relies on code editors, git, continuous integration, containers, Linux servers, databases, and ticketing/documentation systems.
- Participate in operations, maintenance and development activities according to the priorities set by the Product Manager and Product Owner.

Qualifications:
Bachelor's degree or equivalent relevant experience in the field of Computer Science or a related field.

Experience:
If you are excited about this role but your past experience does not align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may just be the right candidate for this or other roles.
- Experience in providing end-user support, troubleshooting, escalation, and issue resolution.
- Experience in supporting, configuring and customising (commercial) ERP systems (e.g., Infor LN, CEGID XRP Ultimate, HR Access, Oracle HR, others).
- Experience in relational database design, SQL, and PL/SQL.
- Experience in using version control systems (ideally git) and basic interaction with Linux servers via command line.
- Knowledge of agile practices and experience in maintaining/improving ERP systems in an agile environment.

Each of the following skills would be a plus:
- Experience in using customer support tools such as ServiceNow.
- Knowledge of Enterprise Service Bus concepts and associated technologies.
- Experience in using scripting languages for basic task automation.
- Business domain knowledge in areas such as supply chain management, logistics, import/export, etc.

Technical competencies:
- Customer service: provide end-user support to existing applications.
- Knowledge and application of software life-cycle tools and procedures: usage of issue tracking (e.g. Jira) and source code versioning (e.g. git) tools.
- Knowledge of programming techniques and languages: ERP application development/parametrization, interfacing with other systems or external tools.
- Design of databases/repositories: extend/modify existing data models, provide means to store personalisation settings etc.

Behavioural competencies:
Building relationships: showing appreciation for the ideas and contributions of others and encourages others to express their views, even if controversial. Understanding how individual differences bring added value to the Organization; promoting complementarities.
Working in teams: working well in groups and readily fitting into a team; participating fully and taking an active role in team activities. Cooperating constructively with others in the pursuit of team goals; balancing personal goals with team goals. Sharing and letting others participate in own work/project; encouraging team development.
Demonstrating accountability: working conscientiously and reliably; delivering on promises. Taking responsibility for own actions and decisions. Readily admitting to mistakes.
Learning and sharing knowledge: taking steps to expand knowledge in other areas of expertise beyond own field. Questioning traditional assumptions and ways of doing things. Learning from own successes and failures.
Communicating effectively: expressing opinions, ideas and suggestions with conviction and in a logical/structured manner; keeping to the point. Successfully changing other people's opinions by persuasive arguments. Delivering presentations in a structured and clear way; adjusting style and content to the audience; responding calmly and confidently to questions.