IT Application Specialist
Branchville, NJ

Job Description

Overview

Selective Insurance is looking for an experienced Application Specialist to provide business solutions for a web based personal lines underwriting system. This individual will play a primary role in the development and implementation of major systems, devising and designing system requirements for the solution of moderately difficult to complex business problems. This individual leads a development team by example, actively participating in the design and architecture of solutions within his/her respective team while collaborating with technical architects to ensure solutions fit within established application development standards and conventions. This person collaborates and coordinates efforts with Project/Application Managers, peers, and Business Analysts to accomplish the successful completion of projects and coordinates the implementation efforts. They will provide system support to existing applications and assists in the implementation of software and product upgrades.

Responsibilities

* Support the functional and technical design, development, testing, implementation, and troubleshooting of complex, multi-tier, windows and web based solutions.
* Participates in the design development of integrations between internal line of business systems and external business to business exchanges to and from systems.
* Follows the prescribed development life cycle and contribute to the ongoing effort to enhance coding standards.
* Meet with business unit representatives to define and evaluate business automation needs. Interpret business specifications to prepare for analysis/design functions.
* Assists with developing project cost and benefit estimates to establish project worth including the development of alternative considerations leading to recommendations for new systems or changes to existing ones.
* Estimates project staffing requirements. May be responsible to estimate resource needs for analysts, programmers, user personnel, consultants, equipment, etc.
* Plans and performs the full range of programming actions needed to achieve desired end-results on complex problems under the direction of the Team Leader or the Application Manager (May be responsible for projects that span more than one system).
* Performs code, design, and test plan reviews for peers.
* Independently perform problem determination and resolution in the production environment.
* Coordinate testing and debugging for programming changes and assist subordinates with debugging, whenever necessary.
* Gain extensive working knowledge of business processes and user functions. Share knowledge and train others.

Qualifications

* Ability to effectively collaborate with people in other departments and/or outside of the enterprise.
* Passion for designing and developing modern web solutions
* Ability to think ahead and anticipate problems, issues and solutions.
* Ability to work effectively under pressure and meet deadlines.
* Experience developing/supporting enterprise web applications including an understanding of ASP.net lifecycles, SOA, RDBMS and IIS
* Strong development skills including c# and/or VB.net, MVC, client frameworks (JQuery, Knockout, etc.), SQL Server, DB2 and/or Oracle, web services (WCF, JSON, REST, Web API), entity framework, SSRS, Webspere MQ.
* Understanding of various application and integration design patterns.
* Understanding of various application security models, cryptogrophy, and secure coding practices.
* Project management and/ or experience in the Property/Casualty Insurance Industry desirable.
* Ability to easily move between multiple projects at any given time.
* Requires excellent communication skills, analytic ability, strong judgment and the ability to work directly with customers and IT management and staff.
* Strong interpersonal communication skills.
* Experience with COBOL a plus.
* College degree in Computer Science, Management Information Science, Business Administration or related field preferred.
* Six to eight years of programmer/analyst experience.

Selective is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. Selective maintains a drug-free workplace.