Job: Application Analyst @ Austin Transportation Data & Technology Services

4 min readJun 2, 2020

In a nutshell

We’re hiring an application analyst to join the Austin Transportation Data & Technology Team. We’re looking for a curious and hard-working person who is excited about bringing modern digital products to government.

This is a temporary, full-time position funded for at least one year. Your work will be focused on architecting, building, and maintaining form-based web applications. The majority of these applications are built with Knack to serve Austin Transportation staff. From field technicians who install traffic signals to planners designing Austin’s bike lanes, you’ll be supporting a range of users by digitizing paper processes, optimizing operational workflows, and improving data quality.

The role is open to all levels of IT practitioners with a background or interest in: GIS, database design, information architecture, computer science, data visualization, user-centered design, urban planning, public policy, and social impact.

You’ll need to be motivated and ready to work through the challenges of delivering software solutions in a complex bureaucratic environment with many legacy technologies. Our team is passionate about shaping the future of city mobility and building smarter, more open government. If that sounds like you, most definitely apply.

About ATD Data & Technology Services

Data & Technology Services is a division of the Austin Transportation Department (ATD) that embraces progressive civic tech values including open technology, agile development, and user-centered design to build impactful products with Austin’s mobility planners, engineers, technicians and staff.

We use a wide range of modern tools and technologies to deliver solutions to our stakeholders. We build enterprise business systems using Knack, a no-code workflow management service, and we also have a team of developers who build custom software when out-of-the-box doesn’t cut it. We embrace mature frameworks, with an eye towards maintainability and long-term stability. We love web mapping, and we champion open-source and open data across the City of Austin.

What is it like to work at ATD Data & Technology Services Team?

You’ll be working alongside people who care deeply about what they do, driven to tackle the hard problems that city government and Austinites face every day. We’re a small, growing team, and you’ll have a chance to make an immediate impact. We’re going to trust your opinion and expect you to help us make the right decisions. You’ll be empowered to dive into our processes, test new tools, and give your thoughts on how we can do better.

We are only a small part of Austin Transportation. You’ll have a chance to work with brilliant colleagues, many of them renowned experts in their fields. You’ll learn firsthand how the City of Austin runs.

What will you be working on?

You’ll have the chance to work on ATD’s growing portfolio of products ranging from workforce management, field asset tracking, and permitting, as well as analytics dashboards and mobile data collection.

Permitting | Help us expand our online permitting services to Taxi’s, Limousines, and Pedicabs
Traffic Regulation Management | We manage thousands of traffic regulations that define where you can park your car, the speed limit, etc. You’ll work with transportation engineers to build software to manage the end-to-end workflow of putting new traffic regulations into operation.
Field Applications | Help us maintain and build new features for the technology our technicians use to track their work installing street signs and traffic signals.
Parking | Help us develop new solutions to track traffic meter installations and repairs.

What will you be doing day to day?

Develop our no-code enterprise applications.
Troubleshoot issues and train end-users.
Work with stakeholders to assess our legacy systems, evaluate problems, and identify solutions that meet evolving business needs.
Work closely with our solution architect, product manager, and developers to design and deliver user-centered products in an agile fashion.
Participate in two week sprint cycles and sprint reviews where you’ll demo your work for stakeholders.
Collaborate with cross-disciplinary teams of transportation engineers, city planners, systems analysts, and software developers.
Write about your work, sharing lessons learned with colleagues and broader civic tech community.
Maintain data standards, author technical documentation, and participate in interdepartmental meetups and events.

You should apply if any of these sound like you:

You have experience supporting and configuring web applications, forms, or databases. Bonus points for experience with no-code solutions such as Knack, Zoho, Access, Salesforce, etc.
You’re comfortable translating business needs and research findings into human-centered product requirements.
You’re familiar with relational database principles and methods for extracting, transforming, and loading data.
You have strong technical writing skills including experience creating documentation, workflow diagrams, and training materials.
You like working with end users and are able to engage with a wide range of digital specialists and stakeholders to define the best approaches to a problem.
You want to work with a team of technologists on projects that benefit the public good.

Ready to apply?

We will be reviewing applications as they arrive, through June 21st. Brave our HR portal to submit an application: https://www.austincityjobs.org/postings/76582