Career Mondays: Product Analyst – San Diego, California

Email me directly at jobs@usabilitycounts.com if you’re interested.

The Product Analyst is involved primarily in the pre-development phase of the product development lifecycle. Product vision, work initiation, prioritization, product scope, requirements management, product sponsor management, business value and approvals are among the areas of action for this position. During the development phase, they are primarily concerned with making sure the product under development matches the vision requirements by working with all areas of software development including artists, designers, engineers, managers and quality assurance teams. This position requires business knowledge, organization, independence and good communication.

Duties and responsibilities may include, but are not limited to the following:

• Receives requests for new development and enhancements from initiating stakeholders and insures that work requests are complete, accurate, and reflect the intent of the initiator
• Participates in evaluation of the request queue, including elaboration on requests, supporting evaluation of business value, and balancing of capacity with demand
• Participates in the request approval process, which includes screening and approval of requests based on identified business, financial, and technical criteria, as well as prioritizing approved requests based on importance to the business, external deadlines, and resource availability
• Defines and controls the scope of an application release, including integration of all approved and applicable work requests into a single project
• Works with both business and technical stakeholders to create, gather, document, and manage the lifecycle of the business and functional requirements related to work requests, which may include creating use cases and creating documentation for requests; manages the organization and changes to requirements and changes to deliverables
• Leads, tracks and executes the requirements definition phase of the product development cycle, ensuring that all key stakeholders have participated in the process
• Continuously identify and implement process/tool improvements for requirements definition/elicitation process
• Responsible for the creation, implementation and maintenance of standardized requirements documentation
• Is knowledgeable of competing products and can evaluate product and business performance and feature sets against the competition
• Participates in the review of product and technical solutions to project requirements; makes sure designs meet requirements
• May be assigned issues and risks to be resolved during development or quality assurance
• Creates and maintains products guides which provides a central location for documentation related to products and services

This position requires a minimum of four years product management and requirements analysis experience in an information technology environment, as well as proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite and Visio. Additional software tools, if required, need to be learned quickly.

Additional requirements include:

• Demonstrated ability to work collaboratively with stakeholders and project team members to further the business objectives of our products and services
• Excellent written, verbal and social skills – You will be interacting with all types of people
• Ability to work in a fast paced, multiple project environment on an independent basis and with minimal supervision
• Knowledge of video games, video game business models, the gaming market and competing services is helpful

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Career Mondays: Content Strategist in New York, New York

If you are interested, email me at jobs@usabilitycounts.com.

Top interactive agency is seeking a seasoned   Sr Content Strategist/CS Lead for a three month project of the over 5,000 page site. Environment is highly collaborative and friendly, and extremely fast-paced and tactical in this stage.

Requirements

• Competitive site analysis and benchmarking in content breadth, organization and presentation.
• Creating development plans for web content;   recommending content types and organization based on user needs and marketing goals, identifying content gaps
• Presenting content strategy deliverables to clients
• Selecting and evaluating content; maintaining site content inventory.
• Defining research requirements for web strategy.
• Developing content attributes and classification schemes (content models)
• Understanding of relational databases is desirable.
• Content development and editorial calendar planning experience is desirable
• Supervisory/mentoring experience desirable

Experience

• Content Strategy Experience:   5 years
• Interactive marketing experience: 5 years

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Career Mondays: Lead Experience Architect In Denver, Colorado

If interested, send your resume to jobs@usabilitycounts.com.

A company located in Denver, Colorado are looking for a senior level Lead Experience Architect with strong interests and capabilities in the rapid development of Rich Internet Applications. The ideal candidate will thrive in a work environment that requires strong problem solving skills and independent self-direction, coupled with an aptitude for team collaboration and open communication. The candidate will also have extensive experience in a fast-paced and innovative development environment. A thorough understanding of user-centered design methodologies is a must.

Responsibilities

• Gather business requirements, user needs, and visual requirements
• Facilitate key client workshops to solicit feedback and generate consensus
• Guide clients through key design engagements
• Brainstorm best practices and innovation
• Design interaction design diagrams and interface wireframes
• Help define the user model and user interface for new applications
• Develop storyboards and prototypes to communicate UX and design ideas
• Analyze functional and performance requirements to maintain design architectures
• Lead a small team of professional UX Designers
• Strong client-facing presentation and communication skills

Required experience and skills

• 8 or more years of user interface design experience focused around
  visual design for software applications, web, mobile devices, CD-ROMs, or
  kiosks
• 5 or more years as a User Experience lead
• Extensive knowledge of and experience with user interface design patterns, visual design elements, web technologies, and development methodologies
• Demonstrated experience in designing usable applications
• Experience with SaaS platform UI design
• Strong knowledge of MS and Adobe Suite software
• Solid academic background in human-computer interaction or related field (BS or MS in Computer Science or related field a big plus).
• Strong knowledge of user interface design processes and methodology, particularly as applied to web-based applications
• Experience with activities and deliverables associated with user centered design, SDLC, and functional requirements gathering.
• Excellent leadership, communication, project management, and teamwork skills.

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Career Mondays: Senior .NET Developer in Los Angeles, California

Email your resume to jobs@usabilitycounts.com.

The Opportunity

A large consulting company is seeking several .NET experts with five years of .NET programming experience. The selected candidates will work in small groups on multiple software development projects, and will work closely with the assigned Project Managers to deliver quality solutions to our client companies.

Skills

• Expert-level expertise with ASP.NET, Web Services, and Windows Forms
• Experience with large-scale applications in a leadership role
• Expert-level competency in C#.NET
• Broad experience with .NET Framework (1.1/2.0)
• Experience with ADO.NET, SQL Reporting Services and SQL 2000/2005
• Third-party controls (Infragistics or similar)
• Experience with .NET 3.0 (WF, WCF, WPF, WCS)
• Demonstrable experience developing solution architecture
• Leadership experience throughout the software lifecycle

Pluses

• Training or speaking experience (MCT or similar)
• Expert-level experience with one or more emerging technologies such as AJAX.NET
• Experience creating custom controls for either ASP.NET or Windows Forms
• Security, including CAS and WCS

Background

• Must be a self-starter who requires minimal supervision.
• Excellent interpersonal and organizational skills, ability to handle diverse situations, multiple projects and rapidly changing priorities.
• Ability to communicate with clients at all levels.
• Ability to come up with the best solution for given requirements.
• Ability to provide reasonably accurate estimates for projects, based on client-provided technical and functional requirements.

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Career Mondays: Information Architect In San Francisco, California

If you know of anyone or are interested in the position, send an email to jobs@usabilitycounts.com.

The opportunity is for a temporary to permanent mid to senior level Information Architect that lives local to   San Francisco.

The company is a high-end fashion retailer in Union Square area of San Francisco. Office is in the heart of everything: shopping, restaurants, transportation, and is housed in a heritage-style office building with exposed brick walls, big open spaces, and a cozy, close-knit team.

Must be able to lead initiatives and make recommendations, and be proactive the user experience process. Experience working on major site builds in an e-commerce environment is required. Experience in fashion a major plus, but not a requirement.

Please be able to have the full range of information architect skills like building wireframes and writing personas, understand shopping cart functionality, and an ability to evangelize your user experience ideas to a greater team. Having a great sense of humor, and a collaborative team spirit is great too.

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Career Mondays: SharePoint Information Architect

If interested, send your resume to jobs@usabilitycounts.com.

An international specialty technology company is looking for an on-site full time Information Architect with at least two years of experience designing SharePoint (MOSS) Solutions to champion its SharePoint internet among the employees of the company. This position will ensure the proper governance structures are in place to define the administration, maintenance, and support of content through the information lifecycle. The Information Architect will work closely with business users and the Solutions Architect to develop business requirements for more complex team site applications.

Tasks

• Working within a cross-company team, define the organization, presentation, and navigation of content for the intranet site.
• Conduct one-on-one and group training for team sites. Working with individual departments to establish their team site. Work with business users and Solutions Architects to develop more complex solutions.
• Conduct group training for my sites. Develop workshops to help users establish their my sites.
• Develop and implement the governance and guidelines for how Sharepoint is utilized (content publishing, information security, archiving of content) along with the roles and responsibilities.
• Completes special projects and other duties as assigned.

Skills

• Two years experience as a Sharepoint Information Architect.
• Three years of experience managing projects with documented business benefits by leveraging collaboration technologies.

Background

• Four-year college degree, preferably in computer science or software engineering, or equivalent level of experience.
• Must be a self starter with good interpersonal and analytical skills.
• Must be able to work with both technical and non-technical employees.
• Must be detail oriented, creativity, experience working with multi-disiplinary teams.
• Ability to understand business requirements, analyze business processes and develop technical solutions to support the enterprise

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Career Mondays: Senior Java Mobile Engineer in Los Angeles, California

I promise, the UX jobs will come soon.

If you have any friends that fit this, send it along to jobs@usabilitycounts.com. If there’s a hit, and the person gets hired, I’ll make it worth your while.

The opportunity

An international software development company is looking for a on-site full time Java Senior Engineer with three or more years experience in the design and development of J2EE-based mobile applications to join their application development team, and will be working on applications that comprise of web content management, provisioning, billing, and data analysis applications and defining development processes. The company produces very dynamic and highly interactive applications for the web, and is looking to fill this position immediately. The position is full time, and some travel is required.

Tasks

• Design and lead the implementation of mobile and web storefront, content management, hosting, and provisioning applications
• Define software development processes and frameworks, technical documentations such as UML, use cases, and test plans
• Act as a liaison to other engineering teams working on joint projects
• Provide technical assistance and resolve development issues with external partners

Skills

• 7+ years of professional experience with J2EE software/application programming with an additional background in C/C++
• Experience with Java/J2EE specifications, application server, database schema design, Oracle and JDBC, Hibernate, Struts/Spring, source control and build software such as CVS, Subversion, and ANT
• Practical development and production experience with the wireless industry and development environment especially pertaining to the following technologies: J2ME, BREW, Symbian, Smartphone
• A Bachelors Degree in Computer Science or Computer Engineering

Pluses

• Some development experience within the mobile gaming or content space is preferred

Background

• Good communication skills
• Well versed at working with software development teams and processes in a fast paced environment
• Experience working in a corporate environment
• Thorough knowledge of software design concepts, such as object-oriented programming, common design patterns/algorithms, and development lifecycle processes

Pay Range

• Full Time:  Depending on experience

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Career Mondays: Senior Level Front End Developer In Los Angeles, California

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Career Mondays: Flex Developer In Los Angeles, California

I’ve been receiving inquiries about posting jobs here. Because of this, I’ll be posting new opportunities every Monday. Some of them aren’t pure User Experience, but they do have some kind of User Experience or SharePoint slant to them. If you see anything here, or are looking for a job, send me your resume at jobs@usabilitycounts.com.

Senior Level Flex Developer, Southern California

The opportunity

A technology product and services company is looking for a Flex Developer  with two years experience to join their User Experience team. The company is international in scope and a leader in their field, and their client list includes Fortune 500 companies that use their award winning, enterprise-level products and solutions. They may consider the right candidate if they have experience in a J2EE environment and are looking to expand their skill set.

The position is either a full time or contract.

Requirements

• Rich Internet Application (RIA) development experience, preferably with AJAX or Adobe Flash
• Experience with the Adobe Flex development environment
• Advanced HTML and CSS skills
• ActionScript skills
• JavaScript skills

Pluses

Background

• Good communication skills
• Well versed at working with User Experience teams and processes
• Proven track record of delivering innovative solutions

Pay Range

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