***The candidate will be required to work onsite. Some remote work will be allowed at the manager's discretion.
This position will be responsible for establishing best practices for administering and interpreting sources of data for the SCHS as it shifts to a more data centric, less siloed, culture with more democratized and harmonized data access and processing. This position will empower, uptrain and collaborate with analysts and epidemiologists to migrate data from existing servers to the cloud and automate routine processes. This position partially supports cross-sectoral accountability such as that between NC DHHS and NC DOJ using Clear Impact Scorecard for the Opioid Settlement work. In addition, it is critical to modernizing the SCHS website and its 400,000+ files of historical data.
This position will serve as software/hardware operations specialist for including performance and tuning, disaster recovery, within a high availability, 24x7 environments. This position will also be responsible for protecting confidential and sensitive data. The work effort requires substantial knowledge of many work specialties (technical and business), including federal and state initiatives. In depth knowledge of data systems and processes is essential. Incumbent will utilize highly specialized knowledge in analysis and work with details of the design architecture to determine solutions. Person must demonstrate expert knowledge in technical and business areas and integrate requirements of clients into cohesive solutions for highly complex problems. The person in this position needs expert-level skills in a variety of technical platform environments.
Due to the nature of the work and association, errors made could be harmful to the state’s citizens and result in endangering their health, disclosure of private confidential medical information, and the loss of confidence by state and federal agencies, DHHS, DPH, local agencies, and the public. Errors could result in a significant cost impact. The position must maintain the highest degree of accuracy in its work. The work requires that the highest levels of security and availability be maintained. Exactness and attention to detail is essential and error-free work is expected.
Interaction with a broad range of clients and/or technology support employees requiring strong communications skills and ability to use a wide range of technical resources for communicating in a sometimes-remote environment.
The Applicant for this position is expected to perform Database Administrative functions, and some Data Analyst functions and assist with Application Deployment and Developer Support functions in the support and maintenance of very complex database environments, data conversions, and software applications.
This position coordinates and creates schedules and develops reports for SCHS data. This includes a variety of sources from flat files to HL7 and CDA compliant. This is necessary to accurately report and exchange health information data and maintain privacy and security of data under current HIPAA and other standards. This applies to DPH, State, Local and National health information exchange needs. The environment for data repository and reports will be SQL Server.
Description of Work:
Data System (60%)
• Designing and customizing complex databases
• Creating instances and views and writing SQL queries as needed
• Monitoring the use and performance of databases
• Reducing redundant storage and managing extents and failover
• Performing regular backups and recoveries when needed
• Instituting database security and maintaining user accounts
• Facilitating data sharing with departmental and other state personnel
• Resolving database problems that have resulted in unscheduled downtime
• Transform logical design into an efficient physical database
• Consider distributed client/server processing requirements, volume, capacity, and performance requirements
• Design and program scripts to perform complex data conversions
• Maintain, support and test disaster recovery plans
• Consult with IT staff on server operation scheduling, backup, storage, and retrieval functions
• Monitor database systems management, application logs, error logs, and back-ups logs
• Resize files and index tables to improve database performance
• Analyze database system needs and communicate needs regularly with management
• Perform database builds to keep all database environments in synchronization with each other
• Consult with IT staff on Installations, patches, upgrades and reconfigure database servers
• Document and implement server/database configurations
• Generate alerts for job failures and capacity shortages
• Support and maintain Microsoft Reporting Services for production and surveillance reports
Data Management (30%)
• Maintain data transformation scripts to generate extracts for specific requests
• Support database client connections and assist users in writing SQL queries
• Support staff with creation of annual data item conversion scripts
• Manage transfer and decrypt encrypted backups and files
• Perform complex global data fixes to ensure data quality for disease surveillance and research without negative impact to business processes
Data Governance: Database Security and Encryption Services (10%)
• Manage database permissions at server and database levels
• Create and maintain roles for higher database security
• Secure all database and backups with encryption
• Manage encryption keys to restore backups when required
Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities
1. Thorough knowledge of all principles behind the administration and structuring of an integrated data base system
2. Complete understanding of applications analysis and programming techniques.
3. An ability to effectively communicate in written and oral form with systems end-users, application programmers and IT management and to establish effective working relationships
4. Ability to plan a variety of work projects with varied time frames of higher complexity or broader projects.
Minimum Education and Experience
Bachelor's degree in computer science or an IT related field or a related curriculum from an appropriately accredited institution and three years of progressive experience including two years in the design and maintenance of an integrated database system.
or
Associate degree in computer science or an IT related field or a related curriculum from an appropriately accredited institution and four of progressive experience including two years in the design and maintenance of an integrated database system; or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
| Skill | Required / Desired | Amount | of Experience |
| Thorough knowledge of all principles behind the administration and structuring of an integrated data base system | Required | 3 | Years |
| Complete understanding of applications analysis and programming techniques. | Required | 3 | Years |
| An ability to effectively communicate in written and oral form with systems end-users, application programmers and IT management | Required | 3 | Years |
| Ability to plan a variety of work projects with varied time frames of higher complexity or broader projects. | Required | 3 | Years |
| Bachelor's degree in computer science or an IT related field or a related curriculum or Associate degree in computer science or an IT related field | Required | 3 | Years |