by SherlockTalent
I am once again delighted by the generosity and support of our SoFlo Tech Community!
ITP18 is in the record books but it would not be complete without my personal message of gratitude to our amazing tech community. ITP is truly a local event made possible by the support of our local community.
Here are just a few stand-out moments.
- Record-breaking turnout
- CIO-VIP focused activities
- $35,000 of toys and cash donated to Marine Toys for Tots and The STEM Advisory Board
- A record number of speakers and sessions
- A record crowd for the CIO-VIP Luncheon with Keynote by tech billionaire Jim McKelvey
by SherlockTalent
Apply to this job
SherlockTalent is looking for an experienced Mid-Level to Senior Business Analyst to own the requirements gathering and to be the primary business owner from start to finish for several SaaS products.
The ideal candidate will have some Management or Lead experience as this position will be managing a few offshore BA’s.
Candidate will work closely with the development team, UI/UX team, management, and customers. Exceptional organizational, written and verbal communications skills are required.
Responsibilities:
- Will be the vital link between our information technology capacity and our business objectives by supporting and ensuring the successful completion of analytical, building, testing and deployment tasks of our software product’s features.
- Works with internal stakeholders such as Product Management, Customer Success, and Sales, as well as customers, to clearly define and document their requests.
- Assists with diagnosis/troubleshooting of reported problems pertaining to software developed by the team.
- Determines how to best implement the requested changes/customization. This may include working with Development staff, Product Managers, QA staff and/or other Business Analysts.
- Creates business requirements documentation and functional requirement documentation with enough detail to enable application developers to complete the programming request.
- Ensures that the final user documentation effectively conveys the information the developers need and working with a technical writer for the customer facing documentation.
- Create user acceptance test cases and validates developed software solution to ensure that the completed product matches with the business requirements and operates correctly.
- Report and follow through on common sources of technical issues or questions and make formal and informal recommendations to resolve.
- A successful candidate will acquire subject matter expertise enough to assist questions from developers, customers, pre-sales, and management.
Skills and Experience:
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent relevant experience.
- Vigilant problem solver with strong business acumen.
- Intensely analytical, with the ability to translate analysis into recommendations.
- Must possess excellent verbal and written communication skills (including technical writing) since this position requires extensive communication between technical and non-technical audiences.
- Skilled in Microsoft Office applications, wireframing/prototyping applications, and localization tools.
- Must be self-directed and highly motivated with the ability to work independently as well as in a team.
- Experience working on a team that follows a software development lifecycle and develops using Scrum methodology.
by SherlockTalent
South Florida’s tech sector is not growing talent as quickly as it should, according to billionaire entrepreneur Jim McKelvey.
The co-founder of mobile payment company Square was addressing more than 2,000 technology professionals gathered Thursday at ITPalooza at the Greater Fort Lauderdale/Broward Convention Center.
McKelvey also said South Florida’s educational institutions can’t compete with places like New York. And that free education from his nonprofit LaunchCode is more valuable than a technology degree from a university that profits from those students enrolled.
LaunchCode trains people of all ages to be coders and guarantees them jobs if they graduate.
Lower-ranking education and less talent are two reasons why South Florida didn’t get the nod for Amazon’s second headquarters last month, even though it was among the 20 finalists, McKelvey said in an interview before his presentation at the annual event.
“Was [South Florida] really a finalist?” McKelvey said, pointing to Amazon’s selections of New York City and Northern Virginia for its two new campuses. “Let’s look at what they chose: high tax, low lifestyle, high talent. The educational attainment of those regions blows South Florida away.”
“I think some Amazon execs wanted to expense a trip to South Beach,” said McKelvey, who splits his time between South Florida and St. Louis, where Launch is based. “Were we really in contention? They went to where the talent was.”
South Florida can better compete for high-tech projects by improving education, he said.
The answer is “talent, talent, talent,” McKelvey said. “You have a phenomenal lifestyle down here. The business climate is fantastic, the infrastructure, tax advantages. … What are we missing? We’re missing, basically, the talent. The educational institutions of Miami are not world-class. We just don’t have it.”
“Sometimes you only need one thing not to work for everything not to work. Every programmer knows this. You can have a thousand lines of code and you can have only one little one that doesn’t work, and that stops the whole thousand from working,” he said.
LaunchCode operates in Miami but has plans to expand into Broward County. The program uses a Harvard University curriculum.
“We need a talent pipe, and that’s what we are at LaunchCode,” he said.
McKelvey said the free education provided by LaunchCode is more valuable to students and employers because LaunchCode programmers are being trained for what employers need.
Some audience members disagreed with McKelvey’s comments about academic education.
“I was furious,” said Yair Levy, professor of cybersecurity for Nova Southeastern University in Davie. He said NSU teaches students not only how to code, but also how to communicate and collaborate. And he said NSU updates its technology curriculum every year.
He said 20 years ago, programmers sat in a backroom coding. Today, they need more well-rounded skills because “they have to sit in front of venture capitalists.”
Alex Funkhouser, chairman of ITPalooza and CEO of Miami Beach-based recruiter SherlockTalent, said he agrees with McKelvey that South Florida needs to build a better educational infrastructure to lay the foundation for tech talent.
He said South Florida is making some progress in internships and apprenticeships for students through GetMyInterns.org, a program for high school students that works with Miami-Dade public schools. The program placed 3,000 students with local companies last summer and will be expanding to Broward, he said.
by Alex Funkhouser
Join over 100 of the regions top industry experts as they discuss pivotal topics of interest to the tech community.
This is the most content-rich ITPalooza in history. We have over 100 speakers, presenters, and panelists representing 35 panels, presentations, and training sessions!
Click to view complete agenda: https://itpalooza.org/agenda/
It’s hard to pick out favorites, however, the morning keynote with Mike Maier, CTO of the City of Fort Lauderdale and the CIO-VIP Luncheon Keynote with Jim McKelvey, founder of Square and LaunchCode, would have to be high on my list.
I know I’ve mentioned this before but I encourage you to bring a new unwrapped toy of any value to add to our toy wall.
Other highlights have to be the magnificent Toy Wall which we build every year in support of the Marine Toys for Tots. This year, our partner Neiman Marcus held an ITPalooza VIP toy drive at their exclusive Fort Lauderdale store.
by SherlockTalent
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We are seeking a Network Engineer to act as a subject matter expert for all Network Infrastructure and Operations Support for the networking environment. The Network Engineer will interact with all levels of technical and business entities, manage external vendors and facilitate a reliable network environment.
The Network Engineer’s role is to ensure the stability and integrity of data, video, VOIP and wireless network services. This is achieved by planning, designing, and developing LAN/WAN’s, VPN’s, Firewalls, IDS and NAC across the organization.
Duties and Responsibilities:
- Collaborate with management and department leaders to assess, design, and implement short and long-term strategic plans to make certain network capacity meets existing and future requirements.
- Plan, acquire and install of in-house and remote hardware and software across the organization’s network.
- Participate in managing all network security solutions.
- Develop and deploy methodologies for testing network performance and providing network performance statistics and reports.
- Develop, implement, and maintain policies, procedures, and associated job aids for network resource administration, operation, acceptable use, and technology recovery.
- Collaborate on disaster recovery planning and testing to identify gaps, corrective action, and risk options.
- Available 24×7 to provide support as needed.
- Responsible for participating in quality assurance, compliance and in-service and continuing education activities as requested by Company.
Education, Certifications, and Experience:
- BS degree in Computer Science, Information systems or Electrical Engineering Technology with five plus years’ experience, AS degree with seven-plus years’ experience or High School Diploma with nine-plus years’ experience.
- 5 years minimum experience, 3 years supporting mid-size to large enterprise data networks.
- Extensive experience in managing Cisco firewalls, routers, and switches.
- Advanced knowledge of LAN/WAN concepts, practices and protocols.
- Enhanced understanding of ITIL foundations.
- Enhanced knowledge of HIPAA and PCI.
- CCNA, CCNP Certifications or equivalent experience required
- Other Cisco certifications (CCDP/CCSP/CCIE R&S and Security) are a plus.
