This is a specialization of the Software Specialist job description.
Accountable to the CSCF User Support Manager for facilitating continual improvements to the School presence on the World Wide Web via all means but direct content development.
The incumbent is a member of a group of Software Specialists, with responsibilities similar in kind, but specific to the School WWW presence. The incumbent is capable of providing direction for co-op students engaged in assisting WWW content providers.
The Computer Science Computing Facility (CSCF) is the primary computing support provider for the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. Its mandate is to provide a leading computing and networking infrastructure to support the research, teaching, and administrative missions of the School. CSCF plans, manages, and monitors the network facilities within the School. This enhanced network capability is connected to the campus backbone network, and hence the Internet, through a single point of presence provided by IST. Services include account administration for non-CSCF owned research machines, back-up services, machine installation and setup, a secure and environmentally controlled machine room, consulting services to the School, electronic mail, web access, and local software enhancements. CSCF also provides remote distribution of software, such as mathematical text processors, scientific software, statistical packages, compilers, and editors, particularly through the MFCF-developed xhier system. IST maintains the xhier system for the wider campus community.
In response to curriculum demands within the School, CSCF centrally plans, develops, and administers instructional labs. These include special-purpose labs for computer graphics, real-time programming, networking, and distributed systems. General-purpose instructional facilities include PC-based labs (Macintosh and Windows), and thin-client labs that provide students immediate access to an array of Unix servers. Graduate students in the School are served by thin-client or PC-based systems within their offices. Students are provided Unix accounts for the duration of their academic terms. CSCF maintains its own systems and also provides hardware, software, and consulting support to faculty members and administrative staff across the School who operate their own equipment.
The Math Faculty Computing Facility (MFCF) maintains similar instructional facilities. They are physically adjacent to CSCF's, each environment provides access to the file storage of the other, and accounts for all Math Faculty students are provided on both. Furthermore, a Help Centre and a printing room are common to both environments. Therefore, CSCF unavoidably coordinates these aspects of its instructional support activities with those of MFCF.
The computing environment is constantly changing as new technologies are adopted. As a result, staff are continually required to adapt, to develop new skills, and to be aware of emerging technologies and their potential application within CSCF as well as the campus in general. The large size of the computing environment results in non-trivial diversity, and the resulting need for integration.
The working environment is fairly unstructured, with the emphasis being placed upon communication, continual improvement, and achieving timely results.
The work environment is typically within private offices, in front of a computer workstation. Work is generally self-managed which allows staff to take breaks as necessary.
There is an occasional need to engage in light to medium lifting of computing equipment; typically workstation-class machines, network components, and mid-sized servers, the most awkward typically being large CRT monitors.
While most work will be conducted by various electronic means from the incumbent's office, it's expected that presentation of classes, and visits to content providers will entail some mobility.
The incumbent can provide, or quickly learn to provide, all aspects of support for the use of the World Wide Web by the faculty. The result of this support will be the continual improvement of the School presence on the WWW.
Work ranges from day-to-day problems that affect the use of the WWW, to long-term planning designed to improve the use of the WWW by the School.
When judged practical, the incumbent explores possibilities, recognizing preferred approaches and solutions. The incumbent judges the extent to which such approaches may be practically pursued in a given situation, as opposed to using standard approaches and solutions. The incumbent uses a disciplined approach to all aspects of problem resolution.
The incumbent adopts an abstract approach to problem solutions, so as to not only be aware of appropriate solutions, but to be able to choose general, scalable solutions to problems where possible. Solutions which can benefit the campus as a whole are ideal.
The incumbent uses general principles to solve specific problems without a detailed knowledge of the systems involved.
The incumbent can function independently and effectively, establishing appropriate priorities for his/her areas of specialization.
The development and maintenance of a useful presence on the World Wide Web imposes a variety of needs, some examples of which are (in no particular order):
The incumbent is capable of performing any of the above competently, either by employing existing skills or by obtaining the required skills.
A single but very significant example of what the incumbent does not do is the creation of the School WWW pages themselves. The incumbent is to make the creation of effective WWW content possible, not to directly create it.
A fundamental difference between this and most other technical positions is the need for excellent communication skills.
When engaged in front-line support, the incumbent is effective, polite, and comforting to users, who may be very inexperienced with the supported systems. When engaged in more abstract design and development, effective, precise communication with peers, here and elsewhere, as well as productive mentoring and coaching of others, becomes important.
The incumbent will have to engage in significant communication with all WWW content providers within the School, which can include just about everyone. The relationship will vary from presenter, to educator, to proselytizer.
The incumbent can communicate effectively with WWW specialists at other installations, whether it be by attending technical conferences and meetings, or by the various forms of electronic communication. Significant external relationships include the sharing of expertise and effort with other campus support WWW groups that affect the School. For example, the departments of Information Systems and Technology, and Graphic Services.
CSCF has 22 full-time permanent staff, and typically some co-op students and/or part-time student help. The budget is approximately $1.7M. Staff may be involved in other funding, often the result of support for research computing.
The size of the supported community varies with time, so specific numbers can only provide a rough idea of magnitude. As of Fall 2007, there were approximately
70 faculty 1700 CS undergrads 2500 other undergrads taking CS courses 260 grads 20 administrative staff
in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, aside from CSCF itself. Each of the groups has diverse support needs.
A minimum requirement is a university degree in a computing discipline together with relevant experience, or a combination of education and/or experience deemed to be equivalent.
The effective use of the WWW requires a background in Computer Science. Strong database skills, and sufficiently good programming skills are required such that the incumbent can
There are a variety of abilities involved in these positions. It's expected that a change in position grade is the result of a change in some of the requirements, but not necessarily all. Specialization is reasonable. However there are certain characteristics that are common to all position grade changes. They are:
A senior position requires a sufficient depth and breadth of experience that it can be usefully applied to virtually all relevant problems in the computing environment. An incumbent in a senior position is considered an expert in several areas.