Rarefied talent in data science, data technology, and analytics

Cognos BI Administrator and Reporting Author Specialist

American Institute for Research

Job Description

The American Institutes for Research (AIR) is a leading professional services firm specializing in all aspects of education and other social policy issues. AIR prides itself in conducting high-impact, high-stakes projects for significant Federal, state, and private organizations.

AIR’s Information Technology (IT) organization provides technology services for clients both inside and external to AIR. IT maintains three professional-grade data and hosting centers that are supported by a team of engineers monitoring the continuous operations of the network, including servers, security, and applications. Internally, IT provides a wide variety of services that include electronic mail, collaboration, networking, business-specific database applications, and technical support for applications and web-site developers. Externally, IT delivers web hosting services with rigorous security requirements that satisfy industry standards.

Responsibilities

The primary role for the Cognos Business Intelligence (BI) Administrator & Reporting Author Specialist is to design, develop, and implement various enterprise reporting solutions. The individual will primarily manage and support the Cognos BI environment. The successful candidate must possess hands-on, significant working knowledge of of the IBM Cognos 10 BI suite of components, especially Report Studio and Framework Manager. Success in this role depends on strong technical, creative and analytical skills, as well as excellent communications in order to codify customer requirements and develop outstanding solutions.

Utilize excellent communication and interpersonal skills to vision and create reports from business requirements. This will require working with business users and IT groups in an iterative fashion to gather, analyze, and clarify requirements; validate completeness and accuracy of the reports; and to deliver solutions to help business make better decisions.

  • Ensure adequate performance and minimal downtime of Cognos portals.
  • Enhance visual presentation of current reporting solutions.
  • Ensure production issues and tickets within Cognos environment are resolved in a timely manner.
  • Data modeling and package creation in Framework Manager.
  • Assist novice report authors in writing reports.
  • Willingness and aptitude to learn new tools and support other BI solutions and data analytics efforts.

Qualifications

Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology or a related field.

  • Minimum of 3+ years of Cognos 10 BI Administration.
  • Minimum of 3+ years of expert proficiency in developing and maintaining reports using Cognos 10.
  • Advanced skills using Cognos Report Studio, Query Studio, Active Reports, and Business Insight Advanced.
  • Strong skills with Microsoft Office suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint, Visual Studio, and Visio).
  • Demonstrated experience and ability to work with business users to gather requirements and manage scope.
  • Expert-level knowledge of SQL, stored procedures, views, and triggers.
  • Expertise in the preparation of the architecture and design of data integration strategies and the implementation of data stores.
  • Experience with SQL Server, Oracle, and proprietary databases including OLAP cubes.
  • Detail oriented with strong analytical and problem solving skills; excellent communication skills.
  • Experience training end users or technical support staff to use programs.
  • Knowledge and experience with Cognos TM1 and Cognos SDK is a plus.
  • Other BI tools experience such as Qlikview, Tableau, Spotfire, etc. is a plus.
  • Knowledge and experience using ETL tools is a plus.
  • Knowledge of Deltek’s Costpoint and Time & Expense applications is a plus.
  • Knowledge of Infor’s Lawson Talent Management (LTM) application is a plus.

Keys to Success:

  • Deliver exceptional customer service: As the technical expert, must deliver accurate and timely data to users of that information.
  • Develop successful relationships: This position will interact directly with many end-users such as senior management, finance and accounting, human resources, and analysts. It is important to have good working relationships with these groups.
  • Embrace change: Tackles tough assignments with initiative, creativity, a value-added mindset, questioning nature, and a sense of urgency.
  • Demonstrate business savvy: Suggests ways to produce meaningful data faster and more accurately.
Interested in this position?
Job Location
1000 Thomas Jefferson Street
Washington DC
Additional Job Details
Employment Type:
Full Time