Manager of Application Design and Development

Job Duties

Application Development Leadership

- Manage the daily work of the application design and development team.

- Assign and prioritize application development, database, reporting, integration, maintenance, and support work.

- Establish project schedules, milestones, responsibilities, and expected deliverables.

- Monitor active projects and provide regular status updates, risk assessments, and recommendations to the CIO.

- Review proposed application changes for accuracy, maintainability, security, operational impact, and compatibility with existing systems.

- Coordinate testing, user acceptance, implementation, post-release support, defect correction, and ongoing maintenance.

- Identify technical debt, legacy dependencies, unresolved defects, and single points of failure.

Staff Supervision and Development

- Directly supervise the Applications Specialist and Database Administrator, Database Applications Developer and Administrator, and Software Application Specialist.

- Provide daily work direction, coaching, technical guidance, and clear performance expectations.

- Review work for accuracy, completeness, documentation, quality, and compliance with departmental standards.

- Promote collaboration, knowledge sharing, cross-training, and backup coverage within the application team.

- Identify professional development and training needs for assigned staff.

- Provide documented performance feedback to the CIO and participate in formal employee performance reviews.

- Support continuity during staff absences, organizational transitions, and changes in application responsibilities.

Application and Data Area of Responsibility

- Maintain an accurate inventory of internal applications, databases, reports, interfaces, owners, users, dependencies, and support requirements.

- Establish standards for application design, database development, testing, documentation, versioning, release management, and support.

- Evaluate applications for continued use, modernization, consolidation, replacement, or retirement.

- Reduce reliance on undocumented systems, manual workarounds, and individual staff knowledge.

- Develop and maintain an application and data roadmap in coordination with the CIO.

- Help ensure that organizational data is accurate, consistent, appropriately secured, and available to authorized users.

DCM, Microsoft Access, and SQL Consolidation

- Work with the CIO to evaluate and improve the design, use, and long-term direction of DCM.

- Identify duplicative applications, reports, databases, data-entry functions, and integration gaps.

- Develop a coordinated architecture connecting DCM, Microsoft Access applications and data, Microsoft SQL Server, TAPDA, and other approved systems.

- Plan the redesign, consolidation, migration, replacement, or retirement of legacy Microsoft Access applications when appropriate.

- Preserve required business functions and historical data during modernization work.

- Coordinate data validation, reconciliation, testing, rollback planning, documentation, and user acceptance for significant changes.

- Consult affected departments before changing established applications, data structures, reports, or workflows.

TAPDA and Artificial Intelligence Integration

- Work directly with the CIO and AI Architect on approved artificial intelligence and application-integration initiatives.

- Support TAPDA's evolution from a transcription application into a broader discovery processing and review platform with agentic assistance in the interface.

- Identify applications and data within the Manager's area of responsibility that may appropriately integrate with TAPDA or other approved AI-assisted workflows.

- Help establish structured, documented, and secure methods for data exchange among DCM, Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server, TAPDA, and other organizational applications.

- Participate in the design of application interfaces and data services used by TAPDA and its agentic assistance capabilities.

- Ensure that data supplied to AI-assisted services comes from approved, validated, and authorized sources.

- Support workflows that allow authorized users to search, organize, summarize, compare, and review information while retaining human review and control.

- Ensure that AI-assisted functions do not silently alter authoritative data or bypass established access, approval, or security requirements.

- Support testing, documentation, user acceptance, and controlled implementation of approved AI-enabled features.

Systems Integration and Coordination

- Coordinate application strategy and priorities with the CIO.

- Coordinate with the Senior Systems Administrator and AI Systems Architect regarding infrastructure, security, identity, deployment, backup, storage, and production requirements.

- Coordinate with the Assistant Director of IT - Operations on support readiness, user communication, account requirements, training, and implementation.

- Coordinate with the Assistant Director of IT - Litigation Technology on attorney workflows, discovery review, litigation support, Electronic Records Management, and TAPDA requirements.

- Work with departmental stakeholders to translate operational needs into clear and supportable technical requirements.

- Identify and escalate material security, data-integrity, performance, resource, and architectural concerns before implementation.

Data Quality, Security, Documentation, and Continuity

- Promote accurate, consistent, and reliable use of organizational data.

- Maintain appropriate separation among development, testing, and production environments.

- Ensure application access is based on approved organizational roles and responsibilities.

- Document database structures, data flows, application dependencies, interfaces, service accounts, scheduled processes, source-code locations, and recovery procedures.

- Ensure critical applications can be understood and supported by qualified technical personnel other than the original developer.

- Support backup, audit, continuity, recovery, and disaster-planning requirements for assigned applications.

- Ensure sensitive and confidential information is handled in accordance with Defender policy.

Requirements

Education and Experience

- Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, software development, database administration, or a related field preferred. Equivalent combinations of education, technical training, and substantial relevant experience may be considered.

- Demonstrated experience designing, developing, administering, maintaining, or supporting business applications and databases.

- Demonstrated supervisory experience or substantial experience leading technical staff and application projects.

- Experience with Microsoft Access and Microsoft SQL Server.

- Experience with systems integration, data consolidation, application modernization, or legacy-system support.

- Experience gathering requirements and translating operational needs into technical solutions.

- Experience in a legal, nonprofit, government, or similarly complex service environment preferred.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

- Strong knowledge of application design, database development, relational data concepts, testing, documentation, and change management.

- Ability to manage technical employees, establish priorities, evaluate work quality, and maintain accountability.

- Ability to plan and coordinate application integration, data migration, validation, and modernization projects.

- Working knowledge of role-based access, confidentiality, data protection, backup, recovery, and secure application practices.

- Ability to understand AI-assisted workflow concepts and work with the CIO to integrate approved capabilities responsibly.

- Strong analytical, organizational, written, and verbal communication skills.

- Ability to explain technical matters clearly to nontechnical staff and translate business needs into technical requirements.

- Sound judgment when balancing immediate operational needs with long-term system reliability and maintainability.

- Strong commitment to customer service, collaboration, accuracy, documentation, and the mission of public defense.

Physical Requirements

- Prolonged periods sitting or standing while working at a computer.

- Ability to move standard computer equipment weighing up to 25 pounds.

- Regular and reliable attendance, including in-person leadership as operationally required.

- Occasional work outside regular business hours may be required for releases, maintenance, system recovery, or urgent production issues.