Section Chief

Job Description and Duties

Under general direction of the Enterprise Application Services Branch Chief, the incumbent supervises the mission-critical Cost Recovery System (CRS), which provides billing services for the Department of Developmental Services (Department) consumers residing in State-Operated Facilities and Department of State Hospitals patients; Developmental Center health systems; and vendor-supported Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms. The incumbent directly supervises section staff and serves as technical project manager for assigned application and modernization initiatives. Plans and coordinates project delivery, resolves technical issues, maintains system documentation, and works with business customers to improve system functionality. Develops requests for offer and statements of work, manages assigned contracts, and coordinates vendors, consultants, and internal technical teams from planning through deployment and ongoing support.

Effective July 1, 2025, State employees are subject to a salary reduction of three percent in exchange for five hours per month of the Personal Leave.

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You will find additional information about the job in the .

Working Conditions

Prolonged periods on a computer a majority of the time. May require on-call responsibility and occasional weekend support. Occasional travel including overnight or day trips.

Under Government Code 14200, this position is a hybrid, in-office/telework position, and may be subject to change. Incumbent can be required to report to the office, or any designated location at any time. Telework agreements can be modified and/or cancelled at any time. All commute expenses to the reporting location will be the responsibility of the selected candidate.

Pursuant to California Government Code requirements, candidates must be residents of the State of California at the time of appointment.

This position requires lawful authorization to work in the United States. The Department does not sponsor employment visas for this position.

Special Requirements

The Statement of Qualifications (SOQ) must be numbered in the same order as the following areas, typed in 12-point Arial font, single spaced, and be no more than two pages in length.  Use specific examples that identify your role, actions, and results. Distinguish your contributions from those of the team. Where direct experience is limited, explain how related experience prepares you for responsibility.  Applicants who fail to answer the questions or submit an SOQ may not be considered.

1. Describe a time you identified an inefficient business process and gained support for improving it. How did you engage staff and business partners, address resistance, and prepare users for the change? Explain your role, how you measured success, and how you ensured the improvements were sustained.

2. Describe your experience developing or managing an IT statement of work, procurement, or vendor engagement. How did you establish measurable deliverables, acceptance criteria, service expectations, and cost controls? Provide an example of a vendor performance or delivery issue, explain how you resolved or escalated it within your authority, and describe the outcome.

3. Describe a significant production incident or high-risk system change you managed for a business-critical application. How did you assess service impact, protect sensitive data and data integrity, coordinate technical teams and vendors, and communicate with business partners? Explain how you verified recovery or successful implementation and used root-cause findings, documentation, or process improvements to prevent recurrence.

Desirable Qualifications

In addition to evaluating each candidate's relative ability, as demonstrated by quality and breadth of experience, the following factors will provide the basis for competitively evaluating each candidate:

Knowledge of: Principles, practices, and trends of public and business administration; employee supervision; the legislative process; state procurement and contract administration; and departmental goals and policies; the Software Development Life Cycle and Agile, Scrum, Kanban, predictive, and hybrid delivery methods; legacy modernization, cloud services, SaaS/CRM platforms, APIs, authentication, and batch integration; data mapping, SQL-based validation, migration, reconciliation, and data quality controls; source control, peer review, automated build and deployment pipelines, environment controls, cutover, and rollback

Ability to: Develop cooperative relationships with the department, facilities, the public, and other state organizations; coordinate services for persons with developmental needs; analyze situations accurately and take effective action; reason logically and creatively; communicate clearly; analyze data; review reports; and establish and maintain project priorities; build collaborative teams; resolve conflicts; manage stakeholder expectations; and coordinate training, adoption, and knowledge transfer; Translate business needs into technical requirements, user stories, scalable solutions, and measurable acceptance criteria; lead multiple projects; manage scope, schedules, resources, cost forecasts, dependencies, risk plans, and change control; apply the California Project Management Framework and applicable Project Approval Lifecycle (PAL) or Project Delivery Lifecycle (PDL) pathways with PMO and oversight partners; Plan functional, integration, regression, performance, and user acceptance testing; track defects and release readiness; coordinate security, privacy, accessibility, access controls, vulnerability remediation, monitoring, and recovery with specialists; demonstrate effective leadership, analytical, interpersonal, presentation, and written and oral communication skills; develop statements of work; evaluate vendor estimates, service levels, licensing, cloud costs, and total cost of ownership; use approved scheduling, backlog, collaboration, and reporting tools, such as Microsoft Planner, Azure DevOps, Asana, and/or other dashboards; assess approved AI-assisted tools; protect sensitive data, validate outputs, require human review, and coordinate risk assessments.

Benefits

As a state employee working for the Department of Developmental Services, you and your family will have access to excellent medical, dental and vision insurance benefits in addition to retirement benefits.

Benefit eligibility may be based on job classification, bargaining unit, time base and length of appointment. Additional benefits may also be outlined for specific bargaining units in employee collective bargaining contracts. For more information, please visit the links below:

Benefit information can be found on the website and the website.

Additional Information

Electronic application submission is highly encouraged.

Multiple positions may be filled from this recruitment. This recruitment may be utilized to fill future vacancies that may occur during the life of the certification list.

Possession of Minimum Qualifications will be verified prior to interview and/or appointment. If you are meeting Minimum Qualifications with education, you must include your unofficial transcripts/diploma for verification. Official transcripts may be required upon appointment. If it is determined an applicant does not meet the Minimum Qualifications, the candidate may be withheld from the eligibility list, rendering them inactive and ineligible to be hired for the position. Candidates who have been withheld may file an appeal with the California Department of Human Resources.

All appointments are subject to State Restriction of Appointment (SROA), Departmental Restriction of Appointment (DROA), Re-employment List procedures, pre-employment physical and fingerprint clearances. Further information on the definition of the above may be found on the California Department of Human Resources' website at:

If you have not taken the Information Technology Supervisor II exam/assessment you may find the exam for this classification at the link below. You must take and pass the exam/assessment to obtain eligibility for hire. Click to gain list eligibility.

Required Application Package Documents

The following items are required to be submitted with your application. Applicants who do not submit the required items timely may not be considered for this job:

• Current version of the State Examination/Employment Application STD Form 678 (when not applying electronically), or the Electronic State Employment Application through your Applicant Account at All Experience and Education relating to the Minimum Qualifications listed on the Classification Specification should be included to demonstrate how you meet the Minimum Qualifications for the position.
• Resume is required and must be included.
• Statement of Qualifications -

  A Statement of Qualifications (SOQ) is required and is a narrative discussion of how the candidate's education, training, experience, and skills meet the minimum and desirable qualifications and qualify them for the position. The SOQ serves as a documentation of each candidate's ability to present information clearly and concisely in writing. SEE “SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS” ABOVE FOR INSTRUCTIONS.