JOIN US IN ENABLING TRADE THROUGH CANADA'S LARGEST PORT
The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority is an arm’s-length federal agency responsible for the shared stewardship of the lands and waters that make up the Port of Vancouver, Canada’s largest port. Our mandate, as outlined in the Canada Marine Act, is to enable Canada’s trade objectives on behalf of all Canadians, ensuring the safe movement of goods through the Port of Vancouver while protecting the environment and considering local communities.
As an organization with a significant impact on communities and businesses across Canada, the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority is dedicated to diversity, inclusion, and sustainability. We strive to create a workplace that mirrors the richness of our community, empowering all employees to achieve their full potential.
The Senior Business Systems Designer leads the discovery, definition, and functional architecture of business systems to ensure technology solutions directly support organizational processes, decision‑making, and operational outcomes. Partnering with business leaders, the role analyzes complex operational challenges, identifies capability gaps, and defines the business capabilities required to address them. Through structured analysis, the role translates business needs into clear capability models and determines how those capabilities should be enabled through enterprise business systems. The role defines solution approaches and implementation roadmaps that guide large‑scale business systems initiatives and modernization efforts, ensuring alignment between business strategy and system design.
Leveraging deep expertise in enterprise applications and business process design, the Senior Business Systems Designer defines functional solution architecture and configuration approaches for complex Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms. The role ensures system capabilities, integrations, and data structures are aligned with business objectives and the organization’s broader technology direction. Acting as the principal authority on business system solution design, the role provides leadership throughout the pre‑implementation and implementation lifecycle by guiding business analysis, validating solution design and configuration, and ensuring delivered solutions achieve intended business outcomes.
What you do:
- Lead the structured exploration of complex business challenges by working closely with
- business leaders and subject matter experts to understand operational processes, pain points, and emerging needs.
- Analyze current operational practices, information flows, and system usage to identify business capability gaps and opportunities for improvement.
- Facilitate discovery workshops and analysis activities to clarify business problems, define desired outcomes, and establish a shared understanding of transformation objectives.
- Define the business capabilities required to support organizational objectives and determine how those capabilities should be enabled through business systems.
- Establish and maintain a holistic view of how enterprise business capabilities are supported across existing and planned systems, identifying opportunities to improve alignment and reduce fragmentation.
- Shape solution approaches that connect business challenges with appropriate technology solutions, ensuring proposed systems effectively support organizational capabilities and operational goals.
- Contribute to the development of business systems modernization roadmaps by identifying opportunities to introduce, enhance, rationalize, or retire systems.
- Define the functional architecture of business system solutions, ensuring system capabilities, workflows, integrations, and data structures align with business objectives.
- Lead requirements definition and fit‑gap analysis activities to determine how system capabilities should be configured to support business processes.
- Establish configuration strategies that maximize the use of standard system functionality while minimizing unnecessary customization.
- Maintain a holistic view of the organization’s business systems landscape, ensuring system roles, boundaries, and capabilities remain clearly defined and aligned with organizational needs.
- Define and govern business system capability boundaries to ensure capabilities are appropriately distributed and to avoid duplication or fragmentation of functionality.
- Provide solution design leadership throughout the implementation lifecycle, ensuring delivered systems align with approved functional architecture and business requirements.
- Guide analysis activities during implementation initiatives to ensure consistent, high‑quality requirements definition and validation.
- Perform other duties as required.
What you bring:
- A Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field such as Business, Information Technology, Engineering, Computer Science, or a related acceptable discipline.
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Minimum of five (5) years of progressively senior level experience working with enterprise business systems, including responsibility for defining requirements, shaping solution approaches, and supporting system design decisions within complex organizational environments.
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Demonstrated practical experience applying architectural, business analysis, or systems design methods within large‑scale enterprise system initiatives, with a clear track record of using structured approaches to inform real solution decisions rather than producing theoretical artifacts.
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Substantial hands‑on experience delivering full lifecycle COTS and/or SaaS implementations, including discovery, fit‑gap analysis, solution design, configuration strategy, and implementation validation for complex enterprise platforms (e.g., ERP, HCM, CRM, Financial, Asset, or ServiceManagement systems).
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Proven experience translating complex operational processes and business challenges into capability‑driven system solutions, including defining business capabilities, functional requirements, target‑state processes, and system designs that can be realistically implemented within enterprise constraints.
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Demonstrated architectural decision‑making experience within enterprise implementations, including responsibility for: determining where business capabilities should reside across platforms, evaluating configuration versus customization tradeoffs, and identifying integration and data implications of design choices.
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Experience working at the intersection of business strategy and system design, partnering with senior business leaders to shape solution direction while remaining grounded in system feasibility, vendor capabilities, and implementation realities.
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Proven experience working with software vendors and system integrators in an architecture or solution design capacity, including participation in vendor evaluation, solution design workshops, fit‑gap discussions, and validation of proposed configurations.
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Experience providing design leadership across implementation initiatives, including guiding and reviewing business analysis outputs, validating functional designs and configurations, and ensuringdelivered solutions align with approved architectural intent and intended business outcomes.
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Strong working knowledge of enterprise delivery and collaboration tools (e.g., Excel, PowerPoint, Jira, ServiceNow, SharePoint, Smartsheet, or similar), used to support structured analysis, design documentation, decision‑making, and executive‑level communication.
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Demonstrates strong enterprise systems thinking, with the ability to understand and reason about how business processes, data, integrations, and technology platforms interact across complex organizational environments.
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Possesses the ability to translate complex, ambiguous business challenges into well‑defined business capabilities and system‑enabled solution approaches, balancing business outcomes with system constraints.
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Exhibits strong architectural judgment when evaluating solution alternatives, including business capability placement across platforms, configuration versus customization decisions, and high‑level integration and data design implications.
What we offer:
- Market-competitive base salaries and variable incentive plan
- Generous and inclusive benefits offering including retirement benefits plan
- Earned time off program
- Paid vacation and personal care leave
- Learning, development, and advancement opportunities
- Onsite gym with towel service in a national landmark in the heart of Vancouver’s waterfront
- Friendly, unique, and respectful workplace
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Job type: Bargaining Unit, Full-Time, Permanent, Hybrid
Working environment: Normal working office conditions
The incumbent must obtain and maintain a valid Marine Transportation Security Clearance when specific projects require this position to access restricted areas/information as defined by the Marine Transportation Security Regulations.
This is Canadian-based employment, and all employees are expected to maintain legal eligibility to work in Canada. Applicants advancing in the hiring process may be subject to technical assignments, psychometric assessments, and/or background checks, including but not limited to criminal record, credit, and/or reference checks.
At the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, we are dedicated to employment equity and a workplace reflective of the diversity of our port community. We welcome applications from all qualified candidates including women, persons with disabilities, Indigenous peoples, and members of visible minorities. Reasonable accommodation can be provided in the selection process and while working with the port authority. If you require assistance with applying to our openings or are seeking accommodations to apply in an alternative format, please contact us at [email protected]. We are committed to supporting your needs and will do our best to provide the necessary assistance.
We recognize and acknowledge that we are located on the traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. To learn more about our First Nation relations and commitment to reconciliation, please visit our website.
