Employees cite Blue Slate as a great place to work for a whole slew of reasons.

The sheer challenge of the problems solved here. The opportunity to work with leaders and employees of exceptional caliber. The unusual team approach that takes synergy to an exciting level. The culture of collegiality that makes work a joy. Our employees’ enthusiasm for these strengths placed Blue Slate among the Business Review’s Great Places to Work in 2007 and 2009.

Blue Slate is committed to a set of core values that has sustained since nearly the company’s founding in 2000.  These values are a part of our corporate DNA and drive how we approach our work each and every day.  We call them the BluePRINT.

•    Passion for excellence
•    Reach for the next level
•    Integrity is the foundation for success
•    New ideas keep things creative, fun and exciting
•    Total commitment to customers, company, colleagues and community

Does this sound appealing? You might belong here! Please explore the openings below and apply to jobs@blueslate.net.

 

Senior Business Consultant

Description

Senior Business Consultants work within the Blue Slate project teams, partnering with clients to design, implement and lead value-based solutions to complex business problems. They also support the sales process by delivering with excellence and identifying future opportunities within clients.  Senior Business Consultants mentor others on the consulting team, while identifying, sharing, and reusing industry and discipline best practices. They often work across more than one project or client and may be responsible for leading programs.  At the senior level, consultants possess deep business understanding and key industry knowledge necessary to lead and execute on client projects and deliverables with excellence.

The role may require up to 80% travel. Our consultants are solution and client driven, and therefore may work at the client's site from Monday through Thursday. For some clients or projects, or portions of projects, this may not be a requirement.

Specific Activities and Responsibilities

  • Build relationships with clients and prospects
  • Effectively develops and manages important professional relationships and complex interactions with high-level persons in a client setting
  • Lead project teams, plan and manage programs / projects
  • Expertly perform business analysis in the following disciplines:
  • Solution design and ROI-based, multi-generational program planning
  • Process definition, analysis, and re-engineering
  • Market research and analysis
  • Tool / solution analysis and selection
  • Requirements definition and rules harvesting
  • Builds professional rapport and acts as professional guide to both with the internal team and client team
  • Ability to design value based solutions, including building out estimates and effort, and manage to that plan
  • Champion and drive quality throughout the project lifecycle
  • Identify, share, and reuse best practices to promote growth of team, quality of work product and collective knowledge
  • Uses a mixture of analysis, ‘business smarts’, experience, and judgment to make high-level decisions that impact others
  • Participate in pre-sales consulting, solution design, and project planning

Skills and experience required

  • BS/BA degree in Business, Computer Science, Information Technology, Information Sciences, or related field
  • 7+ years work experience in a related industry (Healthcare, Insurance, Financial Services, and/or Consulting)
  • Understanding of the application of current technologies (BPM, SOA, etc.) to business problems
  • Ability to plan, manage, and lead projects
  • Computer proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite
  • Excellent interpersonal and written and oral communication skills
  • Strong analytical and problem solving skills
  • Effective team member and leader, capable of self-directed work
  • Passion for excellence and an entrepreneurial spirit
  • Must be willing to travel 80 to 100%

Skills and experience preferred

  • MBA, MIS, CPA, or other advanced degree
  • Quality (e.g. Six Sigma) trained/certified
  • 2-5 years consulting experience, preferably in Healthcare, Insurance, or Financial Services
  • Prior experience with business process management technologies (workflow, business rules, business intelligence, etc.)

 

Lead Business Consultant

Description

Lead Business Consultants work within the Blue Slate project teams, partnering with clients to design and implement value-based solutions to complex business problems. In addition, Lead Business Consultants support the sales process by delivering with excellence and identifying future opportunities within clients.  They also mentor junior team members on the consulting team, while sharing, and reusing industry and discipline best practices. Lead Business Consultants are usually focused on one project. At the lead level, consultants possess business understanding and key industry knowledge necessary to execute on client projects and deliverables with excellence.
The role may require up to 80% travel. Our consultants are solution and client driven, and therefore may work at the client's site from Monday through Thursday. For some clients or projects, or portions of projects, this may not be a requirement.

Specific Activities and Responsibilities

  • Build relationships with clients and prospects
  • Play key roles on client teams
  • Performs business analysis in the following disciplines:
  • Solution design and ROI-based, multi-generational program planning
  • Process definition, analysis, and re-engineering
  • Market research and analysis
  • Tool / solution analysis and selection
  • Requirements definition and rules harvesting
  • Analyzes and organizes complex information from a specific content area, identifying key issues, assessing impact, and drawing reasonable conclusions
  • Structures more complex information accurately and draws informed conclusions
  • Builds professional rapport with the internal team and client team
  • Champion and drive quality throughout the project lifecycle
  • Identify, share, and reuse best practices to promote growth of team, quality of work product and collective knowledge


Skills and Experience Required

  • BS/BA degree in Business, Computer Science, Information Technology, Information Sciences, or related field
  • 4+ years work experience in a related industry (Healthcare, Insurance, Financial Services)
  • Understanding of the application of current technologies (BPM, SOA, etc.) to business problems
  • Ability to manage and plan for projects
  • Computer proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite
  • Excellent interpersonal and written and oral communication skills
  • Strong analytical and problem solving skills
  • Effective team member and capable of self-directed work
  • Passion for excellence and an entrepreneurial spirit
  • Must be willing to travel 80 to 100%

Skills and Experience Preferred

  • MBA, MIS, CPA, or other advanced degree
  • Quality (e.g. Six Sigma) trained/certified
  • 1-3 years consulting experience, preferably in Healthcare, Insurance, or Financial Services
  • Prior experience with business process management technologies (workflow, business rules, business intelligence, etc.)

Lead Consulting Software Engineer

Description

The Lead Consulting Software Engineer works with the customer, project manager and analyst to design, construct, integrate, test and deploy enterprise-level applications. This individual may be called upon to perform analysis tasks based on project needs and staffing.
 

The typical tasks for the Lead Consulting Software Engineer include applying architectural tenants to projects, creating OO-design artifacts (e.g. class diagrams, sequence diagrams), creating prototypical applications as proof-of-concepts, creating software solutions using industry standard tools and languages, integrating partner and other vendors’ products, assisting QA to assure stability of the solution, and working with the client to deploy the solution.
 

The individual should be well versed in OO design, including the use of UML. He or she should also be fluent in Java and willing to pursue other languages, such as C++, C#, or VB.NET. Experience with multiple platforms, such as Microsoft Windows, Solaris, and Linux, is preferred.
 

It is expected that the individual will also have experience with a diverse set of complementary technologies, and will continue to pursue such knowledge. Technologies such as SQL and RDBMS, Web Services, Message Queues, XML, Networking, Business Rule Engines, Workflow environments, Document Management Systems and Web Application Servers constitute the infrastructure on which we design, build and deploy solutions. The Senior Consulting Software Engineer must understand the uses and operation of these technologies. Further, the individual should  have experience with SDLC frameworks, Design and Build Tools and preferably  Automated Testing Tools.
 

This position will involve up to 80% travel.
 

Specific Activities for and Responsibilities

  • Understand client needs from both a functional and technical perspective
  • Work with clients to define, analyze and engineer sound IT-based solutions for their unique business processes and rules
  • Given the client's business and technology environments, document the detailed technical specifications based upon the documented functional requirements
  • Code and configure automated business processes and rules using specialized software, such as rules or workflow engines, or by developing custom applications
  • Test the software solution
  • Integrate software solutions into a production environment
  • Train the client on utilization of new processes, tools and solutions


Skills and Experience Required
 

  • Strong OO design background including UML and design patterns
  • Understanding of SDLC, covering various waterfall and agile frameworks
  • 3+ years of Java design and programming experience (J2SE, JDBC, Swing)
  • 3+ year of Java EE design and programming experience (Servlets, JSPs, EJB, JMS)
  • Hands-on experience with traditional web standards such as HTTP, HTML, XHTML, JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets and AJAX
  • Knowledgeable with multiple Java frameworks such as Spring, Struts, JSF and Hibernate
  • Has utilized various design and development tools, such as MagicDraw, Ant, and Eclipse
  • XML/XSL/XSLT experience
  • A working knowledge of web Services and other integration patterns and their supporting technologies
  • System integration experience, such as using messaging services and middleware
  • Versed in complementary technologies, such as SQL, Networking, and SCCS
  • Able to participate as an individual contributor on large and small development projects
  • Capable of working independently
  • Able to work within tight schedules and budgets
  • BS degree in Information Technology or related field
  • Excellent interpersonal and written & oral communication skills
  • Strong analytical and problem solving skills

 

Skills and Experience Preferred
 

  • 4+ years of design and development experience on platforms such as Solaris, Windows, C++, DBMS (i.e. Oracle, Sybase, or MS SQL), MQ Series, and similar
  • Experience with BPM tools, principles,  and implementations
  • Experience carrying out analysis tasks, such as gathering user requirements, running requirements sessions, and developing process maps and use cases
  • Experienced, comfortable, and conversant with the offshore development model, including rewards and challenges
  • MS in Computer Science
  • Oracle (Sun) Java Certified
  • 2-5 years consulting experience, preferably in Healthcare, CRM, or Financial Services
  • Prior experience with BRMS packages such as PegaRULES, JRules, JBoss BRMS or Blaze
  • Has experienced project failures and learned from them
Senior Consulting Software Engineer

Description

The Senior Consulting Software Engineer works with the customer, project manager and analyst to design, construct, integrate, test and deploy enterprise-level applications. This individual may be called upon to perform analysis tasks based on project needs and staffing.

The typical tasks for the Senior Consulting Software Engineer include applying architectural tenants to projects, creating OO-design artifacts (e.g. class diagrams, sequence diagrams), creating prototypical applications as proof-of-concepts, creating software solutions using industry standard tools and languages, integrating partner and other vendors’ products, assisting QA to assure stability of the solution, mentoring junior team members and working with the client to deploy the solution.

The individual should be well versed in OO design, including the use of UML. He or she should also be fluent in Java and willing to pursue other languages, such as C++, C#, or VB.NET. Experience with multiple platforms, such as Microsoft Windows, Solaris, and Linux, is preferred.

It is expected that the individual will also have expertise with a diverse set of complementary technologies, and will continue to pursue such knowledge. Technologies such as SQL and RDBMS, Web Services, Message Queues, XML, Networking, Business Rule Engines, Workflow environments, Document Management Systems and Web Application Servers constitute the infrastructure on which we design, build and deploy solutions. The Senior Consulting Software Engineer must understand the uses and operation of these technologies. He or she must also have intimate knowledge around a subset of these technologies, including configuration, integration and operation of several. Further, the individual is expected to have thorough experience with SDLC frameworks, Design and Build Tools as well as Automated Testing Tools.

The Senior Consulting Software Engineer will typically spend 30% of his of her time providing guidance to more junior consulting software engineers and the balance in a hands-on delivery role; designing, building and testing software-based solutions.

This position will involve up to 80% travel.

Specific Activities for and Responsibilities

  • Understand client needs from both a functional and technical perspective
  • Work with clients to define, analyze and engineer sound IT-based solutions for their unique business processes and rules
  • Given the client's business and technology environments, document the detailed technical specifications based upon the documented functional requirements
  • Design, code and test proprietary solutions for unique business or systems requirements, such as an integration tier in front of a legacy system
  • Code and configure automated business processes and rules using specialized software, such as rules or workflow engines, or by developing custom applications
  • Lead the testing of solutions, at unit, integration and system levels. This includes specialized testing such as performance and fail-over
  • Integrate software solutions into a production environment
  • Mentor less experienced designers and developers, applying best practices and assuring quality delivery
  • Train the client on utilization of new processes, tools and solutions
  •  

Skills and Experience Required

  • Strong OO design background including UML and design patterns
  • Deep understanding of SDLC, covering various waterfall and agile frameworks
  • 8 years of Java design and programming experience (J2SE, JDBC, Swing)
  • 6 year of Java EE design and programming experience (Servlets, JSPs, EJB, JMS)
  • Broad hands-on experience with traditional web standards such as HTTP, HTML, XHTML, JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets and AJAX
  • Knowledgeable with multiple Java frameworks such as Spring, Struts, JSF and Hibernate
  • BS degree in Information Technology or related field
  • Excellent interpersonal and written & oral communication skills
  • Strong analytical and problem solving skills
  • Has utilized various design and development tools, such as MagicDraw, Ant, and Eclipse
  • XML/XSL/XSLT experience
  • Web Services, including hands-on work with SOAP and UDDI
  • Experience with different testing types and able to articulate value of each
  • 5 years of experience with Java application servers, including significant debugging of deployment and operational issues
  • Experience with “JAX Pack” (JAX-RPC, JAXB, …) and a solid understanding of object serialization, XML marshaling/unmarshaling, and similar interoperability approaches
  • System integration experience, such as using messaging services and middleware
  • Versed in complementary technologies, such as SQL, Networking, and SCCS
  • Able to participate as an individual contributor on large and small development projects
  • Capable of working independently
  • Able to work within tight schedules and budgets


Skills and Experience Preferred

  • 7-10 years of design and development experience on platforms such as Solaris, Windows, C++, DBMS (i.e. Oracle, Sybase, or MS SQL), MQ Series, and similar
  • Experience with BPM tools, principles,  and implementations
  • Experience carrying out analysis tasks, such as gathering user requirements, running requirements sessions, and developing process maps and use cases
  • Experience with portal products and architectures
  • Experience with SSO environments and operation
  • LDAP implementation experience
  • Experienced, comfortable, and conversant with the offshore development model, including rewards and challenges
  • MS in Computer Science
  • Oracle (Sun) Java Certified
  • 2-5 years consulting experience, preferably in Healthcare, CRM, or Financial Services
  • Prior experience with BRMS packages such as PegaRULES, JRules, JBoss BRMS or Blaze
  • Has experienced project failures and learned from them
  •