Sr. Application Developer

Are you passionate about the management and development of natural resources? Do you understand that water is one of our most valuable and important resources? If you want to be part of a dedicated and talented team that works to responsibly manage North Dakota's water resources for a resilient future - then this employment opportunity might be for you. The Department of Water Resources (DWR) is looking for a Senior Application Developer to serve the citizens of our state as a part of Team ND.

DWR offers rewarding career opportunities with a competitive employee benefits package including fully paid family health insurance for employes and their families, optional dental and vision coverage, retirement plan options, voluntary insurance programs, and accrued annual and sick leave.

The State of ND offers 40 hours of new hire leave at the beginning of employment, in addition to standard monthly leave accruals. Team members who were previously employed with a state agency and are eligible for reinstatement, as defined in NDAC 4-07-05-01.1, or who are granted an interagency transfer are not eligible for new hire leave.

The salary range for this position is $8500 - $9500 per month (dependent upon experience).

Summary of Work

The purpose of this position is to architect, design, develop, implement, and maintain business applications that support the Department of Water Resources in carrying out various aspects of its mission. This position requires a thorough understanding of the agency's complex scientific and business processes and the ability to apply that knowledge to use 4D, PostgreSQL, and other tools to develop, build, implement, and maintain the applications and data systems that support those processes. This position is responsible for managing large scale complex custom business applications built using 4D and coordinating how all applications work as a system to facilitate the agency's business workflow. This position provides critical subject matter insight and will serve as the primary liaison between other developers, end users, and leadership for complex, multi-component business applications. This role requires clear communication, effective requirement translation, and operational continuity across systems involving web dissemination, automated and manual data ingestion, document management workflows, and multiple user interfaces.

Duties and Tasks

Maintain, develop, compile, and document the business applications developed by the Department of Water Resources.

Responsibilities include:

• Develop a deep understanding of the business processes of the agency.
• Coordinate processes and best practices across applications and developers.
• Assess the performance and effectiveness of existing applications and workflows, and recommend corrective action, redesign, or direction changes if needed.
• Manage existing 4D database applications.
• Maintain git versioning systems.
• Build and maintain automated and manual data ingestion pipelines and document management workflows.
• Coding, compiling, and signing applications.
• Serve as liaison to other agency divisions for requirements gathering, stakeholder updates, and training on affected applications.
• Coordinate with application users to create documentation related to application intended use.

Implement and manage the agency's AI coding tools and resources, ensuring compliance with security, privacy, and licensing requirements.

Responsibilities include:

• Implement and configure AI coding platforms.
• Maintain shared instructions, context files, and coding standards.
• Manage user access, onboarding, and permissions for AI coding platforms.
• Tracking AI tooling usage and related resource needs.

Maintain, develop, and document the web dissemination services related to the agency's business applications, including implementing and testing for security vulnerabilities and remediating any vulnerabilities identified.

Coordinate upgrades to the business applications, to ensure they are maintained and kept up to date with security patches and software updates.

Administer, design, and test the backup solutions for business applications. This includes mirroring, incremental, and offsite backups, as well as providing air-gapped solutions.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, or a related and relevant field with at least 5 years of experience; or an associate degree in one of these fields with at least 7 years of relevant experience; or an equivalent amount of relevant professional work experience in application development, including design, implementation, and maintenance of complex business applications.
• Demonstrated experience with relational database design and management (e.g., 4D, PostgreSQL, or similar RDBMS platforms).
• Experience with git or other version control systems in a team development environment.
• Experience translating business/scientific requirements into technical specifications and working solutions.
• Demonstrated experience acting as a technical liaison between developers, end users, and leadership on multi-component systems.
• Working knowledge of macOS server administration and/or application deployment on macOS environments.
• Experience with backup and disaster recovery planning, including offsite and/or air-gapped solutions.
• Excellent time management and organizational skills.
• Demonstrated ability to communicate effectively and collaborate with individuals and teams across the agency, including those with varying levels of technical expertise.

Preferred Qualifications

• Direct experience developing and maintaining applications on the 4D platform.
• Experience administering macOS server infrastructure in a production environment.
• Hands-on experience with AI-assisted coding tools/platforms in a professional software development workflow.
• Experience establishing governance, shared instructions, or usage standards for AI coding tools within an organization or team.
• Experience using AI tools to support technical documentation, user manual creation, or knowledge base development.
• Familiarity with building or integrating Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems or other custom AI/LLM-based tools.
• Experience in a government, scientific, or natural-resources agency environment.
• Knowledge of secure software development practices and vulnerability testing/remediation.
• Project leadership experience on large-scale, multi-stakeholder technical initiatives.

About Team ND

"Far and away the best prize life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing." - Theodore Roosevelt

More than 7,500 talented, hard-working people across sixty-three agencies have come together as Team North Dakota. At Team ND, we are driven to succeed through gratitude, humility, curiosity and courage. Our purpose is to empower people, improve lives, and inspire success. Join us in being legendary.

Total Rewards: The State of North Dakota is committed to providing team memberswith a strong and competitive rewards package that support you, your health and your family.

Considering a new position on Team ND? How does your current position stack up? Use our Total Rewards Calculator to estimate.

Application Procedures

Please note that the Department of Water Resources is not enrolled in E-Verify and does not provide sponsorships for employment.

Applications will ONLY be accepted online through the ND PeopleSoft System.

State of ND employees should access the announcement and application by signing into their ND PeopleSoft account at: ND PeopleSoft , clicking on "Careers," and selecting "View All Jobs" in the drop-down menu.

Applicants who are not employees of the State of North Dakota can access the announcement and application by visiting: ND Careers website .

Application materials must reach this office by 11:59 PM Central Standard Time (CST) on the closing date.

In addition to the online application, the following is also required:

• Cover letter (addressed to Human Resources)
• Resume
• Copy of all college transcripts, and;
• Thename,address, andphone numberofthree professional references (no letters of reference please).

For more Team NDbenefit information, please see Team ND Benefits .

Application materials will be scored based on a 100-point job-related personnel system.

Applications should include information that directly addresses how the applicant meets the minimum qualifications and a summary of work. It is very important to be thorough and detailed in all application materials.

Applicants who experience difficulties during the application process should contact or .

For questions regarding this position's duties or requirements, please contact Missy Schmidt at or .

TTY users may use Relay North Dakota at 711 or 1 .

Equal Employment Opportunity

The State of North Dakota and this hiring agency do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity), genetics, religion, age or disability in employment or the provisions of services and complies with the provisions of the North Dakota Human Rights Act.

As an employer, the State of North Dakota prohibits smoking in all places of state employment in accordance with N.D.C.C. 23-12-10.