As with many of the job categories that we feature on this blog, the programmer analyst job description will tend to vary somewhat depending on the industry in which you work and the particular tasks to which you are assigned. As is also true of many of these job categories, the basic list of programmer analyst job responsibilities ought to be pretty self-evident based on the job title.
Naturally, the programmer analyst must be capable at both understanding computer programs as they currently exist and at building them from scratch. That is to say, he must have the requisite ITIL training and general information technology-related certifications that help to make a person a competent programmer. But at the same time he must have a background in the sorts of software training courses that give a person a firm understanding of end-user experiences and what makes a program functional in specific business settings.
Only with the sort of information technology training that allows a person to look at a program from both sides will a person be able to fully live up to even the basic programmer analyst job description. That is to say, he will be able to identify flaws in the user experience and business integration of an existing program, as well as being able to design a replacement program or to modify code in order to correct the problems he identifies.
At the same time, a programmer analyst’s job responsibilities are sure to include communication with clients and colleagues about these very problems and solutions. For that reason, business analyst training and certified scrum master training are also helpful in allowing a person to work as part of a goal-oriented team and to communicate with people whose understanding does not extend beyond the business side of a programming problem.
In this way also, our programmer analyst job description is similar to the job descriptions we provide for various other roles that require extensive information technology training and certifications. Many of those roles draw heavily on such information technology training but also put you in a position mediating between programmers and business people. This is all the more true if your information technology job placement ends up being in something other than an IT firm – an outcome that is increasingly likely as IT becomes more closely integrated into all manner of business operations and private sector industries.
This is all worth emphasizing because while it may be tempting to believe that it’s sufficient to be a computer genius with a lot of information technology training, a closer look at the programmer analyst job description reveals that there are also strong human and business elements to the process of evaluating user requests, designing and outlining IT solutions, and explaining them to a diverse array of colleagues.
Making the situation more complicated, the specific types of information technology training and business analyst training that are most needed vary from industry to industry and from company to company. Consequently, as with many other job categories, your best chance of following the most efficient path to a programmer analyst job placement may come from first meeting with an online information training consultancy to match up your training program against your exact goals and strengths.