• Evaluate power generators Verifiable Costs in the Nodal Market. Review and approval of fuel consumption rates and incremental emission, operation and maintenance costs as outlined in the Verifiable Cost Manual and Nodal protocols.
• Provide training to client staff in understanding gas-fired power plant operations and controls and how these relate to Operation and Maintenance costs.
• Represent client in the stakeholders meetings as it relates to Verifiable Cost analysis.
• Develop internal procedures for compiling and processing Resources Verifiable Costs.
• Prepare financial and technical documents to inform client management and stakeholders on the status of approved Verifiable Cost.
• Develop Tools for analyzing O&M costs of Resources.
• Assist in the creation of a comprehensive list of *typical* O&M categories.
• Provide support for the implementation and testing of the Verifiable Cost Management System.

• Develops and tests analytical tools to estimate credit risk exposure, including forward price exposure;
• Develops and maintains methods to estimate potential future exposure and determine the adequacy of the capital in the market;
• Performs periodic review and evaluation of credit exposure estimate methodologies to ensure exposure is appropriate and recommends improvements;
• Develops and tests credit risk mitigation strategies;
• Evaluates proposed changes to market rules to ascertain credit risk implications and interact with market participants to manage changes;
• Provide analytical support for ongoing credit compliance and collateral management;
• Performs other duties as assigned.

• Minimum of 5 years (in excess of degree requirements stated above) of progressively responsible experience in quantitative/ analytical field.
• Excellent quantitative modeling and analytical skills.
• Strong skills in MS Excel, MS Access, Basic statistics, Data analysis.
• Bachelors degree in a quantitative discipline such as Statistics, Economics, Mathematics or related field or six years applicable experience is required.

• *Coordinate Nodal Performance Testing.
• *Assist in writing and reviewing test cases, scripts and oversee performance test execution
• *Work with E2E and Market Trials leads to obtain and prioritize business scenarios and associated scripts.
• *Responsible for defining detailed methodology to demonstrate Nodal system will perform according to defined Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
• *Provide technical leadership for performance related issues.
• *Able to digest and visualize the end-to-end architecture.
• *Facilitate discussions at performance testing.
• *Work with stakeholders, business subject matter experts, and IT organizations to define peak dynamic work load patterns across the entirety of the clients Nodal infrastructure, including but not limited to, business applications, integration infrastructure, web portals, data warehousing, reporting, security, monitoring, and housekeeping activities.
• *Maintain detailed performance testing schedule and orchestrates performance testing activities in concert with other testing activities.
• *Attend weekly Operational Readiness Test (ORT) review meetings.
• *Support ORT Lead with stakeholder management
• *Construct and maintains a list of prioritized risks, hot-spots and concern areas.
• *Develop a list of Key Processing Indicators (KPIs) for each Nodal application.

• *Technical Degree or equivalent experience
• *Experience leading and mentoring test staff with in a test engineering capacity.
• *Proven experience in defining stress test workloads with representative performance characteristics.
• *5 years experience in utility industry, preferable within an ISO or similar.
• *Project management experience managing high visibility projects
• *Experience with performance testing tools such as TQC.
• *Hands on experience configuring or recommending the configuration and optimization of Unix, Linux and AIX platforms.
• *Hands on experience with various application delivery platforms, including application server containers, core Java applications, web-based content delivery, database-centric applications, and real-time, message-driven middle-tier components
• *Experience with HP Quality Center or similar automated testing tools (preferable).
• *Trouble shooting skills in relation to the diagnosis of performance bottlenecks.
• *Excellent communication and facilitation skills.
• *Team building and team leading.
• *Problem-solver motivated self starter, action and results oriented, able to follow through to completion.
• *Mentoring skills to help skills transference to permanent IT operations staff

Performs complex computer programming work. Work involves analyzing system and user requirements to develop programs for computer applications; writing complete solution programs for complex problems; documenting methods and procedures used in program development; and testing, correcting, and revising programs. Works under general supervision but exercises considerable latitude in carrying out programming assignments.

• Consults with staff members to schedule work and coordinate programming projects.
• Analyzes proposed computer applications in terms of equipment requirements and capabilities.
• Analyzes, reviews, and revises programs to increase operating efficiency or to adapt new procedures.
• Develops block diagrams and machine logic flowcharts to represent operations and data flow for applications
• Codes, tests, and debugs programs and prepares test data.
• Assists in developing solutions to software-related problems.
• Assists in developing standards and procedures for programming staff.
• May assist in the generation or installation of systems software.
• May develop and implement specialized programs to supplement and enhance systems software.
• May assist in preparing detailed analyses, plans, diagrams, and verification procedures for existing and proposed computer applications.
• Stays abreast of technological changes of databases and applications and assess the impact to TABC.
• Performs related work as assigned.

• Bachelors degree from an accredited four-year college or university with a major in data processing, computer science, or a related field. (Professional level experience in computer programming may be substituted for the required education on a year-for-year basis.)
• Three (3) years experience in computer programming work.
• Working knowledge of .NET development and Microsoft SQL Server database systems
• And/or Working knowledge of Microsoft Office SharePoint, Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007.
• And/or Experience with SQL Server Reporting Services report development and distribution.
• Skilled in webpage development.
• Experience in requirements analysis and associated software development.
• Experience in software development using C, C++, C# or VB
• Ability to analyze problems and develop solutions.
• Ability to perform detailed work accurately.
• Ability to work effectively with others.

• Experience with Web Service development.
• Experience SQL Server databases.

• Successful candidate will gather and provide analysis on compliance related information including procedures, processes and system evidence.

• 2-4 years relevant experience;
• Minimum Bachelor's degree required;
• Compliance or audit background preferred;
• Familiar with IT processes and technology;
• Excellent writing skills a must (samples preferred);
• Experience with SAS70 reviews and NERC CIP knowledge preferred.


Closing Date: August 31, 2009

Allied Consultants offers its family of consultants excellent rates, a local support staff, and an attractive benefits package which includes medical insurance (employee premiums paid 100%), life insurance, a matching 401(k) plan and a cafeteria plan.

Candidates selected for interview may be required to undergo criminal background checks and a drugs screen in accordance with Federal and State law. Offer of employment is contingent upon the successful result of a background check

Allied Consultants is an equal opportunities employer.

• *Understanding of Nodal applications and architectures
• *Define Operational Readuiness Test (ORT) tasks and resource requirements
• *Develop full scale project plans
• *Plan and schedule and track project timelines
• *Review and track ORT deliverables
• *Provide direction and support to project team
• *Monitor and report on progress of the project to all stakeholders
• *Present reports defining project progress, problems and solutions
• *Implement and manage ORT related changes
• *Experienced technical hands on team leader responsible for demonstrating the operational readiness of the failover and recovery technology, processes and procedures for Nodal infrastructure.
• *Responsible for collaborating with business and technical stakeholders to understand, document, and disseminate the multi-site expectations of the runtime production system, including primary/secondary site identification (if any) and which applications / components will be expected or could operate in hot-hot configurations.
• *Organize and participate in disaster recovery testing.
• *Work with Nodal project technical architects to identify necessary failover and recovery requirements and translates these into test cases to demonstrate failover / recovery in accordance with agreed SLAs.
• *Define detailed test cases for planned and unplanned failover and recovery events.
• *Identifies any existing documents or plans and validates them for inclusion into the failover test plans to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort.
• *Document or facilitate the documentation of the inter-site and intra-site fail-over and recovery from fail-over procedures for each application
• *Document the environment pre and post failover conditions together with expected behaviors, timings, and system / database states; includes how to verify these conditions for system verification post-fail-over.
• *Understanding of Oracle DataGuard fundamentals.
• *Understand Business Impact Analysis and how it relates to business continuity plans and SLAs.
• * Develop plans to provide fail-over capabilities for mission critical servers, applications and infrastructure components
• * Develop templates for all recovery documentation and procedures.
• * Review recovery plans, including process and procedures for redundancy and recovery architectures.
• * Provide a leadership role in organizing and conducting business interviews and planning sessions with client leadership.
• *Monitor and manage the system resources, CPU usage, disk usage, and response times to maintain the operating efficiency.

• *Technical Degree or equivalent experience
• *5 years experience in utility industry, preferable within an ISO or similar.
• *Project management experience managing high visibility projects
• *Trouble shooting skills in relation to the diagnosis of performance bottlenecks.
• *Excellent communication and facilitation skills.
• *Team building and team leading.
• *Problem solver motivated self starter, action and results oriented, able to follow through to completion.
• *Mentoring skills to help skills transference to permanent IT operations staff.