Senior consultant

ABOUT THE ROLE:

Accela is seeking a Senior Consultant to join our Professional Services team. In this role, you will lead implementations of the ePermitHub Digital Plan Room, Accela’s electronic plan review solution, for government agencies using the Accela Civic Platform. You will manage implementations from discovery and solution design through configuration, scripting, testing, training, and go-live, ensuring projects are delivered on time and within budget. Working closely with cross-functional project teams, you will help deliver solutions that support local and state government agencies around the world.

As a subject matter expert in Civic Platform configuration, EMSE scripting, plan review and permitting processes, and REST-based integrations, you will partner with Engineering, Product, and Project Management to influence solution design, establish best practices, and develop reusable tools and approaches.

You will own implementations end to end with a high degree of independence while helping strengthen how the broader team operates through improved processes, scalable solutions, reusable patterns, and mentorship of other consultants.

SPECIFIC RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Analyze client and implementation team needs; deliver scalable solutions that meet both business and technical requirements. Lead discovery with agency stakeholders to understand current plan review processes, pain points and goals.
• Analyze an agency’s existing Civic Platform configuration – record types, workflows, custom fields and tables, standard choices, document types, Citizen Access settings and existing EMSE scripts – and translate it into a preliminary Digital Plan Room solution design.
• Design with a focus on user experience, performance, and maintainability. Produce clear solution design documents, configuration specifications and business-rules documentation that agency staff and teammates can act on.
• Collaborate with our engineering and product management teams to architect innovative plan review solutions that drive efficiency and standardization, acting as the voice of the customer through reproducible bug reports, well-scoped enhancement requests and real agency context.
• Own Civic Platform configuration and custom JavaScript (EMSE) scripting tasks, including design, testing, documentation, and promotion across development, test and production environments with disciplined change control.
• Design and run testing and user acceptance with agency staff; deliver administrator and end-user training; lead go-live and hand off cleanly to support.
• Independently own multiple concurrent implementations from kickoff through go-live, partnering with a dedicated project manager who owns schedule, budget and stakeholder communication.
• Serve as senior technical escalation for production issues: reproduce, read logs, isolate root cause across the Digital Plan Room, configuration and Civic Platform, and drive resolution; turn recurring issues into documentation, configuration-guide updates or product enhancement requests.
• Enhance and evangelize best practices, tools, and frameworks to deliver customer success globally. Identify and build efficiencies – automation, templates and tooling improvements – that make implementations faster and more consistent, and champion consistent use of Jira, Confluence and GitHub across the delivery lifecycle.
• Act as a trusted advisor to customers and project teams. Support sales and scoping through discovery calls, technical demos, effort estimation and statement-of-work input.
• Mentor and guide junior consultants, fostering knowledge-sharing and professional growth; review configuration and code and promote reuse of proven patterns across customer implementations.
• Travel up to 50% to client sites and industry events.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Education/Experience: B.S. in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent work experience.
• Accela Civic Platform Configuration: 5+ years configuring Civic Platform with demonstrated successful implementations – record types, workflows, custom fields and tables, standard choices, document management and Citizen Access.
• EMSE Scripting: Accela EMSE scripting experience with the ability to read and write production-quality event scripts. Candidates with deep Civic Platform configuration experience and strong JavaScript skills who can demonstrate rapid EMSE ramp-up will be considered.
• Programming: Strong JavaScript skills; comfortable with server-side scripting environments.
• Cloud Expertise: Understanding of SaaS, multi-tenancy, multi-tiered infrastructure, and application servers.
• Integration Knowledge: Working knowledge of REST APIs, JSON and HTTP-based integration troubleshooting; enterprise application integration experience.
• Database Skills: SQL proficiency with SQL Server and familiarity with the Accela data model; strong database concepts.
• Consulting Experience: Ability to lead customer-facing sessions; explain technical issues to non-technical audiences; demonstrated ability to work directly with municipal or county government organizations to gather requirements, translate them into a solution design and implement it within Civic Platform.
• Implementation Lifecycle: Experience participating in the full implementation lifecycle, from discovery through go-live and post-go-live support.
• Delivery Tooling: Proficiency with Git and GitHub (branching, pull requests, code review) and with Jira and Confluence as delivery tools, used together to trace work from issue to deployment.
• Continuous Improvement: A track record of improving how teams work – tooling, automation, templates and process.
• Soft Skills: Strong communication, analytical, and problem-solving skills; excellent customer service; ability to prioritize and thrive in fast-paced environments; strong written documentation habits.
• Teamwork: Independent contributor who also collaborates effectively within teams, including large multi-functional teams and direct work with engineering and product management.

DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Practitioner or implementation experience with State and Local Government software
• Previous professional services or consulting experience (Big 5 consulting a plus).
• Government domain expertise in permitting, land management or plan review business processes.
• Experience leading or mentoring implementation teams.
• Programming skills (e.g., C#, Node.js-based build).
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools to accelerate configuration, documentation or analysis work.
• Pre-sales or scoping experience in a professional services organization.

ABOUT ACCELA

For nearly 20 years, Accela has been an industry leader in designing and delivering government software to improve efficiency, increase citizen engagement and enable the development of thriving communities. Today, citizens are savvy to how services should be delivered, and expect a consistently convenient, openly transparent view into their local government. While government agencies struggle to do more with less, our mission has never been more critical. Accela provides a robust, cloud-based platform of government software solutions that accelerate growth, efficiency, and transparency in communities of all sizes. From planning, to building, to service request management and more, Accela’s SaaS offerings level the playing field for small and medium governments and enable smaller agencies to leverage larger city technologies. Our open and flexible technology helps agencies address specific needs today, while ensuring they are well prepared for the emerging challenges of the future.

OUR COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION

Accela believes in developing and nurturing a workplace community where our differences are celebrated, and everyone feels a sense of psychological safety and belonging. Accela is committed to putting resources and attention towards evolving our practices, policies, and philosophies to enable diversity to thrive and to support equity in opportunity for everyone.

COMPENSATION AND WELL-BEING

The annual base salary range for this full-time position is $130,000-$145,000 (less applicable taxes). The actual annual base salary offered may be adjusted based on a variety of factors, including but not limited to, location, education, skills, training, and experience. In addition to an annual base salary, this position is eligible for an annual bonus target. This is a discretionary bonus awarded based on company and individual goal achievement.

Accela’s U.S. team members will receive a generous benefits package consisting of options including flexible time off, comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans, family planning benefits, 401(k) retirement savings plan with company match, health savings account with company contributions, flexible spending account, life, accident, and disability coverage, business travel insurance, employee assistance programs, and other well-being benefits.

Accela is an Equal Opportunity Employer/Affirmative Action Employer and will respond to requests for job accommodations. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, sex, color, religion, national origin, protected veteran status, or based on disability, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

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