GIS Specialist
Ting Internet is a leading fiber Internet provider in the United States, delivering future-proof internet in over a dozen Ting Towns across the country.
As part of Tucows (NASDAQ:TCX, TSX:TC), Ting is backed by outstanding resources and talent. We embrace a people-first philosophy that is rooted in respect, trust, and flexibility. We believe that whatever works for our employees is what works best for us.
The work we do genuinely changes lives. If this sounds exciting, we’d love to hear from you!
Position Overview
As a fixed-line Fiber provider, Ting relies on knowing where our customers are and where our fiber is so we can bring those two things together. GIS (Geographic Information Systems) is all about modelling real-world objects as data that other digital systems can work with. Your job as a GIS Specialist is to ensure the data in these systems does match the real world, and then use this data to answer business questions.
Key Responsibilities
- Manage the GIS ticket queue to support our internal users
- Solve suspected data issues such as address availability check errors by looking at plant drawings, maps, aerial and street photographs, and other sources of data to determine if our system might have the wrong data. Correct as necessary, or confirm an unexpected case is in fact accurate.
- Add newly created addresses. If a building adds an apartment, or a new building is constructed on an empty lot, the new address needs to be added to our system.
- Audit partner address releases
- Our partner providers invoice us for passed addresses, serviced addresses, and other incremental services that need to be checked against what they have actually provided to us. Using reports, tracking sheets, and automation tools that you will help to design, ensure that our numbers match their numbers.
- Receive address delivery batches from partners when new areas are constructed. This data must be checked and ingested into our database so customers can place orders. We also need to track releases so we can account for the pro-rated invoice the following month. Partner deliveries also need to be checked against map data to ensure they didn’t deliver addresses that don’t exist, or deliver the same one twice.
- As-Built and Records Maintenance
- Ingest as-built records from partner and organic construction into our systems of record. Convert from various CAD formats to structured data formats that can be ingested by IQGeo and other systems.
- Maintain the data sets in IQGeo and other systems in response to network changes, additional plant placements, and otherwise ensure that our system of record always reflects the actual state of our plant, and the plant of our partner networks.
- Periodic Tasks:
- Work with the design team to correctly update IQGeo with plant moves or other changes to the physical network that need to be reflected back here.
- Twice a year, produce output to support our FCC reporting. This process is very automatable, but it still requires human judgment to define how the process should work and to ensure our filings happen accurately. On a different twice-annual basis, download the aggregated FCC data that becomes publicly available and ingest it back into our database so we can use it for business intelligence.
- Use database queries and other geospatial tools to generate reports for internal stakeholders.
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities
- Geography was actually fun for you. Maybe you enjoy looking at maps and exploring real places without leaving your desk.
- Attention to detail! This is the most important skill, as the accuracy of our data affects every downstream process.
- Familiarity with IQGeo. This is the main tool used by the GIS team for viewing plant data and the addresses we manage (organic, partners with no system of their own). This is a fairly intuitive web-based tool, but has some nuances to it.
- Experience with SQL queries, especially PostGIS. Our underlying database is PostG