This is a remote position.
Client seeks a Ventus Technical Consultant to augment existing staff and deliver targeted upgrades and enhancements to Ventus, the university’s centralized management system for coordinating and communicating academic accommodations for students with disabilities. Ventus supports classroom and assessment accommodations, integrates with institutional processes and data (including final exam scheduling via SOLUS/PeopleSoft SIS/ERP), and is relied upon by students, instructors, Queen’s Student Accessibility Services, and other campus partners.
This engagement focuses on delivering functionality that improves exam scheduling accuracy, reduces administrative workload, and lessens student confusion during the final exam period, and modernizing the platform stack, strengthening security and reliability. The Ventus platform’s underlying application framework (e.g., Symfony) and runtime (e.g., PHP) are out of date, with several dependencies near or beyond end-of-life (EoL).
Responsibilities
Environment Administration
• Manage and maintain web/app servers (PHP runtime), framework (Symfony), job/queue services, and file/object storage used by Ventus.
• Monitor performance and availability; implement observability (logging, metrics, alerting) to ensure reliability during peak periods (e.g., exam blocks).
• Enforce security hardening and best practices across all environments (dev/test/prod).
Patching and Vulnerability Management
• Establish and execute a patch and dependency management strategy for PHP, Symfony, libraries, OS packages, and container/base images (where applicable).
• Conduct regular vulnerability assessments and remediations; track findings to closure.
• Align with university security standards; maintain records of patch cycles and outcomes.
Non-Production Environment Refreshes
• Plan and execute periodic dev/test/QA refreshes to maintain production fidelity.
• Orchestrate data extraction and anonymization/pseudonymization as required.
• Validate environment integrity and application functionality post-refresh.
Code Migrations / Deployments
• Define branching, promotion, and CI/CD pipelines for dev → prev (test) → prod.
• Enforce quality gates (automated tests, peer review, SAST/DAST as applicable).
• Troubleshoot and resolve migration/deployment issues.
Framework/Runtime Upgrades (Symfony/PHP)
• Assess current versions and dependencies; propose a target upgrade path to modern LTS versions (Target Versions TBD in discovery).
• Refactor/rewrite deprecated components; update configuration, bundles, and integrations.
• Execute test plans (unit/integration/regression), performance testing, and post-upgrade stabilization.
Database Administration
• Manage and optimize the Ventus relational database (MySQL).
• Perform backups, indexing, query tuning, and scheduled maintenance.
• Define and test backup/restore and disaster recovery (DR) procedures (e.g., hot/warm standby or snapshot-based recovery), with periodic DR drills.
Security, Privacy & Accessibility
• Embed security-by-design (least privilege, secrets management, secure coding).
• Ensure compliance with AODA/WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards in UI changes (details TBD with QSAS).
• Align data handling with applicable privacy legislation/policies (e.g., FIPPA/PIPEDA) and institutional norms.
Collaboration & Knowledge Transfer
• Participate in requirements elaboration with the Business Analyst and SMEs (Exams, QSAS).
• Produce and maintain technical documentation (architecture, runbooks, deployment guides).
• Provide training/knowledge transfer to internal teams before project close.
