Lead System Analyst

About the position

The Lead System Analyst plays a critical role in supporting Air Canada Vacations’ (ACV) core business systems, with a primary focus on travel reservations platforms as well as key enterprise applications supporting Finance, Customer Relations, Operations, E‑Commerce and Web channels. ACV is a leading Canadian Tour Operator selling packaged travel products that include air, hotel, cruise and ancillary services. The Lead System Analyst acts as a senior functional and technical liaison between business end‑users, internal IT delivery teams, and strategic third‑party technology partners, ensuring system stability, business continuity, and high‑quality project delivery. The Lead System Analyst provides advanced Level‑2 application support, leads complex analysis and issue resolution, and serves as a senior resource within the team for project delivery, testing strategy, quality assurance (QA) and user acceptance testing (UAT) across multiple platforms. This role provides technical guidance, knowledge sharing and day‑to‑day leadership within the team, but does not include formal people management responsibilities such as performance management, vacation approvals or direct supervision.

Responsibilities

  • Provide Level‑2 functional and application support for ACV’s core reservations systems and enterprise applications.
  • Analyze, triage and resolve incidents, defects and service requests, ensuring adherence to agreed service levels (SLAs).
  • Act as a senior escalation point for complex system issues impacting business operations and support less experienced analysts in troubleshooting and resolution.
  • Maintain operational checklists, monitoring activities and system health validations.
  • Create, maintain and analyze trouble reports, defect logs and error tracking to identify recurring issues and improvement opportunities.
  • Provide day‑to‑day technical guidance and knowledge transfer across the team to improve support consistency, issue resolution and operational readiness.
  • Work closely with ACV business users across Reservations, Operations, Finance, Customer Relations, E‑Commerce and Web teams to understand business needs and system behaviour.
  • Perform root‑cause analysis on system defects and functional issues, collaborating with internal development teams and external vendors.
  • Document functional requirements, system behaviour, workflows and interfaces.
  • Evaluate solution options, clearly outlining pros, cons, risks and impacts before recommending a preferred approach, and provide senior analytical input on cross‑functional initiatives and production priorities.
  • Facilitate analysis discussions, help align stakeholders on requirements and approach, and promote best practices in documentation, support processes and solution design.
  • Act as a primary IT liaison with external technology partners, including, but not limited to: Softvoyage (flight and hotel packaging); Revelex (cruise reservations); Air Canada (air inventory, ticketing and related integrations.
  • Coordinate complex defect analysis, enhancements, releases and incident resolution with vendors, and provide senior guidance on prioritization and risk mitigation.
  • Validate vendor fixes and enhancements through structured testing cycles.
  • Ensure partner solutions align with ACV business processes and operational requirements.
  • Lead and execute functional, integration, regression and UAT testing for system enhancements, releases and production fixes, including coordinating testing approach for larger or more complex changes.
  • Develop and maintain test plans, test cases, scripts and test data.
  • Coordinate testing cycles with business stakeholders and IT delivery teams.
  • Clearly document and communicate test results, risks and go/no‑go recommendations.
  • Support project teams by ensuring solutions meet business requirements and quality standards before production deployment.
  • Develop and maintain system documentation, procedures and user guides.
  • Maintain help documentation and error/message catalogs for supported systems.
  • Support training activities by providing documentation and walkthroughs of new or enhanced functionality to the Training team and business users.
  • Contribute to continuous improvement of support processes and system knowledge bases.
  • Coach and mentor team members through knowledge sharing, walkthroughs and support of best practices, while remaining an individual contributor rather than a formal people leader.
  • Use enterprise tools (e.g., JIRA, Confluence) to manage incidents, defects, documentation and testing activities.
  • Collaborate closely with IT Web Development, E‑Commerce, Infrastructure and Architecture teams.
  • Participate in special projects and initiatives as assigned.
  • Perform other related duties as required by management.

Requirements

  • College diploma or university degree in Computer Science, Information Systems or a related discipline.
  • Minimum 5+ years of experience as a System Analyst, Application Support Analyst or in a similar role supporting business-critical systems.
  • Experience supporting enterprise applications or mission‑critical business systems.
  • Strong understanding of system support, incident management, testing and QA processes.
  • Demonstrated ability to work directly with business users and technical teams.
  • Experience using JIRA and Confluence (or similar tools) for tracking, documentation and collaboration.
  • Strong analytical, problem‑solving and communication skills.
  • Strong ability to mentor peers, coordinate work informally, and provide technical leadership without formal supervisory authority.
  • Ability to work in a fast‑paced, production‑critical environment.
  • Demonstrated experience serving as a senior resource, lead analyst or escalation point within a support or delivery team.
  • Fully bilingual (English and French, written and spoken).

Nice-to-haves

  • Experience in the Tour Operator, Travel, Airline or Cruise industry.
  • Hands‑on experience with travel reservations systems, inventory management or ticketing platforms.
  • Knowledge of TTS, Revelex or airline distribution systems.
  • Exposure to E‑Commerce or Web‑based booking platforms.
  • Experience working with external software vendors and SaaS providers.
  • Understanding of release management and change management in an IT environment.

Benefits

  • Generous employee travel program
  • Health and dental benefits for you and your family
  • Training and development tools
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