Service Operations Specialist

Essential Functions

Major duties and responsibilities of the job

Operational

·         Provide remote and onsite and support for CLS internally developed business critical applications and 3^rd Party vendor packages through Dev, UAT Test and Prod. Manage and escalate problems as appropriate.

·         Investigate defects or problems; work with the internal CLS Development team and external vendors to identify workarounds and support any fixes that are required as part of service improvement.

·         Implement changes or fixes to applications. Support other technical changes being made which affect the CLS Business Systems. Follow the CLS Change Management procedure and other standard practices in installing and configuring applications in Test and Production environments.

·         Ensure that the BAU Service is prioritised and all faults, incidents and problems are responded to in an efficient manner without negatively impacting SLA’s and reporting metrics in place.

·         Upgrade or maintain software at a time when the impact to the business is minimised.

·         Provide 24/7 on-call cover on a rotational shift basis.

·         Participate in regular Disaster Recovery testing activities.

·         Create, maintain and review operational process and support documentation

·         Participate in planned weekend work as required.

·         As required, provide representation for Application Support changes at the weekly/daily CAB. Ensure other team’s changes do not have an impact on the delivery of the application services.

Strategic

·         Ensure CLS internal systems are managed to the highest standard by following industry best practice.

·         Actively contribute to the development of existing and new IT process and procedures to enhance service transition and service operation lifecycle stages.

·         Demonstrate good problem management ownership and prevention of SLA breach under the Incident/Problem Management processes.

·         Demonstrate self-starter capabilities identifying areas of improvement and taking action in order to address service impacting issues.

Leadership

·         Provide support to the team lead/deputy lead roles and act as a point of escalation for the junior members of the team.

·         Lead and oversee the successful release and transition of new IT services into support, meeting the team’s service acceptance criteria.

·         Through example and behaviour, strive to provide peer leadership to other team members ensuring a level of excellence is achieved in delivering the service.

·         Mentor junior members of the team, both technically and professionally

Essential Qualifications

Experience, education and any certifications as necessary for successful job performance

Essential

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent
• Prior IT operational support experience across business-critical Production infrastructure, applications and database services.

Desired

• Industry standard IT certification – Microsoft/Linux
• ITIL certification

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

Competencies required for successful job performance

Essential

• Must have strong experience for supporting production applications in an enterprise Microsoft Windows environment
•   Must have strong experience of supporting proprietary developed business critical banking applications.
• Strong experience of providing cross training on application solutions and operational processes to colleagues.
• Ability to support web based applications that run on IIS, Apache Tomcat, etc.
• Working knowledge of SQL database and basic network configuration
• Scripting knowledge in languages such as PowerShell, VB script, SQL Java scrip
• Experience in working with ticket systems such as Service Now or Remedy and a strong understanding of service priorities and SLA’s.
• Strong documentation and technical writing skills.
• Ability to plan and implement technical changes without unexpected disruption to the service and with minimal oversight.
• Ability to collaborate effectively with Development and other operational support teams in to support the service.
• Strong experience of Release Management processes for the deployment of application packages from development through to production environments.
• Knowledge of ITIL framework (solid understanding of Incident, Problem, Change)

Desired

• Experience of supporting middleware applications such as BizTalk, IBM WebSphere MQ etc.
• Knowledge of Banking Systems and related industry standard practices

Key success indicators:

Characteristics contributing to an individual's ability to excel in the position

• Possess a strong service-oriented mind set who can consistently deliver a high level of service to the business.
• Proactive individual who can take the lead in engaging with the business users and to support the environment with minimal oversight.
• Self-motivated to exceed management expectations and objectives.
• Demonstrate strong technical, analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Able to manage their time effectively and prioritise their own workload in order to meet changing demands from the business.
•   A high level of presentation and communications skills with the ability to communicate confidently with both business and technical staff at all levels.
• Ability to engage with the business to effectively support the environment with minimal oversight.