Specialist Support Engineer

Empowering Africa’s tomorrow, together…one story at a time.

With over 100 years of rich history and strongly positioned as a local bank with regional and international expertise, a career with our family offers the opportunity to be part of this exciting growth journey, to reset our future and shape our destiny as a proudly African group.

Job Summary

Absa Investor Services (AIS) offers a holistic range of operational and administrative support solutions to institutional clients including asset managers, pension funds, stockbrokers, life insurers, government departments, global custodians and broker dealers. These solutions include Trustee Services, Derivatives Clearing, Investment Administration, Securities Lending, Issuance, Cash Management and Custody, Safekeeping, Settlements and Corporate Actions.

The team requires a skilled Specialist Support Engineer to bolster current support on new platforms and increase the support base to assist on ARO jurisdictions as we building out the Pan Africa custody business.

Job Description

Skills and experience required:

• Relevant B-Degree in Computer Science preferred but not essential if minimum requirements of experience and practical application that enables application support is evident
• 5+ years Information Technology and Application Support experience in a Technology environment
• Application Diagnostics and Management experience
• Strong functional knowledge of the custody business and its related functions
• Familiarity working on BaNCS' custody module is desired
• Strong knowledge of the SWIFT messaging framework, and an ability to troubleshoot any related issues
• Experience in Quality Assurance and Testing
• Experience and understanding of Disaster Recovery, and business continuity management
• Excellent communication, analytical skills and decision making ability in collaborative environments
• Excellent understanding of specific coding / scripting languages e.g. Java, C#, Python, Perl, JavaScript
• Knowledge of Object Oriented Design and ability to properly apply general design patterns and paradigms
• Experience with test-driven development and domain driven design
• Knowledge of open-source relational databases
• Knowledge of version control and related concepts and techniques, particularly Git
• Appropriate unit testing framework(s)
• Cloud platforms e.g. Azure, AWS & Google Cloud Platform
  
  

Key Accountabilities:

Devops & Support

• Apply critical thinking, design thinking and problem-solving skills to solve technical problems on existing applications
• Implement all configuration, optimization (e.g. upgrades) & maintenance activity (e.g. regular maintenance patches) for enterprise-wide applications
• Provide efficient and effective support of applications including continued development of the application and security, software patches, reliability, disaster recovery and ensure the application meets the business needs
• Managing deployments through CI/CD pipeline
• Identify and recommend application improvement to enhance capability, performance and also minimize costs.
• Coordinate and execute unplanned maintenance tasks, such as disaster recovery procedures, for production IT services to prevent and to minimize issues
• Manage applications throughout their lifecycle and assist in the application-related aspects of designing, testing, operating and improving technology products & services
• Develop sufficient knowledge of cloud infrastructure & broader organization architecture to assist with application upgrades and troubleshoot issues, with a strong emphasis on AWS
  
  

Maintenance and Knowledge

• Maintain correct and current application documentation and making it available to application users
• Oversee application implementation and configuration, patches, upgrades and maintenance, and ensure that application performance meets agreed SLAs and OLAs
• Ensure minimal business operations impact due to upgrades and maintenance activities
• Ability to document and share knowledge with peers and mentor junior support personnel
• Develop and maintain knowledge in application functionality, user workflow, and business processes
• Compile and maintain inventory of applications and related details
• Manage and provide support aligned to all SLA’s
• Develop the skills required to operate and maintain the technical products & services (applications)
• Develop and maintain expertise in application functionality, user workflow, and business processes.
• Receive and screen user programming requests for new applications or modifications, and determine appropriate priority and response.
• Act as a liaison between business stakeholders and customers, external solution providers, and IT stakeholders for application support specific requirements
• Provide input to current and future application requirements to meet the organization's needs
• Prepare assessments for proposed applications, projects, and define appropriate integration and access requirements
• Maintain awareness of application risks and opportunities for improvement
• Ensure that application users are aware of the application capabilities for enabling their effective use
• Assess vendor proposals for appropriateness and compliance with organization and industry standards.
• Supervise and maintain the organization's repository of applications
• Help diagnose problems and resolve incidents / issues related to applications.
• Work with Enablement teams to define the operational activities related to the applications
  
  

Application Monitoring & Performance Management

• Monitor application modification requests and ensure best practices are being utilised
• Conduct diagnostic investigations of program errors and implement or recommend solutions or methodologies for resolution.
• Maintain metrics of operational performance and evaluate trends
• Analyse business systems to determine effectiveness, identify inadequacies, inefficiencies and problems and recommend solutions
• Ability to analyse performance issues on applications and how best to improve
  
  

Governance, Risk & Control

• Enhance methods and procedures for collecting, analysing, and documenting application issues, and completing user change requests.
• Enhance IT processes for transitioning completed configurations from development to production.
• Plan and coordinate the processes for the provision of user applications and systems necessary for business operations.
• Define and maintain application assessment, development, and support standards, and work with other IT and business stakeholders to establish configuration and use guidelines.
• Provide inputs to availability and capacity management process for effective planning.
  
  

Education

Bachelor's Degree: Information Technology

Absa Bank Limited is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. In compliance with the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998, preference will be given to suitable candidates from designated groups whose appointments will contribute towards achievement of equitable demographic representation of our workforce profile and add to the diversity of the Bank.

Absa Bank Limited reserves the right not to make an appointment to the post as advertised