Junior Application Support Specialist - Quanteam

Location: London, on-site working

Full Time Permanent Opportunity

DEPARTMENT OVERVIEW

The APS eSolutions group (Application Production Support Electronic Markets) is a global team providing services directly to the global FX, Rates, Credit, Commodities, OTC Clearing, Cash management, Primary Syndicate & Client and sales facing eCommerce businesses within the Global Markets IT. The team is concerned with the production support – both functional and technical – and it manages all changes in the Production environment to facilitate an agile business support. The systems are used globally with major data centre hubs in London, NY, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore. The eCommerce APS supports all applications in the eCommerce (Client Facing) suite. Almost all the applications are in-house developed with custom built feature sets. Team members are expected to support all the applications in the suite which may come under different business lines. Team members participate in a 7 am to 6 pm five days a week shift rota in addition to post-release checks during week nights and weekends as required.

DAY-TO-DAY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Provides first level support for internal clients and second level for external clients. User queries may be functional or technical in nature. Team’s responsibility is to own all queries and provide solutions.
• Coordinate with other APS teams.
• Incident and Problem Management: Communicates with internal users and management over incidents and post-mortems. Ensures all support issues are correctly logged in the Bank incident management system with relevant details (downtime, slowness etc.) and ownership of their resolution. Diagnoses issues: establishes their root cause. Initiates task force over critical incidents. Liaises with upstream and downstream systems support teams as appropriate.
• Application Monitoring and follow up: Monitors application state and input/output data correctness throughout the day, hand-over with follow the sun support teams. Updates the relevant Production KPIs.
• Knowledge Management and Documentation: Owns team knowledge base on wiki for all in-scope applications. Provides support to end-users on how to use the application. Ensures regional support teams are trained as required for a follow-the-sun support model, in particular over new releases. Communicates a daily handover document to Follow-The-Sun support teams, where appropriate.
• Continuous Service Level improvement: Contributes to capacity management of in-scope applications: proactively tracks trends in application behaviour, and alerts Application Production and Development teams of any potential risks in the future. Ensures that all application support logs are fit for purpose, i.e. meaningful and actionable. Actively seeks reduction of dependency on manual interventions by support staff, e.g. leveraging enterprise batch scheduling and enterprise monitoring tools.
• Maintenance and enhancements: Participates in release cycles for functional validation on staging/preproduction and production environments – in particular for logs. Review release and coordinate around deployment/post release checks. Communicates Release Notes to internal users and globally based client service desks. Liaises with the IT development teams to ensure enhancements and bug fixes are prioritised, and completed as appropriate. Takes part in release operations when required (e.g. configuration changes). Participates in DRP and BCP exercises.

IDEAL CANDIDATE PROFILE

• Highly motivated with an ability to learn & master large and complex software systems.
• First class degree from a top university. Mathematical or/and IT background is preferred.
• Candidates with relevant experience in a similar role, the majority of which gained within Front Office Trading will have preference. Experience in providing support as part of a team with practical understanding of the criticality of trading applications will be a plus point.
• The role focuses on a wide range of financial products and technologies. Hence candidates with additional finance background will be desirable.

Skills required

• Good working knowledge of: Any of FX, Rates, Commodities, Syndicate trading, Structured/Derivatives products – pricing, risk.
• SQL Skills: SQL Server, Oracle.
• Python scripting.
• TCP.
• Knowledge of: Windows, UNIX, BMC software (BladeLogic, Middleware and transaction management), Digitec, Market Data mechanisms, Network, Distributed systems, TCP/IP, TIBCO RV, TIBCO Business Works, MQ, Java, C#/.NET, HTTP.

Role-Specific Skills:

• Knowledge of Capital Markets environments.
• Good knowledge on financial services with a focus on Front Office and eCommerce.
• Good functional knowledge on financial products: e.g. Interest Rates, Bonds, FX, Treasury.
• Basic knowledge on systems (Unix, Linux, Windows).
• Good knowledge on Web application servers and portals.
• Good Databases skills - SQL queries writing and analysis.
• Good scripting skills (e.g. Perl, Shell, Python).
• Practical understanding of production processes, including change and release management.
• Good incident and problem management skills, with knowledge of ITIL will be beneficial.

Language Required: English fluent

Personal Attributes:

• Strong problem-solving skills.
• Good interpersonal skills and team player.
• Client-focused, attention to details, ownership and accountability, proactive, desire to learn.
• Available for work during weekends and bank holidays (with appropriate notice) and out of hours in case of production incidents.
• High quality analysis with communication skills, ability to clearly explain technical issues.
• Ability to work under pressure in a changing environment.

WHO WE ARE

Quanteam Group is a Consulting firm specialized in the Capital Markets industry, in Paris, London, Krakow, Brussels, New York and North Africa. Since 2007, our 800 consultants provide major clients (Corporate & Investment Banks, Asset Managers, Hedge Funds, Brokers and Insurance Companies) with expertise in several projects such as Financial Engineering, Quantitative Research, Regulatory Implementation, IT Transformation & Innovation. The firm mainly takes part in: Business consulting: Quantitative research, Risk management (e.g. Market risk, credit risk, counterparty risk), Banking regulations (e.g. Basel III, Solvency II, FATCA, EMIR, MiFID), Pricing & Valuation, Organizational Transformation & Process Improvement. IT & Information systems consulting: Business Analysis, Project Management, Change management, Front Office Support (functional and technical), Development (e.g. C++, Python, C#, Java, VBA), Financial Software (e.g. Sophis, Murex, Summit, Calypso), IT Transformation & Innovation. As part of Quanteam Group, Quanteam UK & PL has today more than 80 consultants, working for major Capital Markets institutions in London and Krakow.