Mainframe Application Support Team Leader

The Opportunity: Join our MeTS Settlement and Specialist Services Business Unit as a Mainframe Application Support Team Leader, where you'll lead a dynamic team of on-shore and off-shore professionals supporting critical mainframe systems for the UK Rail Industry. This role offers the opportunity to manage day-to-day operations whilst utilising your own technical skills to deliver enhancements and BAU support tasks as well as develop strategic expertise to drive modernisation initiatives for our key railway customers. This role is a remote working role (Mainland UK based) although there is an expectation that the candidate will attend the monthly team collaboration day in Chester and also be available for occasional visits to customer sites or Worldline sites as required.

Day-to-Day Responsibilities:

• Managing team workload and ensuring that at least 98% of ServiceNOW tickets are handled within SLA requirements.
• Report progress and escalate risks and issues to Specialist Services Operational Team manager and customer stakeholders as required.
• Develop own application knowledge alongside team leading activities in order to contribute to BAU support tasks and also to support strategic initiatives.
• Attend monthly service reviews with customers and represent the team professionally.
• Participate in problem management Root Cause Analysis (RCA) investigations and represent changes at Change Approval Board (CAB) meetings as necessary.
• Perform on-call support as part of rota once familiar with the applications.
• Review test plans and results from team members, ensuring quality delivery.
• Prepare estimates and proposals in response to customer enhancement requests.
• Provide team members with opportunities to discuss their individual performance and career goals through monthly 1:1s and annual performance reviews, all delivered in a psychologically safe manner.
• Provide guidance and mentorship to junior team members on complex technical tasks.
• Encourage team to identify improvements to processes and services in order to reduce recurring incidents, improve customer satisfaction and drive new opportunities.
• Ensure that knowledge of applications is being spread across the team in order to minimise the risk of knowledge loss.
• Positively lead the team’s participation in wider Specialist Services team initiatives for potential application modernization and replacement projects.

Who Are We Looking For: We look for big thinkers. People who can drive positive change, step up and show what's next – people with passion, can-do attitude and a hunger to learn and grow.

Essential skills and behaviours:

• Proven expertise in COBOL (both Batch and CICS) and JCL programming (5 years+).
• Proven experience leading remote teams and managing diverse workforces (2 years+).
• Proven experience of delivering application support to business critical mainframe services in 24*7 SLA-driven environments (5 years+).
• Proven experience of providing on-call support as part of a rota.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in relation to both team and stakeholder management.
• Strong attention to detail.
• Previous experience of capturing user requirements and creating specifications.
• Ability to handle multiple competing issues and prioritise them appropriately (e.g. prioritising incidents based on priority level and SLA timelines, project deliveries etc.).
• Commitment to continuous learning and professional development for both self and team.

Desirable skills and behaviours:

• ITIL Foundation certification (Version 3+).
• Previous experience with using ServiceNOW (or equivalent service management tool) and JIRA/Confluence.
• Previous experience of Mainframe Transformation or Migration projects would be advantageous.
• Knowledge of UK Rail or other Transport sector experience would be advantageous.
• Knowledge of some/all of the following Mainframe technologies would be advantageous: IBM Assembler, ADABAS (using COBOL direct calls), NATURAL, IBM MQ interface development.