Application Support Specialist - Windows & SQL
A Leading Financial Services business are looking to hire an Application Support Specialist, with specific knowledge with Windows and SQL.
- £450 - £535 per day (Inside IR35/Umbrella or PAYE only)
- The role is an initial 6 month contract with scope to roll into a couple of years
- The role is a Hybrid working (3 days a week in the office, 2 from home)
- Based in London, City
- Available for regular shift work patterns covering varying shifts (07:30-15:30/08:00-16:00/09:00-17:00/10:00-18:00)
Key things to note
- The suitable candidate will have previous experience in an IT Application support role
- Experience of applying logical and systematic trouble-shooting techniques of application support issues.
Role Overview
An application support analyst working in a team of 11 to provide 2nd level Application support for a range of vendor and internally developed financial applications.
The applications are a mixture of vendor applications, Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions and internally developed applications running in Windows Server environment with MS SQL databases, SSRS & SSIS, both in our own data centre and within Azure cloud. There are around 25+ mission critical applications supporting in excess of 1000 business users (predominantly Investment Managers, Financial Planners, administrators and support staff) together with a larger number of smaller applications supporting specific processes and business functions.
- Experience within Financial organisations or highly pressured support environments is preferred.
- Hybrid working with 3 days a week on-site.
Skills
- CRM (deep dive) application support (mandatory)
- Financial business understanding ideally from working in the financial sector (preferred)
- Experience/knowledge is how messages work and are transmitted
- Knowledge of SWIFT messaging (advantageous)
- Proven track record of Stakeholder management
- End to end application functionality knowledge; be able to demonstrate clear understanding of patterns of business activity, user journeys and application capabilities
- Experience with Microsoft server platform (required)
- SQL (advantageous)
- Willingness to commit to periods of intense incident-resolution
- Willingness to liaise with software vendors to investigate issues/manage upgrades and changes
- Willingness to speak to key business and management stakeholders to resolve issues
- Excellent communication, organisational and interpersonal skills
Role Activities
- Check and monitor correct running of all applications and processes including start/end of business day checks.
- Investigate and resolve application and business issues relating to applications and processes.
- Resolve high priority issues under the direction of senior members of the application support team.
- Develop full understanding of key applications/business functions.
- Develop business or support reports using SQL and SSRS
- Provide training and guidance to 1st line teams and provide additional support to this function when business volumes demand.
- Escalate problems and errors to 3rd line support or vendor
- Check and monitor correct running of all applications and processes including start/end of business day checks.
- Investigate and resolve application and business issues relating to applications and processes.
- Resolve high priority issues under the direction of senior members of the application support team.
- Develop full understanding of key applications/business functions.
- Develop business or support reports using SQL and SSRS
- Provide training and guidance to 1st line teams and provide additional support to this function when business volumes demand.
- Improve and enhance application and system monitoring and alerting.
- Perform application implementations and upgrades.
- Provide support and guidance to projects working on new developments of production systems; run and monitor test environments in support of new releases.
- React to ad-hoc requests from the business when appropriate.
