Application Support Production Engineer

Our client is a leading and long-established Fintech / Financial Services vendor who counts the world’s leading investment banks and hedge funds amongst their clients. Due to continued organic growth the need has arisen to hire an additional Application Support Production Engineer to complement their existing team. The tech stack consists of Linux, Apache nad MySQL with the core of the system coded in OO Perl. You will be fully trained to understand the bespoke applications and business in depth. You will be working on 2nd and 3rd line support issues, production issues and client integrations tickets, increasing your technical and business skills. You will be able to work with our software’s base code, test and release your code and system changes to Production. The applications delivering the services have significant server based data processing components and a behind-the-scenes data gateway systems. Our services are delivered over the internet, via an interactive user interface. This is a unique opportunity to join a relatively small company at the point where an Application and Production Support Analyst is required to help the team grow more and handle more complicated and advanced production issues and tickets. You will guide and help other Support members to increase their skills and improve the overall performance and knowledge of the team. As the company and client services grow, more and new Products are handed over from Development to Support. You will be responsible for understanding and transferring the knowledge to the rest of the team. For existing products already handed over to Support, you will be responsible for creating any missing documentation, fill out any gaps in the knowledge of these Products and train the other Support member to increase the level of Support the team can currently provide. This role will give you the opportunity to go one step further in your career and become an expert in the Support field, becoming the go to person for production resolution. You will work closely with the development teams to understand in depth the products they have built. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES: Application Support Production Engineer •Be able to investigate and resolve complex level 2 and 3 Production issues impacting internal systems and clients •Work independently, prioritise and handoff if necessary, to other teams •Triage tickets to the rest of the Support team based on complexity •Report common issues, analyse the root cause and prevent them from reoccurring, ideally with minimum interaction from the development team •Responsive on time to internal and external client queries and support level 1,2 and 3 tickets •Enjoy working within a team, taking ownership, guiding the rest of support team •Work independently on boarding of new services for new and existing clients •Updating system configuration across environments •Automate whenever possible •Take initiative, propose solutions, permanently fix recurring issues •Discuss resolution with other team members to increase the knowledge and skills of the team •Suggesting improvements to the production service, team effectiveness and work on making the improvements happen •Use the in house-built monitoring system, understand in depth how it works and work in resolving any issue that may appear •Make improvements to existing alerts or add new alerts by making changes to the monitoring system’s base code and configuration •Identify data in the database or other parts of the system that should be regularly monitored to ensure an uninterrupted service to our clients •Improve the level of support the team can currently provide in currently supported Products •Ensure new Products are handed over to Support efficiently with enough documentation and monitoring •Participate in Client Service and Technology meetings •Handle production incidents and problem management activities related to an incident •Chair incident review meetings, propose action points or discuss with other developers and products owners mutually agreed action points •Follow up on the agreed actions of incidents or even resolve them with minimum help from the development team •Take ownership of various task of the Support team and provide regular updates to the Tech Support Lead •Discuss with the Tech Support Lead possible improvements in day to day work, efficiency and effectiveness •Work closely with the Tech Support Lead and sharing responsibilities whenever necessary •Coordinate regular data centre failover tests, report any issues may appear and ensure they are resolved on time KEY SKILLS / EXPERIENCE REQUIRED: Application Support Production Engineer •Very good Unix/Linux, SQL knowledge to be able to work on daily Production issues •Ability to apply previous support experience in a fast-paced environment •Highly motivated, punctual, organised, responsible •Able to troubleshoot and resolve complex problems •Ability to understand quickly and in depth big complex systems •Able to prioritise and triage support issues and tickets based on complexity •Ability to guide and train the support team and communicate effectively, especially during incidents •Strong communication skills, including the ability to liaise with developers, client service, technical contacts at clients and to provide telephone & e-mail support to end users •Able to gather technical or business knowledge from various development and business teams, document them, understand them in depth and transfer this knowledge to the rest of the Support team •Knowledge of encryption protocols, tools and browser security •Minimum technical training required to be able to support our systems •Self-motivated •Confident contacting clients •Knowledge of file transfer protocols (i.e. FTP/SFTP) •Experience with networking and firewalls •Previous experience in monitoring tools DESIRABLE SKILLS: Application Support Production Engineer •Development experience •Perl programming knowledge •Business knowledge of financial products •Message MQ, Kafka, JVM, Scala Application Support Production Engineer