Application Trading Support Engineer-VP

Job Description

Purpose of the role

To effectively monitor and maintain the bank’s critical technology infrastructure and resolve more complex technical issues, whilst minimising disruption to operations. 

Accountabilities

• Provision of technical support for the service management function to resolve more complex issues for a specific client of group of clients. Develop the support model and service offering to improve the service to customers and stakeholders.
• Execution of preventative maintenance tasks on hardware and software and utilisation of monitoring tools/metrics to identify, prevent and address potential issues and ensure optimal performance.
• Maintenance of a knowledge base containing detailed documentation of resolved cases for future reference, self-service opportunities and knowledge sharing.
• Analysis of system logs, error messages and user reports to identify the root causes of hardware, software and network issues, and providing a resolution to these issues by fixing or replacing faulty hardware components, reinstalling software, or applying configuration changes.
• Automation, monitoring enhancements, capacity management, resiliency, business continuity management, front office specific support and stakeholder management.
• Identification and remediation or raising, through appropriate process, of potential service impacting risks and issues.
• Proactively assess support activities implementing automations where appropriate to maintain stability and drive efficiency. Actively tune monitoring tools, thresholds, and alerting to ensure issues are known when they occur.

Vice President Expectations

• To contribute or set strategy, drive requirements and make recommendations for change. Plan resources, budgets, and policies; manage and maintain policies/ processes; deliver continuous improvements and escalate breaches of policies/procedures..
• If managing a team, they define jobs and responsibilities, planning for the department’s future needs and operations, counselling employees on performance and contributing to employee pay decisions/changes. They may also lead a number of specialists to influence the operations of a department, in alignment with strategic as well as tactical priorities, while balancing short and long term goals and ensuring that budgets and schedules meet corporate requirements..
• If the position has leadership responsibilities, People Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L – Listen and be authentic, E – Energise and inspire, A – Align across the enterprise, D – Develop others..
• OR for an individual contributor, they will be a subject matter expert within own discipline and will guide technical direction. They will lead collaborative, multi-year assignments and guide team members through structured assignments, identify the need for the inclusion of other areas of specialisation to complete assignments. They will train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions..
• Advise key stakeholders, including functional leadership teams and senior management on functional and cross functional areas of impact and alignment.
• Manage and mitigate risks through assessment, in support of the control and governance agenda.
• Demonstrate leadership and accountability for managing risk and strengthening controls in relation to the work your team does.
• Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of the organisation functions to contribute to achieving the goals of the business.
• Collaborate with other areas of work, for business aligned support areas to keep up to speed with business activity and the business strategies.
• Create solutions based on sophisticated analytical thought comparing and selecting complex alternatives. In-depth analysis with interpretative thinking will be required to define problems and develop innovative solutions.
• Adopt and include the outcomes of extensive research in problem solving processes.
• Seek out, build and maintain trusting relationships and partnerships with internal and external stakeholders in order to accomplish key business objectives, using influencing and negotiating skills to achieve outcomes.

All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.

The role of Application Trading Support Engineer carries responsibility for the provision of high quality, bespoke support of the Electronic Trading plant which underpins the QPS (Quantitative Prime Services) and Cash Equity businesses. This role encompasses technical support, continuous service improvement, infrastructure architecture and project management. In this role, you will involve liaising with senior leads in Front-Office, Operations, Compliance, and other functions on (amongst other things) Risk and Control, Production Performance, Incident, Problem and Change. You will be expected to ensure stability, supportability and deployment efficiency is delivered as part of the SDLC by working with Development leads, Project Managers and Business analysts. As a key technical contributor, you will involve building and maintaining a culture of operational and technical excellence throughout the team. The role will involve ensuring stability and availability of mission critical, time-sensitive trading systems in a fast-paced environment.

Key Accountabilities

• Provide support for QPS applications and ready to cover early morning APAC hours

• Provide highly visible leadership for major incidents and operational issues impacting the business, including oversight of recovery / resolution, impact assessment / mitigation and post-mortem / action plans.
• Partner with the business and key stakeholders, keeping aligned to business direction, growth and strategic initiatives, whilst influencing decisions that positively impact the stability, quality and efficiency of service.
• Pro-actively improve the quality of systems and service, and increase business value
• Develop specialist knowledge in relevant systems, sharing that knowledge, as required, with global teams.
• Undertake projects as required, including, but not restricted to, the following areas: - capacity and performance management, monitoring initiatives, infrastructure upgrades, web based tools, reporting and documentation
• Ensure that all activities and duties are carried out in full compliance with regulatory requirements, Enterprise Wide Risk Management Framework and internal Barclays Policies and Policy Standards

Essential Skills/Basic Qualifications:

• Degree in an IT, Engineering or Mathematics-related discipline
• Minimum of 8 years of related experience as application trade support engineer providing L1 and L2 support
• Experience in a business facing application support role in Investment Bank
• Strong knowledge of supporting applications on Unix platforms, fluent user of the command line
• Exposure to network connectivity investigation and diagnostics
• Experience of client and exchange connectivity platforms with exposure to exchange APIs and protocols
• Experience Bash/Perl scripting and/or Python/Java programming and with Autosys scheduling

Desirable skills/Preferred Qualifications:

• Knowledge of ITRS Geneos including deployment of netprobes and configuration of enhanced application monitoring.
• Experience with Corvil latency monitoring and configuration, Container management tools such as Docker/Kubernetes
• Proven experience of Equities Electronic Trading in a related front-office application support role within investment banking.
• Exposure to Low Latency environments
• Effective communicator who can demonstrate strong influencing skills
• Track record of delivering continuous service improvement
• Proven ability of high performance under pressure with tight deadlines and challenging constraints