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Position Title:Application Support Specialist (BA4) - 00193220
Duty Station: Kampala, Uganda
Organisation: Barclays Bank UK
Employment Type:Full Time Permanent
Reports to: Head of Regulatory Affairs
Application Deadline:15th January, 2015
About Barclays UK:
Barclays is a British multinational banking and financial services company
headquartered in London. It is a universal bank with operations in retail,
wholesale and investment banking, as well as wealth management,
mortgage
lending and credit cards. It has operations in over 50 countries and
territories and has around 48 million customers. As of 31 December 2011,
Barclays had total assets of US$2.42 trillion, the seventh-largest of any bank
worldwide.
Job Summary:
The Barclays Application Support Specialist will primarily support the
implementation, maintenance, and enhancement of all Applications systems to
enable the use of appropriate Platform technology, as an integral and reliable
component of business process within country. Drive convergence of
Technologies, ensure delivery of technology projects associated with
Applications and liaise and negotiate with internal Customers and technology
vendors.
Key Duties and Responsibilities:
1. Business Support/Capacity/Availability Management 80%
·
Provide holistic technical
support of application availability to Business Users
·
Take actions to achieve
reductions in frequency and duration of incidents that impact application
availability
·
Ensure shortfalls in application
availability are recognized and appropriate corrective actions are identified
and progressed
·
Take action on agreed appropriate
actions with Line Management to maintain or improve application availability
levels
·
Initiate and coordinate actions
required to maintain or improve availability of applications
·
Act as a coordination point for
changes to applications on a need basis
·
Provide a range of application
availability reporting to ensure that agreed levels of availability,
reliability and maintainability are measured and monitored on an ongoing basis
·
Successfully facilitate delivery
of changes to reports needed by the business and ensure that reports and their
dependencies are made available for the business.
·
Maintain and document an
awareness of technology advancements and best practices that support
application availability
·
Amend data anomalies resulting
from system malfunction and service requests upon necessary authorization and
adherence to the standard change process.
·
Define and document e2e User
Acceptance test plans as per function process in accordance with the Business
requirement.
·
To work with all IT managers and
other teams to ensure the testing requirements are fulfilled.
·
Actively participate in system
change/releases/project meetings.
·
Deliver team deliverables in
quality and timely manner.
·
Work with the business team to
identify and resolve operational risks and gaps introduced by changes in the
system to the business.
·
Ensure logging, forwarding and
tracking changes with the relevant Technology and Change teams
·
Work closely with Release
Analysts
·
Regularly review releases and
assign appropriate release testing tasks
·
Conduct installation procedure
tests
·
Actively participate in
functional, performance, and integration testing results
2. IT Rigour
·
Ensure that an operational rigour
culture is firmly embedded through the provision of regular awareness training
and support.
·
Ensure by testing / monitoring
the effective and timely resolution of internal and external audit findings.
·
Work in liaison with Compliance,
Legal, Business Risk, Fraud Investigation, Center Manager and Team Managers to
embed operational rigour, conformance, and share best practice.
·
To carry out snap checks whenever
called upon
3. Team Work:
·
Build and maintain effective
relationships with key players locally (Team Leaders and Testers), ensuring
clear accountabilities for risk, compliance and governance, supporting Team
Leaders in developing their people, maximising their potential, achieving business
goals and feeding into Performance Development measures.
·
Work closely and cross-sectorally
with local country teams, Compliance, Legal, Fraud, and Business Risk teams and
the offshore teams
·
Ensure that all architectures are
signed off by Service Management architect in Service Delivery.
·
Actively participate in existing
and new governance forums e.g. SIDF (Services Infrastructure Design Forum),
TACC (Technical Architecture Control Council), IRPC (Infrastructure Replacement
Council)
·
Sell and motivate the implementation of
service improvement plans/ initiatives.
·
Ensure signoff of Service
Management artefacts by domain architects in the regional office.
·
Establish a mechanism for the
measurement of stakeholders in their adherence to the defined Service
Management principles
·
Participate in the formulation
and clarification of Statements of Requirements, and any subsequent activities
such as Proof of Concepts or product evaluations, by managing, controlling and
supporting the interface role between vendors and other IT departments or
Business units as regards Service Management related technologies and services
·
Participate by leading, managing
and giving the Barclays Technology view and position in the negotiations
between the vendors and Sourcing as regards Service Management related
technologies and services
Qualifications, Skills and Experience:
·
The applicant for the Barclays
Banking Job should hold a degree in Information technology related field (An
additional Business degree to an IT Degree is an added advantage)
·
ITIL v3 Expert
·
Hold Oracle Certification
·
PLSQL
·
At least five years banking
experience
·
At least two years’ experience in
IT exposure
·
Possess good knowledge and
understanding of banking (retail and commercial), core banking applications, IT
Architecture, Change Framework and testing methodologies.
·
An operational perspective and an
understanding of how the testing team fits and contributes to the projects and
the business changes.
·
Hands on knowledge of testing
tools, automated as well as manual testing.
·
Computer literacy skills i.e.
Proficient in “desktop” applications (Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint).
·
Strong management skills.
·
Good project and release
management skills.
·
Strong team ethics. Whether
functional, cross-functional or across different business and country, ability
to create a friendly and focused team environment.
·
Need to multi task in support of
the resolution of complex business problems in different countries.
·
Take full responsibility for own
Performance Development
·
Working knowledge of Retail,
Corporate and all other products offered by Banks and the way they relate to
available systems.
·
Good knowledge of core banking
systems.
·
Good knowledge of the standard
Change Governance Framework
·
Working knowledge of user
acceptance testing and change implementations.
·
Past experience in relationship
management.
·
Working knowledge of working
within a complex matrix management structure to deliver the end business
objective.
·
Policies and Governance knowledge
within the Group and local legislation
Mode of application:
If you feel challenged by any of the above positions, and believe you can
deliver on key deliverables as outlined above, upload your application letter,
current curriculum vitae and photocopies of academic certificate to our
recruitment website detail below:
Barclays is an equal opportunity employer that recruits, develops and
promotes people on merit, and rewards outstanding performance, regardless of
background and gender.
For queries contact us on 0417122453 or
email: barclays.uganda@barclays.com
Deadline: 15th January, 2015
