Systems Support Specialist

Job description / Role

Systems Support Specialist - Banking. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Salary - TBC

Key Skills: Banking IT Infrastructure, LAN, SAN, IT Security, Mainframe, UNIX, WINTEL, ITIL, SDLC

Our client who are a significant member of the Middle Eastern banking community have asked us to assist in the hire of a Systems Support Specialist.

Job Purpose:
- To manage and control the effective utilization of hardware and software of operations related to all operating systems or platforms, which includes Mainframe, AIX, Oracle, Storage, Databases, Wintel and Network operations.
- Follows the day-to-day operations to ensure incessant delivery of services, so as to support the applications and business efficiently, with minimum interruption of daily operations.
- Manage the daily operations to ensure systems efficiency and capacity to deliver all daily business services within acceptable KPIs and SLAs
- Evaluate the need for new and revised systems; identifies possible improvements in computer systems and recommend for the purchase of new hardware and software, in coordination with Capacity Management.
- Participate in all RFP and RFQ drafting and responses evaluation.
- Coordinate, plan and supervise the implementation of new hardware and software. Test and monitor the operation of new hardware and software to meet departments' needs.
- Support the Project Management Office to identify projects hardware and software requirements.
- Adhere to the patch management process during the deployment and maintenance of interim software releases, to ensure that all hardware and software are at the most acceptable patching level.
- Ensure effective and continuous monitoring of the efficiency of the operating systems, servers, databases and applications, so as to enhance their reliability and availability.
- Analyse and recommend the most reliable and cost effective solutions.
- Ensure data availability and integrity at any given point of time.
- Develops contingency and data recovery plans, providing the required infrastructure of the systems, so as to enable the protection and availability of data at all times.
- Supports the development of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for the assigned systems and monitors their efficiency and compliance with set targets, so as to facilitate the evaluation of their performance prior to management reporting.
- Identifies any potential malfunction in the operating systems efficiency and proceeds to the implementation of solutions that will restore their efficiency according to banking standards and agreed SLAs.
- Proceeds to the accurate connectivity of the required hardware and devices, so as to enable the effective utilization of systems and applications.
- Ensure that the databases, storage and network resources for all operating systems are accurately secured, monitored and available for all relevant parties.
- Develop and comply to the SLAs set with business for BT services.
- Develop SLAs with solution provider vendors.
- Attend to the alerts/notifications of service outage raised by the BMC Monitoring tool.
- Ensure all related Disaster Recovery testing activities are performed accurately according to predefined process.
- Ensure all related technical documentations are quality developed and well tested.
- Control and manage the resources consumption to comply with the predefined contract requirements.
- Perform yearly software and hardware capacity audit and provide recommendations to control the extra required capacity.
- Manage and control all related incidents, prepare the incident reports, recommend solutions and identify risks and financial loses.

Requirements

Minimum Experience:
- Ten years of relevant experience in IT operations.
- Ten years of various experience in installations, debugging and patching.
- Expert in hardware and software management.
- Expert in datacentre infrastructure requirements.
- Expert in infrastructure systems integration.
- Expert in report generation and provisioning.
- Technical Architecture experience will be an added value.

English: Advanced

Technical Knowledge:
- Thorough knowledge of banking IT infrastructure like LAN, SAN and IT Security equipment.
- Exposure to financial industry compliance requirements imposed by regulatory authorities.
- Advanced technical knowledge of operating platforms including Mainframe, UNIX and Wintel.
- Strong background of hands-on work experience in one of the operating platform.
- Exposure to the operational, monitoring, decision support tools and change control processes.
- Understanding of IT SDLC (Systems Development Life Cycle) process.
- Ability to develop and maintain technical documentation.
- Very good knowledge of the banking operations and requirements.
- Excellent knowledge in IT project co-ordination and project management skills.
- ITIL and Service Management maturity.

About the Company

Deerfoot IT was established in 1997 as a dedicated IT recruitment consultancy. Deerfoot's core discipline is candidate search and selection covering all IT disciplines and technologies. We hold the ISO9001:2008 quality accreditation and are a corporate and specialist technology member of the R.E.C (The Recruitment & Employment Confederation), our industry's trade body.

Our client portfolio includes organisations operating in most industry sectors including: Banking, Insurance, Retail, IT Software, Govt. and Public Sector, Information Management and the Charity sector. Our client base is located throughout the UK.

Our aim is to simply achieve best practice within our chosen discipline as IT Recruiters. Ensuring we always deliver a best value service in an open, honest, responsible and ethical manner.