Are you ready to take on a key role as a Business Application Manager? We are seeking an experienced and dedicated professional to manage our mission-critical business applications. In this vital position, you will ensure the seamless operation, optimization, and lifecycle management of our core applications, working closely with internal teams and external vendors. Your expertise will help drive business value by supporting process owners, overseeing application upgrades, ensuring security, and mitigating risks. Join us and make a lasting impact on our dynamic and fast-paced environment, where your proactive mindset and technical acumen will shine.

Your role:

As a Business Application Manager, you will be responsible for managing the full lifecycle of mission-critical business applications, ensuring optimal performance, regular updates, and effective collaboration with stakeholders. You will provide 2nd-level support, troubleshoot incidents, and lead the coordination of both technical and functional tests. Additionally, you will oversee patching, backups, and disaster recovery plans, ensuring business continuity. You’ll collaborate closely with process owners, vendors, and cross-functional teams to drive improvements, mitigate risks, and deliver value through efficient application management. Your proactive approach will be key in navigating challenges and optimizing application performance in a fast-evolving environment.
Key Responsibilities:

• Provides business mission critical application management for the business applications in scope. Responsible for business application optimization, lifecycle management, regular patching, capacity management and optimization for the stack supporting the application (e.g. databases, middleware, other frameworks).
• Provides 2nd level support acting as primary internal contact for knowledge related to the usage of the application and contacts vendor for external support as needed.
• Participates in projects to support the update of business applications in line with business requirements.
• Prepares the analysis during projects for applications in scope. Optimize the return on investment during the life of own applications in the landscape. Keeps CMDB database complete and correct for own applications and the supporting components in the stack.
• Advises Practice Lead and Process Owners on desired and mandatory application upgrades for continuous improvement, risk mitigations and in pursuit of adding value to our business.
• Defines and conducts smoke tests and technical acceptance tests to ensure that applications in scope meet or exceed specified standards and business requirements. Together with business owner, drafts, revises and approves functional test plans to ensure compliance with change management processes. Coordinates with users and plans user acceptance testing. Ensures that system tests are successfully completed and documented. Maintain a release calendar for application changes and a year plan for application lifecycle.
  
• Is aware of risks and security aspects that arise with changes and proposes solutions to mitigate them in cooperation with third-party vendors.
  
• Supports with his/her knowledge the Identity and Access Management modules for application in scope
  
• Backup and Patching: Validates and monitor the implementation of (Azure) backups and patching policies on own applications stack by managed services partners or other third-party vendors.
  
• Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery: Support Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery documents with knowledge from own application stack
  
• Provides operational and production support: Respond promptly and effectively to application incidents reported by end users. Troubleshoot issues, perform root cause analysis, problem management and implement appropriate solutions to minimize downtime and disruption to business operations.
  
• Training and knowledge sharing: Conduct training sessions to educate end users on own application functionalities, best practices, and new features.
  
• Service management and communication: Utilizes Topdesk and Atlassian to track and prioritize tickets and changes according to the needs of Process Owners. Ensure effective communication and collaboration with stakeholders, keeping them informed of progress, changes, and potential impacts.
  
• Provides control evidence for application management domain in Cerrix.

Who are we looking for?

A colleague open-minded, very curious by nature and passionate about your job. You are not afraid to handle various tasks at the same time and meet tight deadlines. You are thinking proactively and always a step ahead, finding solutions with both internal and external stakeholders. You are a cooperating person who listens and invests in the work & persons to achieve common goals. You must naturally think out of the box and navigate in a fast changing and complex environment by questioning the how & the why.
Skills/Qualifications:

• You possess specific functional business process knowledge for the financial sector, technical hands-on, business analysis and stakeholder management skills.
• You work independently and proactive under the general guidance of the team lead in an Agile environment where unpredictable change and incidents occur. You independently and proactively plan to address day to day demand and projects with a dedicated, analytical and risk-oriented mind-set.
• You coordinate, improve and communicate internally the value supplied by mission – critical business applications while supporting process owners in making their processes more efficient and value adding to the organization.
• You collaborate and communicate effectively with all stakeholders, process owners, application managers and third-party vendors.
• You are able to drive results independently and with other team members, business teams and third-party vendors.
• Excellent problem-solving and troubleshooting abilities. Can-do attitude
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills.
• Ability to work both independently and collaboratively in a team-oriented environment.
• Detail-oriented with a strong focus on quality and accuracy.
• Proactive and self-motivated with the ability to prioritize and manage multiple tasks effectively.

Experience & Knowledge:

• Minimum of 5 years of experience as business (mission-critical) application manager during operations and projects
• Strong hands-on technical experience in an engineering environment or experience of working as a member of a DEVOPS engineering team.
• Strong hands-on knowledge of Linux, Windows, MS SQL, Virtualization, shell programming or scripting.
• Knowledge with management of SAAS and PAAS applications and platforms is a plus.
• Knowledge of Java application servers j Boss / Wildfly, Apache Tomcat.
• Knowledge of banking applications on at least one business area (core banking, document management, payments systems, corporate lending, retail systems, compliance, treasury, finance).
• Knowledge of techniques, infrastructure, tools to be used in (automated) testing.
• Process knowledge of IT Service Management, change and incident management.
• Knowledge of managing networking infrastructure (e.g. firewall, load balancer) is a plus.
• Knowledge of Java, .NET or another programming language is a plus.

Education:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in computer science, Information Technology, or a related field

What we offer.

• Becoming part of a dynamic team in an international working environment.
• 30 vacation days.
• 13th Month.
• 8% holiday payment
• Laptop and Mobile phone.
• Annual extra appreciation payment.
• Pension Plan - Defined contribution scheme
• Collective Health Insurance – discount on additional health insurance.
• Educational budget and access to Coursera trainings

Our organization:

Work at Garanti BBVA International
Garanti BBVA International (“GBI”) is a mid-sized European bank established in Amsterdam, the Netherlands since 1990 and serves to corporate and institutional and retail clientele. GBI is a wholly owned subsidiary of Turkiye Garanti Bankasi A.S. (Garanti) and has presence in Germany, Switzerland and Turkey. Our ultimate parent is BBVA. Aa dynamic “global boutique” bank, Garanti BBVA International offers fast, accurate, innovative, tailor-made and country-specific financial solutions in selected business lines though highly skilled and diverse talent management. We embrace creativity, are centered towards teamwork and oriented to create multicultural environment as we believe this to be a crucial element. Our vision is future-oriented and as a one big team GBI strives for corporate excellence and goal achievement. By joining our organization, you will find yourself constantly challenged and must be prone to apply out-of-the box thinking.
Life at Garanti BBVA International
GBI is a place for people who dream big and make their dream their goal. We look for people who will challenge the status quo in order to grow. We stand as one team, one family and together we are empowered to create our unique path, be agile, be curious and innovative. Strong partnerships ensure our success. Strong teams hold our foundation. We believe that diversity drives innovation and fosters personal development. We aim to create a working environment where employees are able to learn through support and coaching while contributing visibly to the success of bank.
Our Core Values
GBI is part of BBVA, an integrated and innovative financial institution that looks to the future, created with the mission of financing people’s dreams. That spirit continues to inspire us today and encourages us to transform people’s lives by helping them make the best decisions to fulfil their dreams. This mission is underpinned by our Purpose: “To bring the age of opportunity to everyone”. We live these values, which make us strong and allow us to achieve our purpose so we can keep creating opportunities.
Customer Comes First
We see our work from the customer's perspective, as we incorporate their point of view in every decision we make and always put their interests first. We meet our customer's needs in an agile way, overcoming any difficulties that arise.

Think Big
We want to amaze our customers with the best solutions to generate unique experiences. To achieve this, we set ambitious and inspirational challenges for ourselves, while questioning everything we do and posing new ways of doing things.
One Team
We are committed both to our individual role and the company's objectives as our own. We work as one team, trust our colleagues and break silos between units and hierarchical barriers.

Application:

If you are ready to join our team and contribute to the success of company, we encourage you to apply by submitting your resume and a cover letter. You have two options to apply:

• Online Application: Click on the link below to access our online application portal and submit your application.
• Email Application: Alternatively, you can send your application documents (resume and cover letter) directly to hr@garantibank.eu.

We appreciate your interest in our organization and look forward to reviewing your application. Should you have any questions or require further information, please don't hesitate to reach out.
Please note that we do not appreciate any acquisition efforts for this vacancy by recruitment agencies.