Summary
In details, the position encompasses duties and responsibilities as follows:


Our Information Technology Department is looking for an Application Support Team Lead who will be responsible for overseeing a team of application support analysts. They will ensure the smooth operation of the business applications, providing technical expertise, troubleshooting issues, and managing workload distribution.

Their responsibilities will also include translating user requirements into technical specifications and liaising with other IT teams or vendors for issue resolution or system enhancements. They will have an important part in maintaining system availability and performance, implementing best practices for application support, and promoting continuous improvement. This role requires a blend of technical proficiency, leadership skills, and a customer-focused approach.

The ideal candidate disposes of:

• Develop the application support team to ensure consistent, high-quality support for our trading, logistics, finance and other back-office applications and interfaces.
• Supervise the day-to-day operations of the application support team, including workload allocation and issue resolution
• Ensure the performance, reliability, and stability of trading applications to meet business requirements.
• Act as the primary escalation point for complex application issues, ensuring timely and effective resolution.
• Establish and enforce best practices for application support, including incident management, documentation, and change control.
• Identify opportunities and drive/implement solutions to streamline current business and /or IT processes related to applications support.
• Identify opportunities and build solutions to improve application reliability, availability, and performance.
• Identify opportunities to streamline current business and /or IT processes outside own domain
• Contribute to the production of appropriate metrics to show production application health
• Work with development teams to ensure applications are developed to be effective and supportable and to ensure transitions to production are smooth and incident free.
• Develop capacity with Application Support area to enable development of enhancements and bug fixes
• Facilitate creation and maintenance of knowledge bases and other documentation to enable effective 1st and 2nd line support without recourse to development teams
• Provide occasional “ad-hoc” reports not available through application software, including management information and audit extracts
• Provide training and guidance to the application support team and other stakeholders.

Skills:

• Technical Expertise: A significant knowledge of energy trading systems, both in-house and third-party applications. Familiarity with various software technologies, databases, and operating systems is also important.
• Leadership Skills: Ability to guide and manage a team effectively, providing clear direction, setting performance standards, and creating a positive and collaborative work environment.
• Problem-Solving Skills: Ability to troubleshoot and resolve complex technical issues quickly and efficiently. This also includes strategic thinking to anticipate potential issues and develop preventive measures.
• Communication Skills: Enhanced written and verbal communication skills are vital for liaising with team members, other departments, and vendors. This includes the ability to explain complex technical concepts in a clear, understandable way.
• Project Management: Proficiency in managing multiple projects simultaneously, with the ability to prioritize tasks based on urgency and business impact
• Customer Service: Strong focus on customer service, with the ability to respect end-users, understand their needs, and ensure these are met to a high standard.
• Experience of working in technical application support role
• Experience of software development including programming, database technologies, version management, build management, testing and deployment
• Advanced communication and presentation skills

• Adaptability: As technology and business needs evolve, the ability to learn quickly and adapt to new systems, processes, and tools is critical.
• Risk Management: Understanding of risk management principles and the ability to implement strategies that mitigate risk in application support.
• Experience of working in technical application support role
• Experience of software development including programming, database technologies, version management, build management, testing and deployment
• Excellent communication and presentation skills
• Presentation skills: Ability to chair meetings and present to business users, IT colleagues and key application stakeholders.
• Degreed educated (or equivalent)