Application Specialists III - Brackenfell at Shoprite Group of Companies

Purpose of the Job    

The roles primary responsibilities are to independently participate in the coordination of projects requiring functional and specialized knowledge, working in close collaboration with, but not limited to, project teams, functional teams and vendors. This role takes the technical lead in large or complex applications requiring deep specialized knowledge. The role should be able to coordinate testing and perform quality assurance on the data and validate the outcome of the testing. The role is expected to be an expert in several computer programs and data interfaces.

Job Objectives    

• Provide input and guidance to application teams on product demonstrations and report generation on sample analyses
• Manage and ensure effective operation and support by application team of all high availability critical systems
• Manage, plan and review all support to end user by applications team
• Adhering to and ensuring SLA levels are adhered to.
• Manage, conduct and ensure effective system and service performance monitoring and proactive improvement
• Provide input and guidance to application teams and participate in the delivery of quality systems solutions and ensures optimal performance of multiple system applications
• Sets technical direction for all development, maintenance and architecture initiatives ensuring adherence to overall IT architectural and solution direction. Provides application teams with architectural and technical thought leadership
• Ensure that the project and application teams follows established processes and maintains a high quality service and on time delivery of project outputs for the client
• Provide input and guidance to application teams on all applicable development activities
• Act as a technical systems specialist during the selection and deployment and configuration of new highly complex systems in the organization
• Provide guidance to the client on the most suitable solution, ensuring that all recommendations are achievable within the scope of the product and ensures effective user requirement definition and analysis activities & sets expectations appropriately
• Guides and Participates in Proactively identifying and recommending opportunities for delivering new and improving existing solutions to meet the business requirements
• Ensures effective team participation in the implementation of all release changes, creation and implementation of new system requirements in all special projects
• Provide input and guidance to application teams to ensure identification and delivery of system solutions
• Manage and monitor the effective rollout of all new Software, Reports, or functionality
• Ensure familiarity with System capabilities and functionalities to provide the best assistance.
• Keep up to date and ensure that the applications team is kept up to date on System changes and functionality to ensure the feedback they provide stays relevant and are best for the end User and Team.
• Guides and Participates in the process to determine system application impact assessments and architectural solutions
• Manage and ensure effective Incident management individually, in team and in cooperation with other support teams
• Manage and monitor daily occurrences and guide the development of a more permanent solution
• Manage and ensure effective diagnoses of errors and breakdowns and performance of technical support
• Guides and Participates in Tracking of all vendor related issues from discovery to completion
• Provide input and guidance to application teams on the reproduction, resolution, escalation, and reporting on all problems
• Quality Assure, coordinate and ensure effective provision of client input to Product Managers, Business Analysts and Programmers in regards to complex product features and enhancements
• Formulate processes and best practices for users of applications
• Manage and monitor the effective onboarding / offboarding of Users, ensuring Licenses are used optimally.
• Drives the creation of system application roadmaps
• Manage and monitor the effective implementation of new applications within a business area.
• Quality Assure and ensure effective Configure, compile, refine and maintain JIRA dashboards and reporting

Qualifications    

• Matric (essential)
• 3-year IT qualification (essential)
• MS SQL fundamentals (Introduction to SQL) Certification - (essential)
• MS SQL - Querying data with Transact Certification - (essential)
• ITIL 4 Bridge Certification - (essential)
• DevOps principles (desired)
• Relevant Leadership course (desired)

Experience    

• +6 years’ experience as an Application Specialist – (essential)
• Experience in a Retail and or Financial Services industry - (essential)
• Experience in software testing - (essential)
• Experience of working on projects within the Software Development Life Cycle – (essential)
• Change management experience – (essential)
• Experience in cloud solutions – (desirable)

Knowledge and Skills    

• IT Support and Operations knowledge – (essential)
• Advanced working knowledge of MS Office Suite - (essential)
• Advanced working knowledge of different operating systems and Internet technologies - (essential)
• IT Support and Operations knowledge – (essential)
• Working knowledge of different operating systems and Internet technologies - (essential)
• Incident management system knowledge - (essential)
• Exposure to vendor management - (essential)
• Excellent communication skills - (essential)
• Business presentation skills - (essential)
• Exposure to Project Management - (desirable)
• Foundational knowledge of core programming technologies - (desirable)
• Business presentation skills - (desirable)