Application Support Engineer (2926) at The South African National Roads Agency (SANRAL)

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS:

• Information Technology/ Financial Accounting or equivalent at an NQF 6 qualification.
• ITIL v3 or ITIL 4 Foundation.
• Microsoft SQL relevant certification.
• Minimum 5 years’ experience in application support within enterprise or financial transaction environments.

ADVANTAGEOUS:

• Azure Data Engineer Associate
• Oracle Database SQL Certified Associate
• Oracle OCP

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

Operational Maintenance Execution (24/7 Environment) 

• Provide 24/7 end-to-end troubleshooting of business-critical systems (Payment Systems, Web Services, Integrated Transportation Information Systems, Toll Agencies, customer relation manager (CRM) and SANRAL special projects applications, etc.) 
• Analyse application logs, SQL outputs, transaction records, event logs, and configuration settings.
• Diagnose multi-layer failures (frontend, middleware, backend, database, third party integrations).  
• Escalate high priorities issues with structured evidence to 3rd level Engineers/ developers.  
• Monitor failed transaction queues, pending jobs, and stuck processes.  
• Provide operational oversight to TCH units (VAS, Key Account, Core Account, Toll Agencies) and SANRAL special projects.  
• Collaborate with internal and external stakeholders to resolve complex technical issues.  
• Working closely with developers, testers, ERP teams, DBAs, security, network, and server administrators.  
• Engaging external vendors and partners for advanced troubleshooting and system enhancements.
• Providing structured updates to business stakeholders during high-priority or operations-impacting incidents.  
• Translating technical system failures into business impact language.
• Supporting cross-functional integration initiatives and system upgrades.

Payment Systems Support  

• Supporting end-to-end card payment processing, including eCommerce transactions, settlement processing, payment allocation, and error analysis.
• Diagnosing declined or failed payments, including gateway specific error codes, routing issues, validation errors, service unavailability, and integration failures.
• Monitoring payment gateway integrations and escalating anomalies to external vendors and banking partners.  
• Validating daily settlement files and reconciling discrepancies between front end systems and backend settlement databases.  
• Investigating data integrity issues affecting financial transactions.  
• Monitoring transaction queues for failed, pending, or stuck processes.  
• Providing impact analysis during payment outages and communicating financial risk exposure to stakeholders.

Technical Responsibilities   

• SQL, Database & Data Integrity  
• Writing and executing SQL queries to investigate transaction failures, validate application behaviour, extract operational reports, and resolve data inconsistencies.  
• Supporting Oracle and SQL Server environments through session analysis, lock investigations, schema validation, and performance diagnostics.  
• Identifying slow-performing queries and collaborating with DBAs for performance optimisation.  
• Troubleshooting tablespaces, schemas, user roles, access controls, and connectivity issues.  
• Validating payment-related data flows from front-end systems to back-end settlement environments.  
• Identifying incorrect mappings, out-of-sync accounts, and data corruption risks.  
• Escalating complex database anomalies with structured analysis and supporting documentation.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES CONTINUED...

System Integrations & Interface management  

• Monitor and troubleshoot API integrations, web services (REST/SOAP), middleware services, and system-to-system interfaces.
• Validate message queues, transaction payloads, and integration logs for failures or inconsistencies.  
• Validate integration configurations.  
• Collaborate with developers, middleware teams, and external vendors to integrate and resolve interface-related incidents.

Testing & Quality Assurance 

• Execute regression testing after deployments or system fixes.
• Validate data flows, web services behaviour, business rules, and integration endpoints.
• Log defects with detailed evidence, including screenshots, logs, and SQL output.

System Monitoring & Environment Management  

• Monitoring application environments across all SANRAL domains.  
• Performing daily health checks on application services, IIS app pools, web services endpoints, authentication services, and configuration services.  
• Restarting services (IIS, WMSVC, authentication/configuration services) during incidents or scheduled maintenance.  
• Validating environment variables, configuration files, connection strings, and integration parameters.  
• Monitoring backend services, scheduled tasks, and job execution processes.  
• Ensuring generation and validation of key account files before operational deadlines.  
• Identifying performance degradation, memory leaks, service latency, and abnormal system behaviour.  
• Escalating risks before service impact becomes critical.

Reporting & Audit Compliance  

• Generate daily, weekly, and monthly operational reports.
• Providing structured updates to business stakeholders during high-priority incidents.
• Support internal and external audits (ITGC, financial audits, system audits).
• Maintain accurate documentation for system changes, configurations updates, production incidents and RCA findings.

Closing date for applications: 06 April 2026