Front Arena Technical Support Lead at Absa South Africa

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Understand the entire Front Arena infrastructure setup, establish relations with business stakeholders and Tech teams across CIB Markets and Digital areas, become the main point of contact for Tech support of Front Arena and Market Risk (FRTB) systems and provide reporting to business about systems stability.
• Contribute to business strategy and drive open actions to completion.
• Schedule and leading meetings to identify product issues, assist with the execution of the roadmap on an ongoing basis and assisting with iterative and daily traction, to achieve Business outcomes.
• Understand Absa CIB Technology landscape, strategic intent, and the role within the broader Absa Technology landscape to meet the needs of key deliverables of the organization.
• Anticipate internal and external factors impacting Front Arena and FRTB applications and implement plans to mitigate risks and capitalize opportunities.
• Manage relationships with external services providers by ongoing engagements with key stakeholders, primarily at senior and executive level.
• Collaborate with the Tech Development, Support, Business and Vendor teams deliver world class Front Arena and Market Risk (FRTB) solutions in South Africa and the Rest of Africa.
• Collaborate with Front Arena and Market Risk (FRTB) consumers to drive new requirements and initiatives from concept through to delivery, including requisite approval processes and post implantation reviews (PIR)
• Ensure strong controls are in place end-to-end and adhered to, including activities related to access, operational processes, legal, compliance and regulatory.
• Responsible for Customer Application Support - Engage L1 & L2 Support, internal & external application users, clients, and vendors on issues and drive incident resolution and ensure ongoing management and support of existing Front Arena and Market Risk (FRTB) Services and associated products.
• Engage and communicate with stakeholders on a regular basis to assess and understand their business requirements.
• Work with the agile delivery team, technical leads, and product management team to build and implement world class technology solutions.
• Ensure all personal developments plan activities are completed within specified time frame.
• Work with Internal and External Auditors where required.
• Create and maintain automation scripts and tools to monitor and support the application.
• Manage and triage application issues, resolving directly or escalating to other teams as necessary.
• Work closely with internal teams and customers in a highly collaborative and communicative environment.
• Support the development and implementation of incident management processes, including tracking, reporting, and insuring timely resolution of issues.
• Write technical documentation and operational procedures for use by other technical support teams.
• Continually improve the monitoring, alerting, and incident remediation procedures.
• Manage and lead the Front Arena and Market Risk teams respectively.

Key critical requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, IT Engineering, or related field, preferred
• Minimum of 5 years of experience in application support, with a strong focus on technical components of Front Arena (ADS, ATS, AMBA, AMB, PACE, APH).
• 8+ years’ Technology experience
• Front Arena Functional experience eg, (Trading Manager, Trade Filters, Query Folders, YieldCurves)
• Proficiency in writing scripts using Bash, Python, ACM, AEL, ADFL.
• Ability to work flexible hours, including shift work and weekend/on-call rotations.
• Hands-on experience with automation tools such as AzureDevOps, Github Actions, Jenkins or similar, preferred.
• Hands-on experience with ticket logging and incident management tools.
• Experience with working in an Agile or DevOps culture will be advantageous.
• Expertise in diagnosing and troubleshooting application issues in a heterogeneous environment.
• Understanding of application integration and architecture.
• Experience in working with Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.