Senior Systems Applications Administrator

Job Summary

Acts as primary support and central point of contact on large or multiple systems with significant impact across the firm. Extensive contact with internal customers, other technology professionals, and vendors is required to identify, research, analyze, and resolve system issues and problems. Is able to integrate domain knowledge with an understanding of financial services standards and practices. Is the primary on complex or escalated issues and may provide direction and guidance to junior team members. Applies specialized business knowledge and technical skills to significant deliverables and projects that involve multiple IT departments, business units and have enterprise impact. Handles complex problems independently and demonstrates analytical thinking. Is able to make judgements and recommendations based on the analysis and interpretation of data.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Manages and maintains complex systems.
• Performs implementations and upgrades in compliance with security guidelines.
• Ensures availability, security and integrity of assigned systems.
• Monitors systems, including setting alerts to maintain the stability of the environment and monitoring error logs. Troubleshoots or escalates issues as needed.
• Evaluates and identifies ways to automate, streamline, and improve day-to-day maintenance and administrative practices.
• Installs or coordinates installation of patches and releases on development, test, pre-production, and production systems.
• Ensures adherence to Service Level Agreements regarding application availability.
• Serves as central point of contact and as a liaison to other IT departments and vendors regarding installations, server maintenance, licensing and upgrade issues.
• Effectively manages communication between end users, vendors, and IT departments to solve production, pre-production, test, and t environment problems quickly.
• Creates and maintains accurate system run book for assigned systems.
• Maintains current description and documentation of application configuration, including tracking and documenting any changes to environments.
• Assists in capacity planning, performance monitoring and tuning on assigned systems.
• Participates in business continuity and disaster recovery planning, including assisting with fault tolerance and disaster recovery plans.
• Performs other duties and responsibilities as assigned.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

Knowledge of

• Advanced knowledge of the following:
• Concepts, principles and practices of systems administration.
• Application and web technologies.
• Monitoring tools to ensure required availability of assigned systems.
• Active Directory and DNS.
• Backup and recovery technologies.
• Virtualization concepts and technologies.
• Network and security concepts and technologies.

Skill in

• Identify and understand issues, problems and opportunities; compare data from different sources to draw conclusions.
• Clearly convey information and ideas through a variety of media to individuals or groups in a manner that engages the audience and helps them understand and retain the message.
• Use effective approaches for choosing a course of action or developing appropriate solutions; recommend or take action that is consistent with available facts, constraints and probable consequences.
• Demonstrate a satisfactory level of technical and professional skill or knowledge in position-related areas; remains current with developments and trends in areas of expertise.
• Develop and use collaborative relationships to facilitate the accomplishment of work goals.
• Make internal and external clients and their needs a primary focus of actions; develop and sustain productive client relationships.
• Occasionally work a non-standard shift including nights and/or weekends and/or have on-call responsibilities.

Educational/Previous Experience Requirements

Education/Previous Experience

• Minimum of a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, MIS or related degree and three (3) years of relevant experience in systems or application administration or combination of education, training and experience.

Licenses/Certifications

• None required