IT Operations Executive

iFAST Global Bank is seeking a highly motivated, enthusiastic, and self-starting candidate to join our IT Team as an IT Operations Executive. As an IT Operations Executive, you will have the opportunity to work closely with experienced professionals across various departments, gaining valuable hands-on experience in diverse IT functions. You will be exposed to a wide range of IT projects and responsibilities, allowing you to develop a strong foundation in information technology, continuously learn and grow, and make a significant impact within the organization.

This is a self-directed role in a complex, regulated bank production environment. The jobholder works from objectives rather than detailed instructions. They are trusted to decide the approach, plan and prioritise their own workload, and deliver with minimal supervision. That workload covers production support, incidents, changes, reporting and ad hoc requests. Problems are often non-routine and span several layers: application, database, middleware, infrastructure and cloud. Solving them takes in-depth analysis and sound judgement, not just following existing procedures.

The jobholder is expected to:

• Take full ownership of their work, including deadlines, quality and any commitments made, and see it through to completion without needing to be chased.
• Escalate by exception, bringing options and a recommendation rather than just the problem.
• Anticipate risks and issues before they affect service, and fix root causes rather than symptoms.
• Go beyond the immediate task and the formal remit of the role. This means questioning established ways of working and proactively driving improvements to automation, monitoring, processes and documentation.
• Base decisions on evidence: measure before drawing conclusions and know the numbers behind any recommendation.
• Keep learning and share openly. This means keeping their knowledge current, being honest about what went well and what didn’t, and passing on lessons learned to raise the standard of the wider team.

• Manage application problems / incidents and escalate product queries and bug fixes to the application supplier.
• Coordinate with business application suppliers to develop advanced knowledge of the applications used by the Bank, mainly the Core Banking, middleware and Bank API developments.
• Conduct routine user and system configuration tasks in response to change requests
• Advise on most suitable financial and accounting practices to implement to achieve business objectives.
• Coordinating/Executing daily tasks such as producing regulatory reports, running End of Day processes, data backup, system monitoring, and system-level troubleshooting and remediation.
• Conduct and/or coordinate advanced tasks such as systems integration, new reports development, patch deployment, and system upgrade.
• Coordinate with and manage relationships with systems suppliers.

Relationship Management

• Build relationships with key business sponsors.
• Build relationships with key personnel within external application suppliers.

Busines Analysis

• Responsible for specifying the customisation requirements to meet the business needs and initiatives.
• Prepare business requirements documents and create functional specifications.
• Prepare detailed test specifications based on requirements and possible scenarios
• Ensure best practice and effective IT controls are applied to all aspects of the applications.
• Involvement in disaster recovery testing.

The role regularly involves working under time pressure, particularly during incidents, end-of-day processing and change windows. The jobholder must stay composed and reprioritise quickly as circumstances change. They must coordinate closely with Senior Management, keeping them informed with clear, timely and accurate updates.

The successful candidate will likely possess the following (or equivalent qualifiers):

• Bachelor's degree in IT, Computer Science, or a related field
• Strong knowledge of programming languages such as Java, C++, or Python
• Strong working knowledge of Oracle and SQL Server, including tables, views, packages, stored procedures, functions and triggers, and the ability to write and debug complex SQL.
• Good working knowledge of Linux and Windows operating systems, including writing scripts (e.g. Bash, PowerShell) to automate routine tasks.
• Working knowledge of AWS, infrastructure as code with Terraform, Kubernetes, and CI/CD pipelines using GitHub.
• Good understanding of virtualisation, application clustering and containerisation.
• Good knowledge of integration technologies, including APIs and API gateways, middleware, message queuing (MQ) and SFTP.
• Experience of developing and maintaining financial reports Services (SSRS) and Power BI.
• Good understanding of database performance metrics (e.g. CPU, memory, IOPS, connections, lock waits and query latency) and execution plans, with the ability to identify and resolve slow queries, locking and contention.
• Experience of using Amazon CloudWatch (metrics, logs, alarms and dashboards) for proactive monitoring. This includes setting meaningful alert thresholds, spotting trends before they affect service, and driving performance and cost optimisation.

• Competitive salary of £30K - £35K depending on experience
• 25 days annual leave entitlement plus 8 bank holidays 
• Pension scheme, 4% employer contribution
• Private Medical Insurance 
• 60-40 Hybrid working after successful probation period
• Training and development  
• Free gym access in the building