Platform Applications Support Engineer Job In Manchester

Job Description

Platform & Applications Support Engineer

Location: Guernsey, Haywards Heath or Manchester Salary: up to £42,000 (depending on level of skills) plus excellent benefits package Department: Technology and Data

We’re First Central Insurance & Technology Group (First Central for short), an innovative, market-leading insurance company. We protect the things customers love so they can get on with what matters to them in life.

Data drives us. It fuels our outstanding distribution, finance, technology and legal services. Our underwriting skills are built on data expertise; it creates the insights we need to give the right cover to the right customers at the right price. But, it’s the people inside and outside our business that power us. They make us stand out, help us succeed. We’re ambitious. We’re growing. We’ve won awards.

Fancy making a difference in a company that’s changing insurance for good? If you’re a fast-paced, ambitious team player who gets great things done you’ll fit right in here.

We’re on the lookout for an experienced Platform & Applications Support Engineer. We’re based in Haywards Heath, West Sussex, Salford Quays, Manchester, and Guernsey, w e love working flexibly so you’ll get the opportunity to be office and home based (so living close to Haywards Heath, West Sussex, Salford Quays, Manchester, or Guernsey would be perfect).

As the Platform & Applications Support Engineer you’ll provide 3rd line support in relation to BAU IT application support, supporting the business change function, working with the internal senior team in Platform Support to plan, strategize and deliver continual service improvement.

We’re looking for somebody who’ll provide exceptional standards of support to all customers, supporting a variety of products, services, and platforms. This will be achieved by acting in both a proactive and reactive manner and ensuring that all SLAs are adhered to, and resolutions should be provided in an effective and timely manner. We work and play hard. We mix fast pace with fun. We get things done. Join us and fly.

You’ll be the perfect person for us if: 

• Enjoy working confidently as an individual on tasks as well as being an integral team player.
• Have a great range of technical skills, that includes IT Infrastructure and MySQL.
• Possess a thirst for learning and using new skills and knowledge to drive forward improvements.
• Have a good understanding of Insurance and/or Finance industries.
• Are familiar with Agile ways of working, preferable with experience including working within Azure DevOps.

Job Responsibilities:

• Pro-actively maintain our bespoke Insurance Platform application and associated infrastructure so that it is efficient and stable.
• Log, analyse, triage, and prioritise all IT Incidents, Service Requests, Problems and Changes received via all communication channels into the team.
• Ensure that systems / applications / services in scope of our support exceed business Service Level Agreement (SLA)and KPI targets.
• Analyse Incident, Problem and Change data to identify the root causes and propose resolutions via Service Improvement Plans
• Create and apply solutions to re-occurring Incidents and Requests (Problems) and support upskilling of team members is carried out along with technical documentation to support new solutions.
• Ensure that the team processes and procedures are comprehensive and accurate at all times and stored in a centralised location (KB) for the Platform & Applications team to access at all times.
• Accountable for creating self-service and shift left tools and processes for 1st line support, end users and business teams and therefore reducing demand on frequent requests and incidents within the Platform Support team.
• Display subject matter expert level of knowledge and ownership in area of specialisation, e.g., championing new features and best practice.
• Works with the Platform & Application Support leadership team on Impact Assessments on projects, contributing to Service Design documentations and ensure the project is in scope and in line with IT Service Operations Strategy
• Ensure access and permission levels across the Focus Production environment is relevant for responding, triaging, and resolving requests and incidents.
• Working in collaboration with other IT Ops technical support teams on solutions, document, and roll out across the Platform Support team and continue to drive improvements to solutions.
• Support process and to work closely with internal and external teams to ensure new systems and changes to existing systems are implemented efficiently and on-schedule with minimal impact.
• Ensure all post deployment issues are triaged, logged, and managed to resolution.
• Working with the Change teams to develop and maintain the Operational Acceptance into Service process for change across the platform including integrated and ancillary services and applications.
• Participate in covering the current BAU operational hours (0800-2000) as well as being part of an On Call, Out of Hours support rota based on IT Ops on call requirements and specifics. Occasional out of hours support for business priorities may also be necessary.
• Provide software support by resolving business users queries in their daily use of any supported software.
• To be aware of and ensure compliance with company and other relevant standards/ regulations at all times.
• Technical role model for members of the Platform & Applications Support team, e.g., this will involve technical development through the facilitation of workshops, production of standards, procedures and documentation and running or attending training sessions.
• Support out of hours software upgrades/implementations and testing in conjunction with Business Change, development, and other stakeholders.
• Proactively identify and track risk and issues using the documented processes
• Support and maintain internal team registers to track and resolve problems in working towards improvements across the platforms.
• Support incident and benefit tracking process within the Platform Support team on a frequent basis. Ensuring logs are kept up to date.
• Support and develop the process between Platform Support, TechOps, Service Management in conjunction with the Site Reliability Engineering team (SRE).
• Identify potential change and improvements that will enable further identification of incidents in the Platform for swift resolution to minimise potential impact to the 1st central business (FCIM) and respective customers (policy holders) along with minimising impact to internal end users and prevention of any reputational harm to the organisation.
• Record and classify received incidents and undertake an immediate effort in order to restore a failed IT service as quickly as possible.
• Support first-line investigation and diagnosis of incidents and service requests
• Escalate incidents at risk of breaching SLA or causing significant reputation or financial impact.
• Own all incidents and service requests throughout the lifecycle.
• Identify and own critical controls in the Production platform. Working with key business stakeholders and/or Product Owners to implement controls based on existing services in Production or for upcoming change.
• Monitor the platform and applications using tooling provided, and ensure alerts are acted on and resolved in accordance with SLAs and OLAs.
• Accountable for supressing Incident backlogs owned by Platform & Application Support within the ITSM tool. Ensuring long term solutions are developed for frequent incidents reported by end users.
• Identify and submit change requests for the ITSM tool to continue to support new and current support services provided by Platform Support.
• Own the follow of trends of incidents using tools such as PowerBI and the ITSM tool to aid identification of newly introduced issues within the Focus Platform.

The above statements are intended to describe the nature and level of work being performed within this role. They are not intended to be an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, and tasks. Other similar or additional duties are to be performed or assigned.

Job Specific Competencies:

Qualifications / Experience:

• ITIL Foundation.
• Good experience of enterprise software and application support and delivery.
• Over 5 years IT operations and/or service delivery management.
• Insurance industry experience (desirable).
• Experience in working in a DevOps / TechOps environment.
• Understanding of Site Reliability Engineering processes.
• Some experience preferred 2 years minimum working in or closely within a fast paced and growing IT operational role.

Skills:

• Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written Good technical skills.
• Good time management and organisation skills.
• Analytical and methodical problem-solving skills.
• Excellent technical skills.
• Solid knowledge of Microsoft operating systems including roles and features such as
  • SQL
  • IIS

Desired Knowledge Levels:

• Good understanding enterprise applications such as:
  • Windows Server (2012+)
  • Microsoft Office
  • Insurance Policy & Claims Management Systems
  • CRM Systems (i.e., Microsoft Dynamics, Siskin)
  • AIA (Document generation)
  • SharePoint
  • Atlassian Confluence
  • Working experience of ITSM Tools
  • Azure DevOps
  • Workday
  • PowerBI
  • IIS
  • SQL
  • Kentico
  • Microsoft Azure

Behaviours

• To be self-motivated and have positive, enthusiastic mindset.
• Excellent organisation and proactive approach to workload
• Able to work effectively both individually and within a team.
• An eye for detail and a pride in output
• Can work to own initiative and able to make own decisions where necessary.
• Provides ownership of problems and workload
• Works with the business to identify and drive improvements, contributing to the wider success of the organisation.
• Embrace, embed, and incorporate the company values.
• Own your own development.
• Embrace team, pillar, and organisation culture.
• Willing to challenge the status quo and develop initiatives to improve.
• Good written and oral communication skills and stakeholder management

Want to know more? Simply download the Job Profile. Sounds like you? Then click on Apply.  

What can we do for you?

People first. Always. We’re passionate about our colleagues and know the best people deserve an extraordinary working environment. We owe it to them so that’s what we offer. Our workplaces are energetic, inspirational, supportive. To get a taste of the advantages you’ll enjoy, take a look at all our perks in full here .

Intrigued? Our Talent team can tell you everything you need to know about what we want and what we’re offering, so feel free to get in touch.

We’re happy to discuss flexible working during the recruitment process.

As part of our Women in Finance Charter pledge, we've committed to having 30% of women in leadership roles by the end of 2023.

86% of people would recommend a friend to work at First Central

Simply Health Cash plan. Reclaim the cost of your eye tests, dental, physiotherapy and more

Flexible Bank Holidays

Eight flexible bank holidays; you can choose which festivals you observe

We’re passionate about it. Everyone gets a paid day off annually to volunteer

Electric Car Scheme

Plug into our Electric Car Scheme for a deal with insurance, road tax and servicing

Flexible Working

We’re flexible; most roles let you mix office and home working. We work fluidly around core hours

Your Time in Need

Your Time in Need: five days’ leave so you can deal with life stuff. We’ll support you