Application Support Engineer at Rothesay

Rothesay is the UK’s largest pensions insurance specialist, purpose-built to protect pension schemes and their members’ pensions. With over £70 billion of assets under management, we secure the pensions of more than one million people and pay out, on average, approximately £300 million in pension payments each month.

Rothesay is dedicated to providing excellence in customer service alongside prudent underwriting, a conservative investment strategy and the careful management of risk. We are trusted by the pension schemes of some of the UK’s best known companies to provide pension solutions, including Asda, British Airways, Cadbury, the Civil Aviation Authority, the Co-operative Bank, National Grid, Morrisons, the Post Office and telent.

At Rothesay, we are striving to transform our industry. We believe deeply in creating real security for the future and our leadership in finding new and better ways to do that is the key to our success. To do that, we need the very brightest original thinkers to bring creativity as well as rigour. Rothesay is a rewarding place to work, where quality people can thrive and prosper. We pride ourselves on the connections our people build, many of whom have been with us for over ten years

Job title: Application Support Engineer
Reports to:  Head of Application Support
Contract:  Permanent 
SMCR Classification: Conduct staff

Application Support team members work side by side with the firm’s trading, operational, development and business teams; they’re responsible for Rothesay’s core daily technology processes as well as ensuring that all key custom business applications run smoothly. They implement and undertake monitoring of the firm’s technology stack and infrastructure and are also involved in developing and deploying fixes/enhancements to applications and reports.

The team is also assisting with a large multi-year technology project to redevelop and modernize the full software stack which involves re-architecting existing applications to a cloud-based solution.

Role and Responsibilities 

• Provide first and second-line support to the trading, operations, quant and pricing teams that use Rothesay’s in-house developed applications.
• Proactively monitor system performance and critical processes ensuring high-availability and quickly addressing issues as they arise.
• Identify areas for optimisation of applications and processes and implement enhancements.
• Work directly with key stakeholders on projects to implement technical solutions to business problems.
• Collaborate closely with development teams to fix bugs and improve application functionality.
• Build tools and automate tasks to increase efficiency, improve system functionality, and prevent repeated issues.
• Support the company’s extensive batch job processes, analysing and optimising compute usage to ensure critical jobs are completed on time and SLA’s are met
• Maintain and upgrade the firm’s business critical applications and infrastructure.
• Perform incident management and root cause analysis owning incidents from when they are reported to resolution
• Oversee the transition of new applications into application support ensuring complete user documentation, support tools and support guides are in place

Skills and Experience

• Experience: 5+ years production/application support (or similar role) experience within a financial services company.
• Problem-Solving: Exceptional investigative and analytical skills, partnered with deep technical ability to troubleshoot complex technical issues (debugging/stack trace reading/bug fixing).
• Technical Skills:
  • Proficiency in scripting languages (e.g. Python, Shell, PowerShell) to automate tasks and troubleshoot issues.
  • Strong experience writing and debugging applications written in Python or another programming language.
  • Linux/Unix experience.
  • Experience using and troubleshooting REST API’s.
  • Ability to query databases and investigate database issues (MSSQL, PostgreSQL, ClickHouse).
  • Experience using Git and knowledge of CI/CD pipelines.
  • Familiarity using and configuring monitoring and alerting tools (ELK, Grafana or similar).
  • Understanding of deployment and maintenance of cloud environments (AWS or Azure) is a plus.
• Adaptability: Willingness and ability to quickly learn new technologies and business domains.
• Communication: Excellent verbal and written communication skills with the ability to communicate with both non-technical and technical stakeholders. Demonstratable experience working with traders and quantitative analysts is a plus.
• Client Service Orientation: Strong customer service focus including a helpful and collaborative approach to support and a proactive attitude to solving issues.
• Attention to Detail: Meticulous attention to detail with precision in all tasks.
• Finance: Knowledge of fixed income and fixed income derivatives or pensions a plus.

Required qualifications for this role (if any)

Minimum of a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or a related technical field

Disclaimer This position description is intended to describe the duties most frequently performed by an individual in this position. It is not intended to be a complete list of assigned duties, but to describe a position level.  The role shall be performed within a professional office environment. Rothesay has health and safety polices that are available for all workers upon request.  There are no specific health risks associated with the role.

Inclusion Rothesay actively promotes diversity and inclusivity. We know that our success depends on our people and that by nurturing a culture that values difference, we create a stronger, more dynamic business. We welcome applications from all qualified candidates, regardless of race, colour, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability or age.