Senior Technical Specialist

This job is with Standard Chartered Bank, an inclusive employer and a member of myGwork – the largest global platform for the LGBTQ+ business community. Please do not contact the recruiter directly.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy

Resiliency

Lead / part of SRE team to enhance application and infrastructure resiliency of service through self-healing and automated failovers - target a 99.9% up-time to customers.

Oversee the planned / unplanned disruption of production infrastructure to ensure accountability for building resilient, always-on systems.

Build resilience into the application so underlying system failures are handled gracefully and do not impact end users. Influence design / development teams to always be thinking of the rainy-day scenarios.

Efficiency

Identify opportunities to eliminate all manual and repeatable activities (toil) via tooling and automation

Reduce the number of repeat incidents by permanently fixing the underlying root cause of issues

Capacity Planning

Develop automated predictive analysis of future capacity needs and drive the proactive upgrade of service capacity well in advance

Using Standard Chartered' s SDI (Software Defined Infrastructure) develop auto-scaling to deliver robust resilience to fluctuations in critical service demand

Continuously monitor service demand / capacity for any discrepancies or spikes

Business

Availability / Reliability

Take responsibility for meeting SLA / XLA expectations around the operability and reliability of our critical user service journeys, where our customers expect a 24x7 digital service offering. Examples of "always on" techniques to be used include caching, circuit breakers, dark and canary releases, store and service patterns and alternate user experience flows.

Lead, own, manage, monitor and optimize the reliability and health of all environments

Design, code, implement break fixes to improve service availability based on outcomes from thematic reviews

Latency & Performance

Drive conversation around development velocity using SLIs / SLOs data to ensure development velocity vs. service reliability is optimized in partnership with Product Teams

Iteratively review SLI / SLO / Error Budget policy to ensure the quantitative indicators of customer experience are accurate

Where an increased focus on reliability is required influence senior stakeholders to ensure resourcing / effort is made available

Processes

Transition to Production

Champion and evolve continuous delivery best practice standards to reduce release related incidents, manual hands-off and achieve our aspiration of "zero ops"

Partner with development teams to ensure applications are designed with scale, resilience, and performance in mind.

Monitoring

Optimize monitoring to reduce false positive alerts

Creatively deepen monitoring capabilities leveraging the 3 tenets of observability - logs, metrics and traces

Ensure all critical user service journeys are traceable end to end

Ensure Production Solutions are fit for purpose. Where gaps are identified put a plan in place to uplift the toolset

People & Talent

Establish and manage SRE team when applicable

Drive efficient target operating model and enhance the existing capabilities of the team.

Lead through example and build the appropriate culture and values.

Ensure the provision of ongoing training and development of people, and ensure that holders of all critical functions are suitably skilled and qualified for their roles ensuring that they have effective supervision in place to mitigate any risks.

Set and monitor job descriptions and objectives for direct reports and provide feedback and rewards in line with their performance against those responsibilities and objectives

Risk Management

Identify key issues in the business areas being supported, and based on this information, put in place appropriate controls and measures to assess, monitor, control & mitigate risks.

Ensure a full understanding of the risk and control environment within Technology Services.

Ensure support procedures are in place and adhere to Group Security & Audit policies within Technology Services.

Active engagement with all audit issues arising in this support environment.

Governance

Responsible for assessing the effectiveness of the governance, oversight and controls and, if necessary, oversee changes in these areas

Awareness and understanding of the regulatory framework, in which the Group operates, and the regulatory requirements and expectations relevant to the role.

Qualifications

Bachelor's degree / master's degree in information technology, Computer Science or equivalent work experience, or combination

Skills and Experience

Understanding of ITIL process

Understanding of SQL queries

Basic Linux Shell Scripting with Bash

Cloud Computing

About Standard Chartered

We're an international bank, nimble enough to act, big enough for impact. For more than 170 years, we've worked to make a positive difference for our clients, communities, and each other. We question the status quo, love a challenge and enjoy finding new opportunities to grow and do better than before. If you're looking for a career with purpose and you want to work for a bank making a difference, we want to hear from you. You can count on us to celebrate your unique talents and we can't wait to see the talents you can bring us.

Our purpose, to drive commerce and prosperity through our unique diversity, together with our brand promise, to be here for good are achieved by how we each live our valued behaviours. When you work with us, you'll see how we value difference and advocate inclusion.

Together we : Do the right thing

and are assertive, challenge one another, and live with integrity, while putting the client at the heart of what we do

Never settle,

continuously striving to improve and innovate, keeping things simple and learning from doing well, and not so well

Are better together,

we can be ourselves, be inclusive, see more good in others, and work collectively to build for the long term

What we offer

In line with our Fair Pay Charter,

we offer a competitive salary and benefits to support your mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing.

Core bank funding for retirement savings, medical and life insurance,

with flexible and voluntary benefits available in some locations.

Time-off

including annual leave, parental / maternity (20 weeks), sabbatical (12 months maximum) and volunteering leave (3 days), along with minimum global standards for annual and public holiday, which is combined to 30 days minimum.

Flexible working

options based around home and office locations, with flexible working patterns.

Proactive wellbeing support

through Unmind, a market-leading digital wellbeing platform, development courses for resilience and other human skills, global Employee Assistance Programme, sick leave, mental health first-aiders and all sorts of self-help toolkits

A continuous learning culture

to support your growth, with opportunities to reskill and upskill and access to physical, virtual and digital learning.

Being part of an inclusive and values driven organisation,

one that embraces and celebrates our unique diversity, across our teams, business functions and geographies - everyone feels respected and can realise their full potential.