Technology Application Services Manager

Purpose of the role:

The Technology Application Services Manager is accountable for the architectural integrity, operational support, service continuity, and long-term health of the Bank's business applications. The role owns portfolio rationalization, internal application support, vendor-provided support, vendor management, and leadership of the Application Services team.

B. ROLE ACCOUNTABILITIES

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Application Ownership & Solution Architecture

• Own solution design and architecture across the Bank's business applications estate.
• Hold design authority and provide sign-off on proposed solutions, upgrades, and customizations.
• Define and enforce integration and API standards across the portfolio, maintaining architectural coherence between systems.
• Partner with the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Lead and Delivery Leads on cross-domain initiatives.

Portfolio Health & Rationalization

• Maintain an ongoing view of the applications portfolio's health, identifying underperforming systems, technical debt, and enhancement, upgrade, or replacement requirements.
• Translate findings into recommendations that feed budget and roadmap planning.

Deployment, Release & Quality Management

• Establish and maintain a DevOps methodology and toolset spanning version control and build management.
• Hold vendors accountable for build and release quality.
• Ensure application health monitoring and operational support controls are in place, with accountability for uptime, incident rates, support performance, and service improvement across the estate.

Application Support & Vendor Management

• Own the end-to-end application support model across the estate, covering support delivered internally by the Application Services team and support provided by vendors or other third parties.
• Ensure incidents, service requests, recurring problems, and user issues are triaged, investigated, resolved, escalated, and communicated in line with agreed service levels.
• Act as the senior escalation point for application support issues, coordinating internal technical resources and vendors through to resolution and ensuring root-cause analysis and corrective actions are completed.
• Manage vendor-provided support, including support agreements, SLAs, service performance, escalations, and value for money.

Budget & Portfolio Planning

• Own the annual applications budget, linking funding requirements to portfolio rationalization findings.

Delivery Support

• Provide technical input and estimates during planning.
• Ensure environments, builds and integration points are ready ahead of milestones.
• Ensure quality gates are met before release.

People Leadership

• Manage, develop and lead the Application Services team.
• Own hiring input, performance management and development planning.
• Establish cross-training to reduce key-man dependency.
• Foster technical excellence and ownership.

C. KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS (KPI)

To measure and monitor the performance of the role in the context of the Section/Department's activities

• System uptime & incident rates (estate-wide)
• Architecture standards adherence
• Portfolio health & rationalization
• Internal and vendor-provided application support performance
• Vendor performance, SLA compliance & cost
• Portfolio & budget management
• Team capability & engagement

D. EXPERIENCE, QUALIFICATIONS & SKILLS

Minimum Experience & Essential Knowledge

• 15 years progressive experience in Information Technology, with at least 5 years in a people leadership / team lead capacity
• Financial services background in a similar environment (investment management, core banking, or private wealth) in a lead capacity is a mandatory requirement
• Experience within a bank, investment firm, or other regulated financial services environment
• Expertise across core banking, CRM/ERP, integration/middleware, and investment management platforms desirable (e.g. T24/Temenos, Microsoft Dynamics)
• Proven experience in solution architecture and integration/API design across enterprise applications
• Experience establishing and maturing DevOps practices, including deployment governance and release management
• Experience leading internal application support operations and managing vendor-provided support, including incident, problem, request, escalation, and SLA management

Minimum Entry Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related discipline

Certifications desirable:

• Temenos T24 certification
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 certification
• TOGAF
• ITIL Foundation
• Azure/cloud DevOps certification