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...to look after some of our cutting edge solutions for our blue chip clients.

Position	Application Support Consultant Technology Service Delivery Linda Pakuls Primarily Egham, although London Office and Client Site as required.
Department
Reporting to
Location

Application support is organized into pools of expertise and the analyst will be assigned to one. Support is provided to client installations and an analyst may be expected to understand and support several installations.

Application support analyst is responsible for responding to issues escalated by client named contacts when an incident has occurred that impacts service to the client’s users. The level of service offered varies by contract, but is typically level 3, following the standard ITIL problem management process to control the problem, provide work around or quick fix to Incident Management for restore of service, root cause identification and permanent fixes.

The role encompasses the standard ITIL change management, processing corrections from problem management, proactive preventative maintenance and coordinating small works enhancement cycles that evolve the application for the client.

Job level is determined by experience and skills, and the ability of the analyst to identify and resolve the incident within SLA and how much support he/she would require to do that.

Principal Accountabilities

1.    Problem Management

Find the root cause or errors and potential errors and devise corrections and/or work around until a correction can be implemented, within the published SLAs. Keep client informed of progress and record status progress in the problem management log through to closure.

2.    Change Management

Co-ordinate the creation of scope for each evolution of change from the corrective fixes from problem management, proactive improvements to prevent incidents and small works prioritised enhancements from the client, maintaining a balance between the need for change and the potential failures from change.

3.    Release Management

Co-ordinate the release of changes to ensure a reliable production environment delivering high quality services to clients.

4.    New Installations

Manage the handover between project teams and support teams, and learn about new project delivery and client environments as projects deliver solutions.

 Profile

1.     Technology

This varies by the solutions platforms and would currently be one of the 3 key pools of expertise:

Business Intelligence

• ETL, RDBMS, T-SQL, MDX, Data-Modeling
• SQL Server, DTS and Analysis Services (2000),  
• SSIS,  SSAS, SSRS (2005)
• Reporting tools: Proclarity, Panorama, Business Objects, Crystal
• A working knowledge of one or more of the following databases: Oracle, DB2, MySQL or MS SQL Server, together with good SQL skills.
• Understanding of object oriented concepts and UML notation.

Desirable BI knowledge

• Cognos
• Hyperion

Web solutions - .Net

• A working knowledge of one or more of the following relational databases: Oracle (v8 or later), DB2, MySQL or MS SQL Server (v7/2000 or later), together with good SQL skills.
• Understanding of object oriented concepts and UML notation.
• Version control systems such as CVS, Visual SourceSafe, or equivalent

·         Commercial development/support experience of WebForm and WinForm applications on the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 using C#.

·         Commercial development/support experience of applications utilising Biztalk 2004 and Commerce Server 2002 and Internet technologies

·         Knowledge of N-Tier architectures, scalability and integration issues.

Desirable .NET knowledge

·         XML/XSLT.

·         Web Services.

Web solutions – J2EE

·         Solid core Java programming skills – J2SE 1.3.x, 1.4.x and 5.0

·        Experience with J2EE development (1.3 or 1.4) including: EJBs, Servlets, JSPs and JDBC.

·        MVC frameworks such as Struts

·         Web technologies including: Javascript, CSS, HTML, XHTML, XML

• A working knowledge of one or more of the following: BEA WebLogic Server, IBM WebSphere, JBoss, Tomcat or equivalent platform.
• A working knowledge of one or more of the following development tools: JBuilder, Eclipse / WSAD, Netbeans, JDeveloper, or equivalent IDE
• Version control systems such as CVS, Visual SourceSafe, or equivalent
• Project build tools such as Ant and Maven.
• A working knowledge of one or more of the following databases: Oracle, DB2, MySQL or MS SQL Server, together with good SQL skills.
• Understanding of object oriented concepts and UML notation.

Desirable J2EE knowledge

·         Sun Java Certification

• Deployment knowledge for one of the previously detailed J2EE application platforms.

·         XML/XSLT parsers, XPath, XMLBeans

·         Jakarta libraries such as Log4J, Commons, Axis and JUnit

·         JMS and message queues such as IBM's MQ Series or equivalents.

·         Knowledge or experience in integrating J2EE solutions with legacy mainframe systems.

·         Knowledge of J2EE vendor platform suites:  BEA, IBM, or Oracle.

·         Knowledge or experience of Java based commercial e-commerce solutions, e.g. Blue Martini, Interwoven, Broadvision, ATG Dynamo.

·         Experience with developing solutions that incorporate content management systems technology, e.g. Tridion, Interwoven, Blue Martini

·         Hands-on experience with Unix based systems (Solaris, HPUX, BSD, Linux) including Perl and bash scripting

·         Knowledge of object-relational mapping tools an advantage..

2.     Experience                               

• Experience in applications development: 0-2 years for level 1, 3-5 years for level 2, 6-10 years for level 3
• Experience in applications support: 0-2 years for level 1, 3-5 years for level 2, 6-10 years for level 3
• For BI: strong experience in data modeling or data administration. Be able to troubleshoot data mapping and corruption issues.
• ITIL experience and understanding preferable

3.    Skills

• Ability and willingness to learn new technologies, on own initiative.
• Logical approach and excellent problem solving skills.
• Good technical writing and presentation skills an advantage.
• Excellent customer-facing skills.
• Good listening and communication skills.
• Ability to multi-task and prioritise.
• Be able to learn, understand and re-use existing components – which may be developed in-house, purchased or open source.

4.    Culture

• Team player
• A “can-do” attitude.
• Ambitious
• Change agent
• Uses initiative
• Self-motivated
• Pre-pared to travel around UK

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Regards

Michelle & Danni

Conchango UK Recruitment Team