JOB PURPOSE

Primary purpose of the role is to form a crucial analytical part of the Switch operations support team in the production payment environment, leading investigations, initiate deployments, and implementations, and ensuring continuous improvement of preventative and proactive measures to enable system stability.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Technical Support

• Effective resolution of escalated issues via root cause analysis and effective resolution and / or providing concise reporting. Implementation of application software, API’s, component updates and patches.
  Represent the Switch squad in CAB.
• Ensure internal change requests are submitted, deployed, communicated, and followed up on for resolution.
• Provide 3rd line support functions for the payment service environments.
• Ensure production platforms are reviewed periodically for stability, maintenance and housekeeping is performed.
• Identify enhancements to improve supportability, operability, automation, and performance of systems.
• Maintain the internal servers where required and perform day-to-day admin tasks.
• Track and report on incidents.
• Conduct SQL/PostgreSQL scripting and DB maintenance where required.
• Monitor and refine metrics to be used as a baseline for monitoring and alerts.
• Serve as the third point of contact for customers seeking technical assistance.
• Ensure individual incidents are properly investigated, minimising financial and reputational damage.
• Holistically assess customer problems areas to identify trends.
• Escalate an unresolved problem through the internal escalations process to the development staff.
• Follow up and drive escalations.
• Ensure the customer is appropriately informed through the approved channels.
• Manage the incident queue for escalation to the development team where necessary, including triage and re-prioritisation.
• Respond to outages and failures with urgency and priority.
• Improve fault tolerance even when operational conditions are not optimal.
• Ensure the solution is maintainable, and actively seek methods to reduce downtime.
• Ensure the solution is durable so that as user volumes and requirements change the solution can evolve over the long term.
• Ensure the solution simplifies support and maintenance support through traceability, and effective error messaging.

Customer Service

• Provide after-hours support according to a standby schedule.
• Provide resolution for support requests to customers, according to the Service Level Agreement.
  Configure, troubleshoot, isolate, repair, and resolve all customer issues.
• Ensure regular and effective communication of planned and unplanned outages to customers with resolutions within SLA.
• Ensure alerts or escalations to internal teams are resolved timeously and communicated to internal & external stakeholders within SLA.
• Establish and maintain a positive professional relationship with customers.
• Prepare training documentation as and when changes are implemented.
  Adherence to SLA to ensure consistent and predictable service delivery.
• Support tactical and strategic goals of the operations team & Transaction Junction as a whole.
• Provide training and mentoring for support team members, including escalated support requests.
• Build co-operation and overcome barriers to information sharing, communication, and collaboration across the organization.
• Facilitate opportunities to engage and collaborate with external stakeholders to develop joint solutions.

Self-Management

• Set an example through personal quality and productivity standards and ways of working with others.
• Demonstrate consistent application of internal procedures.
• Plan and prioritize, demonstrating abilities to manage competing demands.
• Demonstrate abilities to anticipate and manage change.
• Demonstrate flexibility in balancing achievement of own objectives with abilities to understand and respond to organizational and Squad needs.

Leadership

• Contributes to the team by applying their diverse skills and perspectives to achieve common goals. E.g. consistently emphasizes and advocates for the team’s common goals and priorities. Volunteers promptly to help others and goes the extra mile to ensure the team’s success.
• Coach, counsel and train offline squad, operation manager, and staff to apply, support, sustain and develop a continuous improvement culture.
• Role model behaviour and motivate team members in line with the Transaction Junction values and ethos.
• Guidance of others and active development of self to improve on their technical and communication abilities so that capabilities and deliveries are better understood and thus trusted and applied throughout the business.
• Gaining the confidence and trust of others through honesty, integrity, and authenticity.

Cultivates Innovation

• Creating new and better ways for the organization to be successful.

BEHAVIORAL COMPETENCIES

Customer Focus
Building strong customer relationships and delivering customer-centric solutions

Instils Trust
Gaining the confidence and trust of others through honesty, integrity, and authenticity.

Cultivates Innovation
Creating new and better ways for the organization to be successful.

Collaborates
Building partnerships and working collaboratively with others to meet shared objectives.

Situational Adaptability
Adapting approach and demeanour in real time to match the shifting demands of different situations.

Business Insight
Applies knowledge of business and the marketplace to advance the organization’s goals. E.g. shows considerable business insight, beyond the fundamentals, asks probing questions and draws on a variety of sources to gain insight and to explore business drivers or industry trends.

Manage Complexity
Makes sense of complex, high quantity, and sometimes contradictory information to effectively solve problems. E.g. quickly determine the most critical data and focuses analysis there; recognizes even subtle symptoms that indicate problems; probes deeply for root causes; uses systematic problem-solving methods, well.

Plan and Align
Plans and prioritizes work to meet commitments aligned with organizational goals. E.g. adopts a sequence of activities that allows for optimal efficiency and effective coordination with others. Makes skilful use of resources and support to deliver efficient, high-quality work.

Balances Stakeholders
Anticipates and balances the needs of multiple stakeholders. E.g. draws upon insights from varied sources to gain a rich understanding of how to meet the needs of multiple internal and external stakeholders. Probes deeply in order to gain a rich, detailed grasp of the priorities of different stakeholders. Takes initiative to respond to stakeholder problems.
Drives Results
Consistently achieves results, even under tough circumstances. E.g. devotes considerable effort to surpassing goals and achieving the best possible results; goes above and beyond to achieve excellence. Drives ahead with great focus when faced with obstacles and setbacks. Maintains productivity and a positive attitude. Adapting approach and demeanour in real time to match the shifting demands of different situations.
Ensures Accountability
Holds self and others accountable to meet commitments. Holds self to high standards and consistently honour policies, procedures, and work requirements. Scrupulously ensures all work is accurate. Demonstrate abilities to anticipate and manage change. Demonstrate flexibility, in balancing achievement of own objectives with abilities to understand and respond to organizational and team needs.
Financial Acumen
Interprets and applies key financial indicators to make better business decisions. E.g. swiftly assembles and fluently interprets the financial data and metrics relevant to the role. Draws rich insights from financial and quantitative data.

EDUCATION

• Matric (required)
• Post graduate Degree / Diploma in Information Technology or relevant work experience. (required)
• Microsoft SQL and / PostgreSQL qualification (required)
• Developer software is an advantage.
• Minimum 1-year experience with databases.
• Minimum 1-year server/client-side languages

EXPERIENCE

• Minimum 4-5 years’ experience in similar role in the payments industry. (required)
• Relevant and extensive experience in transactional payment processes. (required)
• Exposure and experience with SQL and basic coding skills (required)
• Experience in ITIL Foundation (advantageous).
• Linux experience (advantageous).
• Cloud base experience (advantageous).
• Strong technical skills (ideally Postilion Application suite, and commercial experience of supporting switching solutions for large, complex end-user organizations).
• Experience of financial transaction processing will be advantageous.
• Exceptional analytical abilities, including the interpretation of large data sets and deciphering the findings logically.
• Action orientated.
• You communicate your actions and intentions clearly – verbally as well as in a written form. Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Excellent problem-solving and attention to detail.
• Ability to multi-task in a deadline-driven environment and show initiative.
• Strong organisational and resourceful capabilities.
• High levels of attention to detail and resilience.
• Exposure and experience with monitoring tools such as Dynatrace/ Elastic/Grafana and Prometheus, Cockroach DB etc. (advantageous).