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