Application Support Engineer

Vichara is a Financial Services focused products and services firm headquartered in NY and building systems for some of the largest i-banks and hedge funds in the world. Primary Responsibilities - Hands-on day-to-day user application support - Ensuring issues are addressed within specified SLA timeframes - Troubleshooting issues and working with others to ensure root causes are identified and remediated - Establishing and maintaining key relationships with business stakeholders - Communicating with external vendors and Fund Administrators when issues arise - Proactively monitoring system activities (jobs, machine resources etc.) to ensure smooth operation - Identify recurring production support items and executing on recommended automations/validations/health checks to eliminate these issues - Maintaining application, server and environment configurations - Enforcing data, security, application, integration and operational standards and policies - Working closely with the GTS engineering team in transitioning new systems or upgrades to the production environment - Documenting issues and resolutions in Confluence knowledge base Professional Experience - Minimum 4 years of relevant IT experience in customer service or helpdesk/application support required - Strong experience providing end-user/business-facing white glove support - Self-motivated and interested in understanding business user needs to drive efficiency and a culture of continuous improvement - Experience with application administration (monitoring, managing system configuration and working with infrastructure/development teams) - Prior experience in financial services preferred (especially credit & private equity) - Experience working with multiple application and staffing vendors - Excellent communication, collaboration and interpersonal skills - Ability to proactively identify issues and work with delivery teams to mitigate risks - Capable of driving vendors to deliver against goals in difficult situations (limited resources, tight timelines, small budgets) - Understanding of fund and portfolio management business practices and processes, including knowledge of alternative asset fund raising, accounting practices and legal entity/partnership concepts highly desirable