Senior Application Administrator

About Markit
Markit is the leading industry source for asset valuation data and services supporting independent price verification and risk management in global financial and energy markets. Founded in 2001, the company is an independent enterprise with which the world’s leading financial institutions and energy traders work strategically to create price transparency. Today, Markit enjoys the sponsorship of 13 financial institutions who manage assets in excess of $10 trillion, and data contribution relationships with over 50 dealing firms. Markit has designed, launched and acquired over 20 financial data services which are now used by over 300 institutions globally.

Areas of product expertise and service include an independent valuation perspective on OTC derivatives (credit, equity, FX, rates, energy, power, metals and structured products), corporate bonds, syndicated loans, dividend forecasting, and index and ETF management.

Markit has established client relationships with over 350 institutions, including commercial banks, investment banks, hedge funds, asset managers, insurance companies, auditing firms, regulatory agencies, rating agencies and fund administrators.

Markit supports high-value (or influential) academic research into financial issues relating to market transparency and understanding, carried out by recognized universities and accomplished researchers.

Markit’s technology function is centered in Amsterdam. All Markit’s products and services are based on a robust, state-of-the-art Software As a Service platform (the Finance Engine™), powering any type of application requiring market data and related information. Meeting the most stringent performance standards in throughput, speed and reliability, the Finance Engine supports multiple high-availability applications for professionals in financial and corporate institutions around the globe.

Markit is a highly successful company with an innovative and entrepreneurial culture.

About the Operations team
The Operations Team currently provides onsite cover between 06:00 and 19:00 Monday to Friday, on a staggered shift basis, which the candidate is expected to participate in. The working hours are 40 per week, although in practice the successful candidate may be expected to work additional hours, dependant on workload. There will also be regular occasions where weekend scheduled work and support will be required. The candidate would be expected to participate in an overnight/weekend on-call support rotation providing 24x7 coverage.

Professional requirements

3+ years of application support under Unix (preferably Linux and Solaris) platforms
3+ years of system administration of Linux (Debian, Red Hat, Gentoo) and Solaris operating systems
Strong troubleshooting/debugging skills and ability to identify software deficiencies; ability to design and perform structural QA testing of the proprietary applications before launching them in the production environment
Excellent knowledge (experience in installing, configuring and maintaining) of Apache, Resin, JBoss, Tomcat, Bea Weblogic
Experience in installing, configuring and maintaining loadbalancers and clusters, e.g. LVS Linux virtual server
Good working knowledge of Shell, Perl scripting, and Java programming
Understanding of database technologies, particularly Oracle and MS SQL
Good understanding of TCP/IP; basic network administration skills
Knowledge of the monitoring applications, e.g. Nagios is an advantage

Business Competencies

University graduate highly desirable
Exceptional analytical and problem-solving skills
Ability to structure sophisticated problems and trace them back to the root
Understanding of software development procedures and approaches; ability to communicate software flaws and deficiencies back to software development teams
Detail orientated, focused and task driven
Strong inter-personal and communication skills; team player
Excellent verbal and writing skills in English

The successful candidate will be an experienced IT professional with 3+ years of experience with System/Application support, ideally gained in a busy production support environment. She must be self-motivated and responsible. The ability to prioritize under challenging workloads and operation under time constraint is crucial. She must follow established procedures and sufficiently document change and resolution steps.

The candidate will be expected to:

Provide daily support and maintenance of the developed in-house and third party applications
Monitor applications and IT infrastructure availability and performance
Collect debug information enabling development teams to fix identified issues
Perform routine system administration
Participate in the pre-production testing of the applications including creation of the test plans and scenarios
Work in close collaboration with development teams in order to improve supportability and manageability of the applications; lead deployment of new applications in the production environment· Participate in development and deployment of new IT infrastructural solutions; advise other infrastructure teams on requirements of the deployed applications
Create and maintain technical documentation; facilitate creation testing and deployment documentation by development teams

Remuneration

Salary levels are attractive and will depend on experience. Markit offers a range of secondary benefits, including pension plan, stock options, disability insurance, compensation for travels costs, etc.