Senior Manager, Application Production Support

ITO Application Production Support Lead

FWD Group (1828.HK) is a pan-Asian life and health insurance business that serves approximately 34 million customers across 10 markets. FWD's customer-led and tech-enabled approach aims to deliver innovative propositions, easy-to-understand products and a simpler insurance experience. Established in 2013, the company operates in some of the fastest-growing insurance markets in the world with a vision of changing the way people feel about insurance. FWD Group is listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange under the stock code 1828.

FWD Life Insurance Corporation (FWD Life Philippines) launched its commercial operations in September 2014. As of end-2022, FWD Life Philippines ranks 3rd and 6th in terms of Paid-Up Capital and New Business Annual Premium Equivalent, respectively.

The ITO Application Production Support Lead is responsible for providing technical guidance and mentorship to teams of professionals to ensure the effective and efficient support of various software applications critical to FWD business operations. A leadership role responsible for overseeing and managing application support teams within and outside the ITO Team. Must have at least an intermediate to expert understanding of software development methodologies. Strong track record of building and leading high-performing teams. Strategic thinking and strong problem-solving skills. Excellent communication and interpersonal abilities.

Key Responsibilities:

• Ensure the timely and effective resolution of application-related incidents, problems, and service requests.
• Establish and monitor key performance metrics to measure and improve the performance of the application support teams.
• Help lead solving complex problem and challenges that require the highest competency level as an expert in collaboration with key business stakeholders, within the organization.
• Implement best practices for incident management, problem resolution, and service request fulfillment.
• Ensure that all company policies, security, compliance, audit guidelines are carried out in support delivery.

• Oversee incident and service request resolution and closure, requirements refinement, application technical debt, code quality and testing practices.
• Negotiate and manage service level agreements (SLAs) with other support teams, group counterpart, and vendors to meet business requirements.
• Support and participate in the comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity plans for all managed mission critical applications.

• Continuously evaluate and improve support processes to enhance efficiency and effectiveness.
• Implement relevant frameworks to standardize and optimize application support processes (E.g. coding, testing, defect management and quality assurance).
• Ensure comprehensive documentation of application support processes, procedures and troubleshooting steps.
• Facilitate knowledge transfer within the team and other relevant stakeholders.

• Recruit, train, and mentor application support specialist
• Conduct regular performance reviews, set goals, and provide ongoing feedback to direct reports.
• Foster a culture of continuous learning and development within the team.
• Perform other tasks as may be assigned.

Knowledge and Skills:

• Graduate of any 4-year course preferably B.S Computer Science, B.S. in Information Technology or related field with computer related courses
• Any relevant certification is an advantage: (such as but not limited to)
• PSM, ITIL, Cloud Certifications (AWS/Azure Developer, AWS/Azure practitioner…etc.)

Experience:

• At least 5 years working experience in delivering application support services
• At least 3 years as people manager
• Lean Software Development Lifecycle
• Full adherence and practice of SDLC frameworks
• Problem Solving and Decision Making
• Scrum Master / PMP Certification is an advantage but not required.
• Exposed to Agile Operating model
• Background in AS400 programming, Rea JS/Native, SpringBoot/Cloud, JAVA/CSS/HTML5
• Proficiency in systems integration designs and implementation
• Familiarity in Cloud/DevOps/Automation tools/Collaboration Apps (Jira/Confluence/Teams)
• Hands-on experience in Life insurance system development and implementation