Application Support Analyst

About Discovery

Discovery’s core purpose is to make people healthier and to enhance and protect their lives. We seek out and invest in exceptional individuals who understand and support our core purpose, and whose own values align with those of Discovery. Our fast-paced and dynamic environment enables smart, self-driven people to be their best. As global thought leaders, Discovery is passionate about innovating in order to not only achieve financial success, but to ignite positive and meaningful change within our society.

About Vitality Group

Vitality Group, a subsidiary of Discovery Limited is responsible for the expansion of the Vitality Shared-Value Insurance business model beyond South Africa and the UK, serving to fully leverage the assets and intellectual property of Discovery beyond its primary markets. The business forms equity or contractual partnerships with leading global insurers to integrate Vitality and shared value with partner’s insurance and financial services products in the markets where they operate. Vitality Group also operates a business providing wellness solutions to employer groups in the United States. Vitality Health International, a business unit within Vitality Group coordinates and focuses on resource allocation to Discovery’s emerging, global health insurance initiatives. Vitality Group is also responsible for Discovery’s 25 percent equity investment in Ping An Health, the largest comprehensive medical insurer in China.

To date, Vitality Group’s businesses jointly reach more than 27 million unique lives across 37 markets (Argentina, Austria, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ecuador, France, Germany, Ghana, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Macao, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Thailand, the United States, Vietnam and Zambia) as well as our primary markets in South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Key Purpose

The Application Support Analyst will support Vitality Group’s systems, applications and services by providing technical support to customers and partners around the world. The Application Support Analyst will drive the resolution of non-major incidents and service requests in accordance with defined Service Level Agreements and Operational Level Agreements. This role requires working flexible hours due to the 24x5 nature of the function. Passive standby during weekends is also required in the event of major incidents. The ideal candidate will have experience supporting systems in production in a cloud based environment.

Areas of responsibility may include but not limited to

• 2nd and 3rd line troubleshooting, application of work arounds and service restoration using available tools, knowledge base and Standard Operating Procedures
• Investigate, debug and troubleshoot code in order to resolve problems and defects.
• Facilitate resolution of Incidents and Service Requests throughout the lifecycles and across various teams within the specified Service Level Agreements/Operational Level Agreements
• Assist with communication, creation, maintenance, scheduling and distribution of reports
• Ensure all incidents logged meet the minimum entry criteria to enable efficient debugging
• Application and verification of known solutions or Standard Operating Procedures to Incidents and Service Requests (e.g. assisting with the restarting of services on request, data fixes, ad-hoc data extracts and query executions, etc.)
• Proactive ticket status updates and escalation/follow ups where applicable
• Verify resolution with end-users and resolve assigned Incidents and Service Requests
• Associate Incidents with other records (i.e. Incidents, Changes, Problems, Knowledge Articles, Known Errors, etc.) in order to provide input for continuous improvement initiatives regarding ticket trends and opportunities for improvement of processes and procedures
• Record and classify received alerts and events and initiate an immediate effort in order to restore a failed IT Service as quickly as possible as per severity classification and associated Service Level Agreements
• Analysis of logs in the error queue and initiating resolution with the respective resolver group
• Evaluation and escalation of Incidents at risk of breaching Service Level Agreement/Operational Level Agreement to the Incident Team Leader/Manager according to the agreed priority and severity of the incident

• Collaborate with other VG work streams to troubleshoot and restore services in the event of outages
• Escalate risks and issues to management timeously depending on severity and impact
• Create and submit knowledge articles
• Provide knowledge transfer and upskilling of direct subordinates, peers and junior analysts
• Available for on-call and emergency response rotation as needed
• Participate in Post-Mortem/Root Cause Analysis after each event to mitigate problem recurrence
• Review records produced by Junior team members and provide recommendations for improvement and enhance processes where applicable.
• Participate in various cross-functional forums and work streams to contribute to the improvement and implementation of policies, frameworks and standards.

Personal Attributes and Skills

• Communicates effectively
• Values Driven
• Optimistic
• Learns on the Fly
• Resilient
• Instils Trust
• People Savvy
• Drives Results
• Problem Solver

Education and Experience

Education:

• BSc in Computer Sciences/ Information Systems or equivalent IT tertiary qualification
• Formal Java Qualification (Advantageous)

Experience:

• More than 3 years’ experience in an Application Service Desk and Development Role
• Customer support experience (Advantageous)
• ITSM Tools (ServiceNow experience Advantageous)
• SDLC experience (Advantageous)

Knowledge:

• Java, SQL, JSON, GIT
• Advantageous: Android, iOS, Liferay, Oracle, Postgres, AWS, webservices, microservices, ServiceNow, Dynatrace, Kibana, PowerBI & REST Clients

EMPLOYMENT EQUITY   
                             
The Company’s approved Employment Equity Plan and Targets will be considered as part of the recruitment process. As an Equal Opportunities employer, we actively encourage and welcome people with various disabilities to apply.