Technical Specialist Practitioner

Job Description

Purpose of the role

To build and maintain infrastructure platforms and products that support applications and data systems, using hardware, software, networks, and cloud computing platforms as required with the aim of ensuring that the infrastructure is reliable, scalable, and secure.  Ensure the reliability, availability, and scalability of the systems, platforms, and technology through the application of software engineering techniques, automation, and best practices in incident response. 

Accountabilities

• Build Engineering:  Development, delivery, and maintenance of high-quality infrastructure solutions to fulfil business requirements ensuring measurable reliability, performance, availability, and ease of use. Including the identification of the appropriate technologies and solutions to meet business, optimisation, and resourcing requirements.
• Incident Management: Monitoring of IT infrastructure and system performance to measure, identify, address, and resolve any potential issues, vulnerabilities, or outages. Use of data to drive down mean time to resolution.
• Automation:  Development and implementation of automated tasks and processes to improve efficiency and reduce manual intervention, utilising software scripting/coding disciplines.
• Security: Implementation of a secure configuration and measures to protect infrastructure against cyber-attacks, vulnerabilities, and other security threats, including protection of hardware, software, and data from unauthorised access.
• Teamwork:  Cross-functional collaboration with product managers, architects, and other engineers to define IT Infrastructure requirements, devise solutions, and ensure seamless integration and alignment with business objectives via a data driven approach.
• Learning: Stay informed of industry technology trends and innovations, and actively contribute to the organization's technology communities to foster a culture of technical excellence and growth.

Assistant Vice President Expectations

• To advise and influence decision making, contribute to policy development and take responsibility for operational effectiveness. Collaborate closely with other functions/ business divisions.
• Lead a team performing complex tasks, using well developed professional knowledge and skills to deliver on work that impacts the whole business function. Set objectives and coach employees in pursuit of those objectives, appraisal of performance relative to objectives and determination of reward outcomes
• If the position has leadership responsibilities, People Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L – Listen and be authentic, E – Energise and inspire, A – Align across the enterprise, D – Develop others.
• OR for an individual contributor, they will lead collaborative assignments and guide team members through structured assignments, identify the need for the inclusion of other areas of specialisation to complete assignments. They will identify new directions for assignments and/ or projects, identifying a combination of cross functional methodologies or practices to meet required outcomes.
• Consult on complex issues; providing advice to People Leaders to support the resolution of escalated issues.
• Identify ways to mitigate risk and developing new policies/procedures in support of the control and governance agenda.
• Take ownership for managing risk and strengthening controls in relation to the work done.
• Perform work that is closely related to that of other areas, which requires understanding of how areas coordinate and contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the organisation sub-function.
• Collaborate with other areas of work, for business aligned support areas to keep up to speed with business activity and the business strategy.
• Engage in complex analysis of data from multiple sources of information, internal and external sources such as procedures and practises (in other areas, teams, companies, etc).to solve problems creatively and effectively.
• Communicate complex information. 'Complex' information could include sensitive information or information that is difficult to communicate because of its content or its audience.
• Influence or convince stakeholders to achieve outcomes.

All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.

Join Barclays as a Technical Specialist Practitioner role, where to build and maintain infrastructure platforms and products that support applications and data systems, using hardware, software, networks, and cloud computing platforms as required with the aim of ensuring that the infrastructure is reliable, scalable, and secure. At Barclays, we don't just anticipate the future - we're creating it.

To be successful in this role, you should have below skills:

• Own end-to-end engineering and operational support for IBM Mainframe Storage, including DASD and Tape environments

• Design, plan, and execute disk and tape upgrades, technology refreshes, and storage migrations (DASD-to-DASD, Tape-to-Tape)

• Manage and enhance storage recovery, disaster recovery readiness, and resilience, including Hyperswap and replication capability

• Perform capacity planning, utilisation analysis, growth forecasting, and storage optimisation using SMF, Dcollect, and performance data

• Act as senior technical escalation for major storage incidents, driving rapid diagnosis, recovery, root cause analysis, and permanent fixes

• Implement and support storage observability and proactive monitoring using OMEGAMON for Storage and related tooling

• Support and maintain DFSMS, DFSMShsm, DFSMSdss, DFSMSrmm, SMS constructs, ACS routines, catalog management, and storage housekeeping

• Drive service stability through proactive risk reduction, automation, and operational improvements

• Produce storage health reports, risk views, capacity insights, and change documentation for stakeholders

• Work closely with z/OS, hardware, network, application, and resilience teams to ensure storage services remain secure, compliant, and highly available

• 10+ years of experience in Mainframe Infrastructure, with strong depth in Mainframe Storage

• Extensive hands-on experience with IBM Disk / DASD, including provisioning, configuration, replication, performance troubleshooting, and migration

• Strong experience managing IBM Tape platforms and enterprise tape operations

• Proven delivery experience with storage upgrades, migrations, recovery testing, and disaster recovery execution

• Strong experience with Hyperswap, Metro Mirror, Global Mirror, CSM, and GDPS technologies

• Demonstrated capability in capacity planning, performance analysis, and storage forecasting

• Hands-on experience with OMEGAMON for Storage for real-time monitoring, alerting, and observability

• Experience handling major production incidents in large-scale, high-availability mainframe environments

• IBM DS8000 / DASD administration

• IBM Tape / VTS / TS7700 technologies

• DFSMS, DFSMShsm, DFSMSdss, DFSMSrmm

• SMS constructs, ACS routines, ISMF

• ICF Catalog, IDCAMS, ICKDSF

• Hyperswap, CSM, GDPS, Metro Mirror, Global Mirror

• Capacity planning, Dcollect and SMF-based analysis

• OMEGAMON for Storage (monitoring, alerting, observability)

• z/OS fundamentals including TSO, ISPF, JCL, VSAM, JES2, REXX

• Experience in banking, financial services, or regulated environments

• Exposure to Brocade FICON / SAN connectivity and remote replication networking

• Experience with storage automation, service reliability engineering, and operational simplification

• Strong documentation and change implementation experience in production mainframe environments

Some other highly valued skills may include below:

• Able to provide 24x7 on call support

• A broad understanding of the business issues facing the Barclays Group as well as having a depth of understanding of a number of business issues and emerging trends in the IT industry   

• Should maintain a detailed understanding and knowledge of how the Bank’s systems, technical architectures and the nature of the work demand portfolio, so that they are fully aware of the impact of their own work on the Bank.

• Good communication skills required, ability to communicate complex concepts to a broad audience

• Ability to summarise and deliver key messages efficiently to senior stakeholders

• Acts as a key contact point for all project related queries including build, testing and implementation

• Leads in the completion of testing for projects and provide technical explanations of findings

• Supports less experienced colleagues through the entire project process from testing through to implementation

• Able to understand and articulate technical issues to a non-Mainframe/non-technical audience

• Provides comprehensive technical verbal updates of project status to team and produce non-technical written updates for project managers and business.

• Represents Mainframe area at project meetings and provide any inputs to help plan projects.

• Own platform stability and service reliability.

• Drive proactive risk identification and mitigation.

• Lead technical troubleshooting during critical incidents.

• Ensure governance, compliance, and operational excellence.

You may be assessed on the key critical skills relevant for success in role, such as risk and controls, change and transformation, business acumen strategic thinking and digital and technology, as well as job-specific technical skills.

This role is based in Chennai office.