Key Responsibilities

• Through a positive constructive and consultative approach, the Technical Account Manager must work closely with teams across ION Markets to provide customers with a great experience of ION’s service. The Technical Account Manager is backed up by Implementation, Development and central teams delivering the technical aspects of the service, and is responsible for:
• Ownership and presentation of the overall ION Markets service delivered to the customer and their perception of it, including the delivery of upgrades, maintenance, new services, migrations, change requests and day to day operations.
• Maintaining a solid understanding of the customer’s business, their ION Markets business flows, the markets and data setup, using this knowledge to provide business and functional expertise to the customer so they maximise the benefit from ION Markets services.
• Relationship management with the customer’s business, including head traders, technology, support operations and compliance.
• Management and ownership of the production service to ensure it is delivered to the customer in line with the contract, service definition and where applicable SLAs.  Ensure production issues are resolved, assisting ION Markets teams through the provision of strong business domain expertise to assist in resolution.
• Analysis and documentation of customer requirements to ensure such requirements are clearly understood, together with how the service supports the requirement.  Where enhancements are raised then agreement with the Product Management team(s) to determine if/how they will be progressed or the Service changed.
• Management of the delivery plan to the customer.  On larger, complex or non-standard engagements a Technical Programme Manager will be assigned to manage the technical plan/delivery.  The Technical Programme Manager will work alongside the Technical Account Manager to present the plan and take responsibility for technical delivery activities.
• Management & communication of critical production incidents.  Whilst support will manage critical incidents through to service restoration, the Technical Account Manager should expect to assist using their business domain expertise and customer relationship.  The Technical Account Manager should expect to take the lead with communicating any post mortem activities, explanation and write up.
• Perform regular service reviews against the SLA (where applicable) with the customer in line with standards.  Work with teams to rectify failures against the SLA should they occur.
• Manage multiple customers and deliveries at any one time, working constructively with relevant teams to ensure smooth delivery and drive priorities.  Manage the scope of work and delivery in line with the contract, taking ownership for the delivery, managing dependencies and following up on commitments.
• Own the customer change / RFW planning and prioritisation.
• Ensure effective, consistent and structured communication with customers, including ensuring meetings are documented and actions circulated in line with standards and stored centrally
• Ensure all customer documentation and internal dashboards / workstreams / trackers are maintained to a high consistent standard in a timely manner for management review
• Maintenance and regular review of the customer roadmap, communicating customer direction and service utilisation internally to the Service Line / Product Management teams and their line management.
• Provide expertise in specific service areas to other Technical Account Managers/customers so adoption of these services leverage experience and best practice.
• Contribute to team tasks such as becoming an SME in functional / operational areas and maintaining central sources of information (i.e. SharePoint)
• Develop and maintain strong relationships with other teams including Support, Implementation, Product Management
• Positively represent ION Markets Technical Account Management to other ION teams and customers

Required skills, experience and qualifications

• Strong communication skills across all organisational levels within both ION Markets and customer organisations
• Excellent interpersonal skills, with the ability to develop and maintain strong relationships with customers across multiple disciplines
• Extensive business knowledge in equities and/or derivatives trading with first-hand experience at either financial institutes or technology companies working within the financial markets space
• Any knowledge or experience of ION Markets products and how they support customers with their trading requirements will be viewed positively
• Experience of delivering financial software services to customers and able to demonstrate a consistently high rate of customer satisfaction
• Strong analysis skills, ideally demonstrating an analysis background with the ability to create clear, tangible requirements when analysing complex tasks
• Evidence of (or quickly develop a) good technical understanding of ION Markets applications and architecture, with the ability to confidently explain technical concepts to non-technical staff
• Their ability to recognise when to get involved with customer service issues to either provide support / guidance or take control, and authoritatively manage difficult situations to their conclusion
• Experience in managing business critical production services for customers. The ability to manage and communicate a delivery plan and manage delivery negotiations effectively balancing ION’s and the customer’s objectives
• The ability to manage and deliver to multiple customers simultaneously often with demanding timescales
• Experience of successfully working with challenging customers and with complex business scenarios, demonstrating their own contribution to improve customer perception of the service and customer satisfaction
• The ability to remain calm under pressure particularly when faced with difficult situations, showing a flexible approach and an ability to confidently find a way through such situations
• Strong commercial skills with the ability to identify when requests are outside the service, ensuring chargeable work is accurately managed and reported to Finance
• Strong ownership of their brief, escalating where appropriate whilst still retaining responsibility for resolving issues. A results-oriented approach to service provision
• A positive approach to change; can identify improvements to advance the customer delivery service