Application Support Manager (SaaS), Charles River Development, Vice President

at  State Street

Company Profile:
Charles River Development (CRD) is a rapidly growing and profitable financial software and services firm operating as part of State Street and integral to the Alpha product set. Customers include the world’s top investment management, wealth management, banking, and insurance firms. Charles River provides an end-to-end SaaS solution automating front and middle office investment management functions across asset classes on a single platform. The solution improves data quality and investment professional productivity, controls risk and lowers technology costs. Charles River serves more than 350 investment firms in over 40 countries in the institutional asset and fund management, private wealth, alternative investments, insurance, banking, and pension markets. Charles River was acquired by State Street in October 2018.
Background:

Core activities and needs are:

• Experienced Manager of support teams, ideally in the front office.
• Basing decisions on data and support process insight, incorporating feedback and client input.
• Good domain experience, ideally front office.
• Providing business/functional support for investment management or trading systems.

Role and Responsibilities:
Reporting to the SaaS Operations and Support Senior Managing Director EMEA, this role is based in our London offices and is key to supporting the growth and complexity of our business.
This is a critical role in ensuring our clients receive first class technical and application support. This team is the owner of many client interactions and impacts the success of relationships with both EMEA and global clients.

The Support manager will work with Global and Regional Heads of Delivery peers across Operations, Support, and projects as well as Relationship management, and must ensure that incidents and support requests are handled quickly, knowledgeably and any necessary escalations are timely. It is also key that this role contributes, and sometimes leads, process improvement initiatives and activities which are essential as we continue to scale.

• Part of the EMEA SaaS and Operations leadership team.
• Management reporting.
• Process Improvement across Support and the wider Operations as appropriate.
• Team Management.
• Leading or governing Incident management/business recovery activities.
• Ensure competent handling complex and challenging application problems (performance and complex functional issues).
• Liaising with multiple other support teams and able to take the lead of incident.
• Mentoring and developing staff, providing career and performance management for the team.

General Requirements

Essential:

• Management experience within a Support Team with a business-critical remit, ideally in Front Office.
• University degree. Preferably in Business/Financial/Economics discipline. Potentially Computer Science/Engineering.
• Exposure to and knowledge of the investment industry ideally from a buy-side perspective – Largely financial Instruments and workflows. Knowledge of major players and trends are a bonus.
• Drive to progress personal knowledge.
• Experienced in dealing with users or clients from both a business and technical perspective.
• Ability to perform under pressure and prioritise tasks and staff appropriately.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Enjoys complex problem solving and investigation.

Highly Desirable:

• Experience with Order Management Systems (OMS).
• Previous application support experience within the Front Office/buy-side.
• Financial certification (CFA L1+, IMC, Claritas Investment Certificate, CISI Investment Operations Certificate, …).
• General understanding of financial services technologies including integration, development, and data management.
• Exposure to supporting SaaS delivery model.
• Business-level European language skills.

Technical.

Essential:

• Exposure to SaaS deployment models: native, CITRIX, and Azure in general.
• Experience with, and understanding of, relational databases preferably Microsoft SQL Server.
• Understanding application architectures, gained from a support or development perspective.
• Exposure to and/or ability to interpret output from technical analysis tools such as SolarWinds.

About State Street
What we do. State Street is one of the largest custodian banks, asset managers and asset intelligence companies in the world. From technology to product innovation we’re making our mark on the financial services industry. For more than two centuries, we’ve been helping our clients safeguard and steward the investments of millions of people. We provide investment servicing, data & analytics, investments research & trading and investment management to institutional clients.
Work, Live and Grow. We make all efforts to create a great work environment. Our benefits packages are competitive and comprehensive. Details vary in locations, but you may expect generous medical care, insurance and savings plans among other perks. You’ll have access to flexible Work Program to help match your needs. And our wealth of development programs and educational support will help you reach your full potential.
Inclusion, Diversity, and Social Responsibility. We truly believe our employees’ diverse backgrounds, experience and perspective are a powerful contributor to creating an inclusive environment where everyone can thrive and reach their maximum potential while adding value to both our organization and our clients. We warmly welcome the candidates of diverse origin, background, ability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity and personality. Another fundamental value at State Street is active engagement with our communities around the world, both as a partner and a leader. You will have tools to help balance your professional and personal life, paid volunteer days, matching gift program and access to employee networks that help you stay connected to what matters to you.
State Street is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer.
Discover more at
www.StateStreet.com/career

• Part of the EMEA SaaS and Operations leadership team.
• Management reporting.
• Process Improvement across Support and the wider Operations as appropriate.
• Team Management.
• Leading or governing Incident management/business recovery activities.
• Ensure competent handling complex and challenging application problems (performance and complex functional issues).
• Liaising with multiple other support teams and able to take the lead of incident.
• Mentoring and developing staff, providing career and performance management for the team