Hosting Platform Lead

at  Tokio Marine HCC

Job Title: Hosting Platform Lead
Reporting to: Head of Hosting and Cloud
Position Type: Permanent, 3 days a week onsite, 2 days working from home.
Why Tokio Marine HCC?
Standing still is not an option in the current world of Insurance. TMHCC are one of the world’s leading Specialty Insurers. With deep expertise in our chosen lines of business, our unparalleled track record and a solid balance sheet, TMHCC evaluates and manages risk like no one else in the industry. Looking beyond profit, empowering our people and delivering on our commitments are at the core of our customer values, and so is a desire to grow and provide creative and innovative solutions to our clients.
Job Purpose:
The Hosting Platform Lead role is critical in providing Tokio Marine International’s (TMHCCI) business with a stable and secure hosting platform. The position is responsible for the day-to-day technical management of the IT hosting platform (data centre, servers & storage) and line management of four System Administrators based in London and offshore.
The role will require an experienced platform lead who will own and drive the TMHCCI data centre platform technologies. While also optimising team performance, technical leadership of datacentre platform services, improving processes and procedures (including reactive and proactive environment management), implementing security and vulnerability patches/alerts, supporting audit activities, and supporting disaster recovery tests.
This role will interact with various IT teams across TMHCC subsidiaries with a focus on operational performance, service levels, incident management and problem resolution. The individual must have experience working as part of a global company supporting on-premises data centres and possess a team-first mentality whilst adhering to internal processes with the ability to manage business critical issues.

Key Responsibilities:

• Responsible for the availability, performance & capacity of servers, storage, and backup solutions within the THMCCI. Ensuring that all systems have comprehensive and up-to-date documentation, allowing the team to operate smoothly and preserve knowledge. Facilitating onboarding, compliance, and ongoing improvement.
• Day-to-day technical leadership and line management of a team of System Administrators. Creating team development and training plans to ensure systems can be supported.
• Hands-on technical work with direct oversight over ongoing team workload, projects, implementations, upgrades and time-critical operational issues. Responsible for effective resource utilisation and managing priorities accordingly.
• Manage the vulnerability and security scores for all platform systems. Including owning and managing the patching and vulnerability remediation (using SCCM). Ensuring that best practices are used for the availability and security of THMCCI data centre services.
• Work within an ITIL framework - ensure all changes are fully documented and the release processes are followed. Managing and maintaining knowledge base and system documentation.
• Collaborate on the design and delivery of projects, ensuring solutions are ‘designed for service’ in the Production environment.
• Produce the required reports on the hosting environment. Assist with budget planning and the successful execution of budgets and targets.
• Collaborate to build and manage a disaster recovery plan supporting an overall business continuity program.
• Work with the Head of Hosting and Cloud and the Cloud Platform Lead to create and deliver a vision for hosting services. Enable innovation and seek to leverage IT trends that can create business value.

Performance Objectives:

• Increase speed to market for new lines of business to help grow the business.
• Mature the security stature of the organisation to reduce risk exposure to the business. Remediate vulnerabilities within agreed timescales.
• Understand, stabilise and manage the organisation’s technical debt to improve supportability and reduce vulnerabilities
• Evolve the support capability to increase the stability and resilience of our technology.
• Drive optimisation and efficiencies across the department to deliver higher value.

Skills and Experience Specification:

• Strong communication skills (both written and verbal), with the ability to communicate to all levels of the business (within and outside of IT). Hands-on, collaborative style with a heavy focus on business engagement and a supreme focus on customer service and relationship management.
• Strong knowledge of all aspects of Microsoft Windows Server (including DNS, DHCP, DFS, Networking, PowerShell, etc.) and VMware (including vCentre, ESXi, Aria & vSAN).
• Working knowledge of three-tier architecture for VMware and Storage arrays.
• Experience in process automation to drive optimisation and process improvement.
• Technology management skills: taking responsibility for the design, procurement, installation, upgrading, operation, control, maintenance, and effective use of IT infrastructure components and monitoring their performance.
• ITIL Foundation qualified - with practical knowledge of ITIL processes and implementation.
• Ability to solve complex technical, managerial, or operational problems and evaluate options based on relevant information, resources, well-rounded experience, and knowledge.
• A self-starter/motivator with a proactive and forward-thinking mindset. Always wanting to understand new technologies and offerings.
• Able to mentor others as needed (both technically and professionally) and be able to mediate issues between users, team members or other personnel and subordinates.
• 10 years’ experience working in an IT support function.
• 3-5 years’ experience working in a hosting (data centre, servers & storage) support team.
• 1-2 years’ experience leading and managing a team.

Useful:

• Experience with the following technologies:
• PRTG Network Monitor
• Azure Site Recovery (ASR)
• RedHat Linux.
• Managing geographically dispersed teams.
• Experience creating ServiceNow process flows connecting to external systems (e.g. Azure DevOps Pipelines / GitHub Actions).
• Attention to detail, good analytical and interpersonal skills.
• Ability to recognise and report upward on areas for improved efficiencies and productivity.
• Able to help and guide direct team and other teams across the wider IT department.
• Experience in leading projects

Desirable:

• Knowledge of the Insurance Industry
• Willingness to travel to Houston and Europe if requested.

The successful candidate may be required to occasionally work beyond scheduled hours as needed, providing out-of-hours support in incident situations.
What We Offer
The Tokio Marine HCC Group of Companies offers a competitive salary and employee benefit package. We are a successful, dynamic organisation experiencing rapid growth and seek energetic and confident individuals to join our team of professionals. The Tokio Marine HCC Group of companies is an equal opportunity employer. Please visit www.tmhcc.com for more information about our companies.
The Tokio Marine HCC Group of companies is an equal opportunity employer. Please visit
www.tmhcc.com
for more information about our companies

• Responsible for the availability, performance & capacity of servers, storage, and backup solutions within the THMCCI. Ensuring that all systems have comprehensive and up-to-date documentation, allowing the team to operate smoothly and preserve knowledge. Facilitating onboarding, compliance, and ongoing improvement.
• Day-to-day technical leadership and line management of a team of System Administrators. Creating team development and training plans to ensure systems can be supported.
• Hands-on technical work with direct oversight over ongoing team workload, projects, implementations, upgrades and time-critical operational issues. Responsible for effective resource utilisation and managing priorities accordingly.
• Manage the vulnerability and security scores for all platform systems. Including owning and managing the patching and vulnerability remediation (using SCCM). Ensuring that best practices are used for the availability and security of THMCCI data centre services.
• Work within an ITIL framework - ensure all changes are fully documented and the release processes are followed. Managing and maintaining knowledge base and system documentation.
• Collaborate on the design and delivery of projects, ensuring solutions are ‘designed for service’ in the Production environment.
• Produce the required reports on the hosting environment. Assist with budget planning and the successful execution of budgets and targets.
• Collaborate to build and manage a disaster recovery plan supporting an overall business continuity program.
• Work with the Head of Hosting and Cloud and the Cloud Platform Lead to create and deliver a vision for hosting services. Enable innovation and seek to leverage IT trends that can create business value