Principal Application Specialist - Lending/Loan

RK Management Consultants, Inc.; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

RK Management Consultants, Inc. is seeking a Principal Application Specialist - Lending in Chicago to lead a loan application support team and own day-to-day system operations across lending domains.

You will guide change/configuration management, testing, and defect handling for product releases, upgrades and patches while coordinating with business units, IT teams and external partners.

Qualifications

• 10+ years working in a banking/financial services environment with emphasis on applications implementation, testing, maintenance, configuration and support.
• Minimum of 5 years of recent management experience.
• Experience building complex workflows and business process maps.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Expert level experience in FIS core banking, digital/mobile banking platforms, banking-related APIs and microservices, REST, SOA, AWS, ServiceNow, Oracle, JAVA and open source technologies.

Responsibilities

• Handle day-to-day workflow, monitor ticket systems and provide Level 3 support for complex issues.
• Lead acquisition and conversion activities including data mapping, conversion balancing, and implementation of new applications or integrations.
• Support business process improvement and efficiency initiatives.
• Tune and optimize systems for performance.
• Support change management and product/project implementations.
• Provide leadership, mentoring and training, and develop best-practice processes.
• Oversee ownership of technical applications including evaluating new releases and monitoring roadmaps.

Skills

Banking domain knowledge

Leadership

Communication

Business process mapping

Change management

Tools

FIS core banking

Digital & Mobile Banking

APIs & microservices

REST

SOA

AWS

ServiceNow

Oracle

Java

Open Source technologies

Job description

The Principal Application Specialist - Lending is the most senior application support position and serves as a key subject matter expert across the business domains they support. Additionally, this role is the team leader of the IT loan application support team. They are accountable for ensuring the day-to-day operations of the systems under their charge and for supporting and implementing change and configuration management, including testing and defect management relating to new product implementations, development releases, upgrades, patches, and other system maintenance as required. Application Specialists will work closely with Business resources and stakeholders, internal Technology teams, and various vendors and third-party consultants and implementers. They must understand their application’s interdependencies with other applications and infrastructure both internally and outside the corporate network.

Ongoing knowledge of current and changing business and technological environments, trends and strategy is important to success. This position will also support/lead acquisition and conversion activities related to their business domains.

What You’ll Do

• Handling of day-to-day workflow (monitoring ticket system, e-mail, daily tasks, ongoing training) and Level 3 support and troubleshooting of complex issues
• Support/Lead acquisition and conversion activities including data mapping, completion of complex translation tables, reviewing conversion balancing and reconciliation reports, implementation of a new application system, functionality, or integration
• Supporting line of business process improvement and efficiency initiatives
• System tuning and optimization
• Supporting change management and product/project implementation
• Provide leadership, mentoring and training, and develop best practice processes and procedures
• Technical application(s) ownership including evaluation new releases/functionality and monitoring application roadmaps and support bulletins

Qualifications

• 10+ years working in a banking or financial services environment with special emphasis on applications implementation, testing, maintenance, configuration, and support
• Minimum of 5 years of recent management experience
• Experience building complex workflows and business process maps required
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Expert level experience in the following technologies or similar a plus:
• FIS (Fidelity Information Systems) core banking & financial products & services
• Digital and Mobile Banking Platforms
• Strong understanding of loan origination, servicing, documentation or other lending technologies and processes.
• Application Programming Interfaces (API) and micro services technologies
• Representational state transfer (REST) architecture
• Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
• Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• ServiceNow
• Oracle, JAVA and Open Source technologies