Senior Technical Applications Lead

First Financial Bank Texas; Abilene (TX); On-site; USD 110,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

First Financial Bank Texas in Abilene, TX seeks a Senior Technical Application Analyst IV to lead day-to-day oversight of the technical application team. You will direct production support, manage incidents, and coordinate upgrades across enterprise banking apps and integrations.

The role emphasizes RCA, preventive action planning, and mentoring analysts while aligning with ITIL governance and service quality standards. A strong SQL, database, and cloud background is required.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field.
• Advanced-level experience supporting applications and production systems, typically 10+ years in application support, systems support, or technical operations environments.
• Demonstrated senior or lead-level experience coordinating support activities, mentoring analysts, and guiding technical issue resolution across complex application portfolios.
• Relevant certifications are preferred, including ITIL, PMP or CAPM, Security+, database, cloud, or platform-specific certifications aligned to supported systems.
• Expert-level SQL skills, including complex data analysis, query optimization, troubleshooting, reconciliation, and performance review across relational databases.
• Experience supporting enterprise and banking applications, including core banking, loan, deposit, treasury, digital, and integrated business systems.
• Strong working knowledge of application architecture, integration patterns, APIs, middleware, batch processing, scheduling, and multi-tier system dependencies.
• Hands-on experience with enterprise databases and platforms such as PostgreSQL, Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, Java, .NET, and related application ecosystems.
• Experience with messaging and integration technologies such as IBM MQ, RabbitMQ, or similar middleware and event-driven support models.
• Advanced knowledge of monitoring and observability tools such as Splunk, Dynatrace, AppDynamics, Prometheus, Grafana, Wireshark, Lansweeper, or comparable platforms.
• Strong experience leading production incident response, root cause analysis, change coordination, release support, and service restoration activities.
• Strong understanding of ITIL-aligned service management practices, including incident, problem, change, request, and service level management.

Responsibilities

• Provide day-to-day oversight of the technical application team, including work intake, ticket triage, priority setting, escalation handling, support coverage, and execution of daily operational support activities.
• Serve as the senior technical escalation point for critical and high‑impact incidents affecting banking and enterprise applications, integrations, interfaces, and data flows.
• Lead major incident response, root cause analysis, known‑error tracking, and preventive action planning to reduce repeat issues and improve service stability.
• Oversee application health, availability, performance, and defect trends across production environments using monitoring, logging, alerting, and observability tools.
• Coordinate release readiness, deployment support, post‑release validation, and production handoff activities to ensure stable implementations and controlled change execution.
• Lead support activities for application upgrades, conversions, integrations, data mapping, reconciliation, and acquired institution or platform transition efforts.
• Partner with business units and project teams to clarify requirements, assess production support impacts, and align technical support practices with operational priorities.
• Coordinate vendor support, issue escalation, maintenance planning, defect remediation, and service review activities for supported platforms and integrations.
• Ensure adherence to incident, problem, change, release, access, and operational risk management practices consistent with established ITIL and internal governance standards.
• Review and maintain runbooks, support procedures, support diagrams, configuration records, knowledge articles, and technical documentation for the supported portfolio.
• Track and communicate application service risks, recurring issues, support metrics, backlog status, and operational trends to leadership and stakeholders.
• Coach, mentor, and provide technical direction to Technical Application Analysts I–III, including work quality review, knowledge sharing, and onboarding support.
• Support audit, exam, disaster recovery, business continuity, vulnerability remediation, and control evidence activities related to assigned applications and support processes.
• Participate in after-hours support, weekend releases, incident response, and recovery activities when required to maintain production stability and business continuity.

Skills

Advanced SQL

Incident response

Root cause analysis

Monitoring/Observability

ITIL knowledge

Vendor coordination

Cloud environments

PostgreSQL

Oracle

Java/.NET

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology/related field

Tools

Splunk

Dynatrace

AppDynamics

Prometheus

Grafana

IBM MQ

RabbitMQ

Lansweeper

Job description

First Financial Bank Texas in Abilene, TX seeks a Senior Technical Application Analyst IV to lead day-to-day oversight of the technical application team. You will direct production support, manage incidents, and coordinate upgrades across enterprise banking apps and integrations.

The role emphasizes RCA, preventive action planning, and mentoring analysts while aligning with ITIL governance and service quality standards. A strong SQL, database, and cloud background is required.