Overview
The Apps Support Lead Analyst is a seasoned professional role providing
Level 2 (L2) production support directly to Front and Middle Office users
within Citi Japan's Equities business. This position requires
hands-on trade floor presence , supporting mission-critical trading applications in a
high-pressure, real-time trading environment
where system availability and performance directly impact business revenue.
The role applies in-depth disciplinary knowledge, contributing to the development of new techniques and the improvement of processes and workflows for the area or function. Integrates subject matter and industry expertise within a defined area. Requires in-depth understanding of how areas collectively integrate within the sub-function as well as coordinate and contribute to the objectives of the function and overall business.
Evaluates complex and variable issues with substantial potential impact, where development of an approach/taking of an action involves weighing various alternatives and balancing potentially conflicting situations using multiple sources of information. Requires excellent analytical skills in order to filter, prioritize and validate potentially complex and dynamic material from multiple sources.
Strong communication and diplomacy skills are required, with excellent business-level English proficiency essential and Japanese language ability highly valued.
Regularly assumes informal/formal leadership role within teams. Involved in coaching and training of new recruits. Significant impact in terms of project size, geography, etc. by influencing decisions through advice, counsel and/or facilitating services to others in area of specialization. Work and performance of all teams in the area are directly affected by the performance of the individual.
Responsibilities
Provide Level 2 production support for Equities trading applications, acting as the primary technical escalation point for trading-impacting incidents.
Respond to critical incidents during market hours, executing rapid diagnosis and restoration activities to minimize business disruption.
Maintain hands-on trade floor coverage, delivering direct support to Front/Middle Office users in a high-pressure, real-time environment.
Serve as a key liaison between business users and Technology (development, infrastructure, vendors), ensuring timely triage, escalation, and resolution.
Perform deep technical troubleshooting across applications and environments, including analysis of logs and runtime evidence to identify root cause and remediation paths.
Proactively monitor production using enterprise tooling (e.g., ITRS Geneos) to detect anomalies and prevent outages.
Execute operational routines including start-of-day checks, continuous monitoring, and regional handover to support global coverage.
Support production integrity activities, including same-day risk reconciliations and data consistency validation across trading systems.
Manage change, deployment, and release execution using CI/CD and Change Management controls, including rollback readiness and zero-impact implementation practices.
Drive service stability through post-incident review, problem management input, and continuous improvement initiatives across stability/efficiency/effectiveness.
Develop and maintain support documentation, runbooks, and troubleshooting guides; contribute to operating standards and procedures.
Communicate clearly with stakeholders under pressure, including impact assessment, timely escalation per SLAs, and concise business-facing updates in business-level English (Japanese a plus).
Provide guidance/mentoring to junior analysts; act as an SME and contribute to knowledge transfer across global teams.
Adhere to firm-wide control standards, supporting audit/regulatory responses as required and escalating risks/issues appropriately.
Qualifications
5–10 years’ experience in L2 application production support in a securities/investment bank or financial services trading environment.
Demonstrated experience providing trade floor support to Front/Middle Office users in Equities or capital markets.
Excellent business-level English communication (written/verbal); Japanese language capability desirable.
Proven ability to prioritize and multi-task effectively under extreme time pressure in a real-time trading environment.
Strong diagnostic skills including analysis of application/server logs, GC logs, thread/heap dumps, and traces to identify root cause and mitigations.
Hands-on experience with monitoring/alerting platforms (e.g., ITRS Geneos, Grafana, or equivalents).
Working knowledge of Change Management and deployment practices, including CI/CD pipelines and rollback procedures.
Experience with middleware messaging technologies (IBM MQ, Solace, Kafka, Tibco EMS, or similar).
Familiarity with incident/problem management tooling (e.g., Service Now/JIRA) and structured RCA/problem management.
Domain/platform exposure: OMS/EMS/MO systems; Unix/Linux + SQL troubleshooting; FIX/trading workflow knowledge; development background beneficial.
Experience applying Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices to drive continuous production stability improvements.
Education
Bachelor\'s/University degree; Master\'s degree preferred
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