Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa
With over a decade of experience as an operations and application support specialist, I bring a unique blend of technical proficiency and a deep understanding of global customer service. I am adept at optimizing systems, whether they be teams, processes, or software. My role at BMW South Africa allowed me to install, upgrade, and maintain critical systems across multiple sites, ensuring seamless operations through effective troubleshooting and problem-solving. My technical skills include proficiency in Java, Unix, Shell scripting, SQL and Oracle, all of which are crucial for the responsibilities outlined in your job description, underpinned by change control, ticketing systems and scheduling. I can see the forest, the trees as well as the leaves. Being detail-oriented, I understand that all systems are connected and as such, can be optimized; be it teams, processes, ideas or software. My non-linear, lateral thinking enables me to identify and address both commonalities and differences between systems, ensuring robust and effective solutions. I also scored in the 95th percentile of Crossover's cognitive aptitude test. Having traveled extensively for projects, I have honed my ability to communicate effectively and manage customer expectations, aligning well with your need for a customer-focused technical support lead. Looking forward to the possibility of working together.
Duties & Responsibilities • Responsible for installation, upgrade, maintenance and 24/7 support of PPZ (PruefPlan Zeichnung – Test Plan Imaging), BMW’s quality data manage- ment and reporting system for all non-German plants’ (currently nine) bodyshops. • Central liaison between local and central operational resources, key business users, developers and management. • Ordering, maintenance, upgrades and support of four Oracle databases per plant, two SLES servers and a web instance, including scripting. • Standby and fault finding when the software caused errors and emergency manual steps to keep the line running. (40 seconds is one lost car) • Custom scripts and optimisation per user requests. • Customer relations and support in a global setting, including travelling internationally for projects and workshops. • Testing infrastructure and software after system changes (JIRA test cases and Selenium) • Creation of training material, turtorials and videos on Confluence for new colleagues. Projects • Travelling internationally for major and minor upgrades of PPZ system, projects with other technologies, new plant installations and new car model configurations. • Infrastructure migrations, such as SLES11 to SLES12, Oracle and Apache patches, etc. Main Skills Utilized • Linux, including bash/cron scripting • Oracle, including scripting and scheduling • JIRA, Confluence, various in-house self-service tools
This job role involves supporting the IBM Algorithmics Riskwatch Market Risk engine in a UNIX environment. Main Skills Utilized: • Algo One 4.6.1 and 5.0.0 RiskWatch Suite (Market risk engine) • CA Workload Automation AE (AutoSys Edition) 4.5 and r11.3 (Scheduling agent) • Linux, including bash/cron scripting • Oracle and MSSQL, including scripting and scheduling • iXp Autosys and Algo RW schedulers and dependency managers Duties & Responsibilities • I built and maintained the Market Risk RiskWatch estate for Barclays Africa (ABSA Corporate and Investment Banking). This involved a high volume data batch process with 5 data sources for 13 countries, running 5 instances controlled by scheduling on one server to produce a processed data set of over 1 million instruments producing over 150 extracts. These results were sent to the Reserve Bank, without which the investment bank was not allowed to operate. • I also recruited for the Technology Graduate Programme, conducting campus visits, guest lectures and interviews. • Overnight standby in case the batch process halted and emergency manual steps to meet Reserve Bank deadlines • Liaison with software developers on bugs and new features, as well as installing patches. Projects • Optimisation: Reduced daily runtime from 8 hours to 2.5 hours • Africa: Created instances to onboard trading data for 12 African countries • Algo Upgrade: Rebuilt the estate from Algo One 4.6.1 to 5.0.0 • Regular Business as Usual projects, such as configuring new scenarios, report extracts and input sources/output media.
Product Knowledge: • Microsoft Excel VBA • Data analysis and transformation • Technical PC knowledge
Product Knowledge: • IBM ILOG Cplex • C++ • UNIX Scripting