Application Administrator

Application Administrator

Position Summary

The Application Administrator plays a critical role in ensuring the availability, stability, performance, and security of business-critical applications that support essential business operations and customer-facing services. This position is responsible for maintaining highly reliable application environments, proactively monitoring system health, troubleshooting and resolving issues, and minimizing operational disruptions.

The successful candidate will serve as a technical expert for assigned applications, performing root cause analysis of incidents and developing permanent corrective and preventative measures to eliminate recurrence. This role partners closely with infrastructure, development, database, security, and business teams to ensure applications remain resilient, performant, secure, and aligned with business objectives. A key responsibility is ensuring proper application monitoring and observability are implemented using Fiserv-approved monitoring tools, standards, and operational frameworks.

Duties & Responsibilities  

Application Support & Operations

• Provide Level 2 and Level 3 technical support for business-critical applications, diagnosing and resolving complex application issues in a timely manner.

• Monitor application health, availability, and performance to ensure continuous service delivery and adherence to service level objectives.

• Troubleshoot applications, infrastructure, database, network, and integration-related issues across enterprise environments.

• Participate in incident, problem, and change management activities, including after-hours support and on-call rotation responsibilities as required.

• Coordinate with vendors, development teams, and infrastructure teams to resolve production issues.

Performance, Stability & Reliability

• Maintain, tune, and optimize applications to maximize performance, scalability, and system reliability.

• Conduct capacity planning and performance analysis to support business growth and evolving workload demands.

• Analyze recurring incidents and operational trends to identify root causes and implement long-term corrective actions.

• Develop and implement preventative measures that improve application resiliency and reduce operational risk.

• Support disaster recovery testing and business continuity initiatives for assigned applications.

Monitoring & Automation

• Ensure comprehensive monitoring, alerting, and observability are implemented for critical application functions using Fiserv-standard monitoring tools and frameworks.

• Develop meaningful alerting thresholds, dashboards, and reporting mechanisms that provide actionable operational insights.

• Create and maintain application support playbooks, troubleshooting guides, disaster recovery procedures, and operational runbooks.

• Identify opportunities to automate routine operational tasks, monitoring activities, and remediation processes through self-healing capabilities and scripting solutions.

Security & Compliance

• Review, implement, and maintain application security controls, including patch management, authentication mechanisms, vulnerability remediation, and access controls.

• Partner with Information Security teams to assess and mitigate application security risks.

• Ensure applications remain compliant with corporate security standards, regulatory requirements, and audit controls.

• Support periodic security reviews, penetration testing activities, and vulnerability remediation efforts.

Documentation & Collaboration

• Create and maintain technical documentation including architecture diagrams, network flows, installation procedures, operational runbooks, and troubleshooting guides.

• Document incident findings, root cause analyses (RCAs), corrective actions, and preventative measures.

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including Development, Infrastructure, Database Administration, Networking, Cybersecurity, and Business Operations.

• Contribute technical expertise to application upgrades, modernization efforts, cloud initiatives, and enterprise projects.

Continuous Improvement

• Identify and execute process improvement opportunities that enhance operational efficiency, service reliability, and support effectiveness.

• Recommend and implement best practices for application administration, monitoring, automation, and operational excellence.

• Contribute to the evolution of support standards, operational procedures, and resiliency strategies.

Required Qualifications

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent professional experience.

Experience

• Experience administering and supporting enterprise business applications in production environments.

• Experience troubleshooting complex application performance, stability, and availability issues.

• Experience with Oracle database connectivity, performance troubleshooting, and application integration.

• Experience performing root cause analysis and implementing corrective and preventative actions.

• Experience supporting mission-critical systems with high availability requirements.

Technical Knowledge

• Strong understanding of enterprise networking concepts including WAN, LAN, subnetting, TCP/IP communication flows, DNS, routing, and network troubleshooting.

• Experience analyzing packet captures and network traces to diagnose application communication issues.

• Advanced knowledge of Microsoft Windows Server operating systems and Internet Information Services (IIS).

• Experience supporting distributed and microservices-based architectures.

• Proficiency with scripting and automation technologies such as PowerShell, Python, Bash, or similar languages.

• Experience with deployment and configuration management tools such as Ansible, Terraform, and Harness.

• Experience with Active Directory, LDAP, and Single Sign-On (SSO) technologies.

• Working knowledge of AI concepts, large language models (LLMs), and emerging AI-enabled operational tools.

• Experience utilizing enterprise monitoring and observability platforms such as Splunk, Dynatrace, and ExtraHop.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting financial services or highly regulated technology environments.

• Experience with cloud platforms and hybrid application architectures.

• Knowledge of containerized application environments and orchestration platforms.

• Familiarity with ITIL-based service management practices.

• Experience implementing operational automation and self-healing solutions.

• Understanding of database technologies beyond Oracle, including performance optimization and troubleshooting.

Preferred Certifications

• ITIL Foundation Certification

• Microsoft Certifications (Azure, Windows Server, or related technologies)

• CCNA or equivalent networking certification

• Security-related certifications

• Cloud platform certifications (Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud)

Skills & Competencies

• Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities.

• Critical thinking skills with the ability to diagnose complex technical issues across multiple technology layers.

• Demonstrated ability to perform effective root cause analysis and implement sustainable solutions.

• Strong technical troubleshooting and diagnostic skills.

• Ability to work independently while effectively collaborating across teams.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

• Ability to perform effectively in high-pressure production support environments.

• Willingness to participate in after-hours support and on-call responsibilities when required.

• Strong organizational skills and attention to detail.

• Disciplined approach to documenting processes, procedures, incident findings, root causes, and preventative measures.

• Continuous improvement mindset with a focus on operational excellence and application resiliency.