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Location: Chatham/London/Bradford/Petersfield

Salary:

Closing Date: Friday 04 August 2023

PRINCIPAL SAS ADMINISTRATOR

12 MONTH FTC

LEVEL 11

About Us:

Vanquis Banking Group has a rich history dating back to 1880. The company was founded in Bradford by Joshua Kelley Waddilove as The Provident Clothing and Supply Company to help people access finance and goods who couldn’t from traditional lenders.

Today, Vanquis Banking Group is a FTSE All Share company listed on the London Stock Exchange with around 1.6 million customers and plays the same role in people’s lives today, as it did when it was founded.

Vanquis Banking Group is a unified group made up of two brands: Vanquis (cards and loans) and Moneybarn (vehicle finance). While they offer different products and services, they share the common purpose and customer-centric values at the heart of our group. We understand our customers are real people with varied life experiences, so everything we do from our products to our customer experience is designed with this in mind.

You and Your Team:

As a Principal SAS Administrator, you will work within a small team of SAS Administrators and are responsible for the day-to-day running of the SAS platforms in terms of workload delivery, stakeholder management, user management and access to data in the SAS Platforms, Infrastructure and Software Patching and SAS License and Certificate renewals.

You will assist with the Technical Maintenance, Administration, Resilience, and Performance of the

Base SAS On-Prem Platform in Windows, and SAS in Azure Platforms. You provide in-hours support for the entire user-base for Vanquis Bank, Moneybarn, and PFG. You will also co-ordinate and deliver scheduled Change outages with the Business users as appropriate.

In your day-to-day role, as a Principal SAS Administrator you will:

• SME for the SAS On-Prem and SAS in Azure platforms for entities across the whole group.
• Support the technical aspects and delivery of the SAS On-Prem and SAS in Azure platforms across Vanquis Bank, Moneybarn, and PFG in their entirety.
• Ensure the SAS On-Prem and SAS in Azure platforms remain stable, resilient, and performant (within working hours).
• Ensure the SAS On-Prem and SAS in Azure platforms conform to security requirements via the SAS On-Prem Deployment Manager, SAS 9.4 Management Console, SAS Viya Environment Manager, on Windows and Linux.
• Troubleshoot and resolve the SAS On-Prem and SAS in Azure platforms infrastructure issues (configuration, performance, stability).
• Perform Root Cause Analysis for Production issues and remediate issues as required.
• Ensure the SAS On-Prem and SAS in Azure platforms are up to date – SAS Upgrades, Patching & Licensing.
• Work closely to business teams to confidently implement new SAS Processes, ensuring they run optimally.
• Research and adopt new SAS technologies, features, and releases to ensure we use the best tools for purpose.
• Provide consultancy to Project Managers, Business Analysts and Managers around current processes, best practices, and ideas to solve business challenges.
• Translate business requirements into well-engineered, documented, tested database solutions, supporting these systems in production.
• Provide updates on on-going projects to the Lead SAS Administrator and other key stakeholders.
• Have a clear understanding and ownership of the data infrastructure between our SAS platforms, Windows, Microsoft Azure, and SQL servers.
• Maintain and Troubleshoot data pipeline feeds into the SAS On-Prem and SAS in Azure platforms and/or Data Warehouses/SQL Databases as required.

Foundational skills:

• SAS 9.x (and/or SAS Viya 3.5) Certified Platform Administrator.
• SAS 9.x Certified Base Programmer, with SQL Passthrough and SAS Macro experience.
• Microsoft Windows Administration including PowerShell familiarity.
• Microsoft Azure Fundamentals Familiarity (ideally Certified).
• At least 2 years’ Windows experience in infrastructure administration.
• At least 3 years’ Linux experience in infrastructure administration.
• At least 7 years’ experience as a SAS Administrator.
• SAS Viya 3.* Administrator experience preferred.
• Strong SAS, Windows, Linux, and Azure troubleshooting and performance tuning.
• IT Security awareness & practical experience.
• Knowledge of RedHat Enterprise (RHEL7) such as memory and process management, file system architecture, CPU utilisation, disk utilisation, etc.
• Knowledge of SQL coding with optimising experience preferred.
• Capable of being given high level (vague) tasks, working independently and/or managing collaborative team workloads to successful completion.
• Ability to implement the working standards and practices of team.
• Ability to share knowledge with colleagues.
• Experience and interest in systems automation and systems programming.

Development-focus skills:

• Experience in Banking and Finance sectors and/or sectors involving large data volumes.
• Great problem-solving and debugging skills.
• Ability to handle and co-ordinate multiple tasks across the team with perseverance and professionalism.
• Good understanding of tools and principles used in ALM (Application Lifecycle Management).
• Experience with automated software testing.
• Agile Methodologies – Scrum/Kanban/XP.
• Appetite for learning, both on the job, structured and independently.

Why Vanquis?

Vanquis was established in 2003, offering a credit card designed to help customers improve their credit score. In 2016, Vanquis introduced personal loans to give customers additional opportunities on their credit-building journeys. Vanquis brings together our lengthy history in the financial sector with modern money management through its online and app-based accounts.

Our colleagues are the most important part of delivering our purpose to put customers on a path to a better everyday life. If it wasn’t for their amazing efforts, ideas and energy we wouldn’t be the successful business that we are today.

On top of all this, we will give you a package including:

• Competitive salary
• Discretionary annual bonus
• Hybrid working considered
• Up to 30 days holidays in addition to bank holidays
• Pension Scheme with matched company contributions up to 5%
• Private Medical Insurance
• Extensive opportunities for personal and career development
• Opportunity to grow, develop and learn
• Colleague Perks at Work discount platform
• Season ticket loan
• 1 paid day to ‘give back’ to local communities or chosen charity

We strive to constantly improve the way we look after our people and have created an environment where everyone feels valued and can be themselves. We know that by having a better, more inclusive culture and a diverse group of colleagues, we can support our customers and each other in the best way possible. We also believe this goes a long way to helping us live our purpose and defines why we’re here in the first place: to help put people on a path to a better everyday life.

We’re an equal opportunities employer and we want people to join us no matter how they identify, their sexual orientation, marital or civil partner status, race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, disability, or age.

We want to attract and retain the best people. So, we make sure that, if people need it, they’re given all the extra support and reasonable adjustments to take part in any part of our application or interview process. We’ve also got lots of colleagues who choose to work flexibly, so please feel free to talk to us about how you prefer to work at any time.

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible.