Technical Application Analyst IV - Lead

Technical Application Analyst IV We're always looking for bright individuals to join our growing organization. As a part of the First Financial Family, we will invest in your development and provide a dynamic work environment where you're challenged, valued and empowered every day. We strive to be the best destination for the industry's top talent, creating a diverse, collaborative workplace that celebrates innovation and change. We are one team, working together to get things done. Abilene, Texas, United States The Technical Application Analyst IV serves as the lead technical owner for the day-to-day oversight of the technical application team and assigned application portfolio. This role is responsible for directing daily production support activities, coordinating workload and escalation management, and ensuring the stability, security, performance, and supportability of enterprise and banking applications. The lead analyst provides expert-level support for complex incidents, drives root cause analysis and corrective action planning, and partners with business units, vendors, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and project teams to deliver resilient and compliant application services. This position also leads operational readiness for upgrades, releases, conversions, integrations, and business continuity activities while mentoring analysts and promoting service quality, documentation discipline, and process improvement. Essential Functions 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. Minimum Qualifications Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field (or equivalent combination of education and directly relevant experience). 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. Preferred Qualifications: Experience leading technical application teams or providing day-to-day oversight of analyst workload, queue management, and operational performance. Experience supporting financial services, transaction-based, or compliance-driven environments with strong attention to auditability, resiliency, and control execution. Experience with application conversions, acquisitions, data migration, mapping validation, and cutover support activities. Experience with cloud-enabled environments, automation, scripting, and CI/CD or deployment support practices. Ability to establish support standards, drive service improvement initiatives, and use metrics to improve mean time to resolve, stability, and support quality. Strong vendor management, stakeholder communication, and cross-functional coordination skills across operations, infrastructure, development, and security teams. Demonstrated ability to develop analysts, assign work effectively, and maintain documentation, support readiness, and knowledge transfer standards. The above statements reflect the general details considered necessary to decide the principal functions of the job identified and shall not be construed as a detailed description of all work requirements that may be inherent in the job. Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities First Financial Bankshares