IT Application Administrator

Role overview

The IT Application Administrator will join an experienced engineering group responsible for keeping essential business applications available, secure, and running at a high standard. This role requires a strong background in IT, application administration, or systems engineering and analysis, with a focus on dependable support and continuous improvement.

Key responsibilities

• Provide timely data and reporting to the Applications Administration Manager and suggest technical and operational enhancements that support planning, direction, and decision-making.
• Handle application support and maintenance activities, and review or improve SOPs so that controls, policies, and procedures work effectively.
• Deliver rapid fixes when application issues or incidents arise.
• Help shape and enforce IT security policies, processes, standards, procedures, and internal controls for application servers, aligned with the corporate security framework.
• Assess security risks and support the implementation of measures to reduce risks and address audit observations related to application servers.
• Participate in new project implementations throughout the full lifecycle, including development, QC, UAT, and production.
• Monitor application services against approved policies, procedures, service levels, user requests, and maintenance windows to minimize downtime.
• Apply vendor-released security patches and bug fixes promptly.
• Deploy new application releases and packages.
• Ensure supported application implementations remain secure, reliable, cost-effective, and suitable for business use.
• Create and keep updated documentation for the applications under support.
• Coordinate closely with vendors and third parties to follow industry best practices and deliver application support efficiently.
• Maintain an inventory of applications across production, QC, development, and UAT environments.
• Complete any other tasks assigned by the line manager or senior IT leadership.

Requirements

• 8 or more years of experience in IT infrastructure, with a strong emphasis on application technical support and application security.
• Hands-on knowledge of application design, deployment, backup, recovery, and administration is highly desirable.
• Proven understanding of application capacity planning, security principles, and application management best practices.
• Strong grasp of IT infrastructure concepts, frameworks, and standards.
• Experience with application performance monitoring and tuning, security hardening, and high availability.
• Practical knowledge of application installations, upgrades, and high-availability setups in both existing and new environments.
• Exposure to application products and platforms from Oracle, SAP, IBM, Microsoft, and similar vendors.
• Ability to work effectively during occasional high-stress 24x7 on-call situations.
• Good communication and interpersonal skills.
• Strong experience using automation tools related to application management.
• Working knowledge of Windows AD, DNS, HTTP/HTTPS, SSH, LDAP, DHCP, TCP/IP, firewalls, networking protocols, and security concepts.
• Professional certifications in relevant fields are an advantage, and ITIL certification is preferred.
• Project management certifications such as PRINCE2 or PMP will be an added advantage.

Additional information

This is a full-time onsite position based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The role involves supporting mission-critical systems and may require 24x7 on-call availability at times. Applications should be secure, reliable, and designed to perform well while meeting business and operational needs.