Contract Application Support Lead Jobs (NOW HIRING)

In the Technology division, we leverage innovation to build the connections and capabilities that power our Firm, enabling our clients and colleagues to redefine markets and shape the future of our communities.
This is a Lead Software Production Management & Reliability Engineering position at Director level which is part of the job family responsible for overseeing the production environment, ensuring the operational reliability of deployed software, and implementing strategies to optimize performance and minimize downtime.
Since 1935, Morgan Stanley has been known as a global leader in financial services, always evolving and innovating to better serve our clients and our communities in more than 40 countries around the world.
Department Profile
Morgan Stanley Wealth Management (MSWM) Technology is the global technology department responsible for the design, development, delivery and support of the technical solutions behind the products and services used by the Morgan Stanley Wealth Management (MSWM) business. The department is comprised of 10 organizations: Sales, Banking & Corporate-Client Technology, Investment Products & Markets Technology, Client Reporting, Core Processing, Private and International Wealth Management Technology, Technology Integration Office, Enterprise Infrastructure & Production Management, Capital Markets Application & Data Services, Deployment Planning & Release Management, and the Chief Operating Office.
The Reliability Operations (RO) within WMT is responsible for providing swift, courteous, and knowledgeable customer service to end users of the production systems. This position is focused on user and systems support, answering hotline calls, monitoring systems alerts, and taking corrective action. Technical understanding is important as well as the ability to speak to users and understand their problems. In addition to direct user support tasks, the team performs infrastructure related tasks including process configuration, hardware capacity planning, event management, release work, and support tool development to ensure any repetitive tasks are packaged to remove any element of risk.
Position Overview
The Wealth Management Production Management Site Reliability Engineer position is a highly visible/critical role, which will be a team member of technical SME'S managing the stability and optimization of the Wealth Management systems. Scope includes but not limited to, the day-to-day support of the organization's technology related outages, collaboration on technology projects
focused on stability, optimization, business impact analysis, and associated risk-related methodologies. This role will be responsible for overall stability of the Wealth Management Investment Management application platforms, participation on key optimization initiatives, and collaboration with multiple technical teams within Morgan Stanley. Additionally, partners with WM business units, various levels of management and staff to collect, analyze and make recommendations on optimizing the platform.
As a team member with expertise in deep analytical triage, you will provide subject matter expertise in debugging, issue analysis and troubleshooting, working with business and technical colleagues to provide reviews and recommendations to avoid any future application issues. Produce guidance documentation, standards and procedures, products assessments, and training material including working with the various application and infrastructure support teams ensuring that they are documenting every single troubleshooting step in Morgan Stanley knowledge base system to resolve issues in a faster time frame. You will serve as a fully seasoned/proficient technical resource; provide technical knowledge in outage management and proactive solutions to improve the user experience.
This position will mainly perform DevOps/ SRE role in Application support, Platform Stability and Resiliency.
Role & Responsibilities:

• Proactively detecting, troubleshooting, and resolving all issues affecting production applications. This involves coordination with and escalation to development and external teams where necessary. This team owns all issues escalated to us until it is resolved or a workaround is provided for end users to continue functioning.
• Responsible for maintaining clear, concise, and timely communications with affected parties during the investigation and resolution of any individual or system-wide outage
• Responsible for the stability of the Production environment
• Develop and continually revise in partnership with other teams where necessary) suitable policies and procedures to ensure appropriate application development standards are available to guide development for systems deployed to Production.
• As the gatekeepers of the Production environment, responsible for ensuring the Change Implementation Management guidelines/policies are adhered to for all systems deployed to Production.
• Responsible for servicing all requests for data or other activities that require access to Production systems
• Work with development teams at the appropriate stages in application development to ensure any new systems or projects meet the Production standard
• Responsible for maintaining and growing a body of knowledge that is accessible to all team members. Ensure information regarding any support related activities or issues are available and easily accessible. The goal is to improve self-reliance and reduce dependency on the availability of development or external team resources for the initial troubleshooting and resolution of problems.

Primary skills

• Minimum 5-7 years of experience developing and/or supporting enterprise applications
• 3-5 years of experience leading a small-to-medium team with similar skill sets
• Willingness to embrace Agile practices and DevOps/SRE concepts
• Working knowledge of DevOps and observability tools (e.g., Grafana, Prometheus, Splunk, Kibana)
• Strong analytical skills, including problem determination and recovery/resolution processes
• Ability to interface with and build strong working relationships across technology teams, business analysts, and vendors
• Understanding of database engineering and the ability to develop high-quality database solutions
• Experience with AWS services such as EC2, ECS, S3, Fargate, Aurora, and Lambda
• Hands-on scripting experience with Python and working knowledge of Java
• Administrative competence in at least one major programming language or platform (e.g., Perl, PowerShell, Unix scripting, Java, C#, .NET)
• Exposure to application technologies such as JavaScript, React, GraphQL, Python, Django, Celery, PostgreSQL, Golang, ElasticSearch, RabbitMQ and Kafka.
• Experience with web analytics tools (preferably Adobe Experience Cloud) is a plus
• Fast learner who thrives in a fast-paced environment
• Strong organizational skills and the ability to manage multiple tasks and high-pressure outage situations through resolution
• Driven to learn new technologies and techniques and to be an integral member of the team
• Hands-on experience administering large-scale, high-availability systems and using tools to monitor performance and availability
• Experience in creating technical architecture documentation
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills for technical discussions across management layers
• BS/MS degree (or equivalent), preferably in a quantitative discipline (e.g., Computer Science, Computer Engineering)
• Experience with on-call support and the ability to respond to emergencies on a 24/7 basis
• Experience in the financial services industry is a plus
• Assist with investigating and troubleshooting production issues, and actively mentor/coach/train team members

Secondary Skills

• 5-10 years of experience supporting or developing transaction-based systems
• Hands-on technical professional who understands both code and infrastructure
• Proven operational/support background with strong understanding of incident, problem, and change management to drive stability across organizations
• Ability to lead outage incidents by coordinating cross-team response and user communications through resolution
• Strong focus on metrics, monitoring, and trend analysis
• Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to analyze and interpret data
• Ability to build strong relationships and coordinate effectively with multiple parties during outages, while providing clear updates to APG and BU partners
• Comfortable with an on-call rotation, including weekend work
• Strong end-user support skills; able to partner with users to diagnose issues and drive to resolution
• Self-motivated with excellent written and verbal communication; able to communicate clearly and concisely
• Strong ownership mentality with a focus on customer satisfaction
• Detail-oriented and well organized, with strong analytical skills
• Experience working in a virtual and/or global team environment
• Self-starter with a "can-do" attitude and the ability to multitask effectively
• Familiarity with ITIL concepts, especially incident and problem management

We have a track record of innovation and passion for unlocking new opportunities, we help our clients raise, manage and allocate capital. We do this by offering a wide range of investment banking, securities, wealth management and asset management services.
All that we do at Morgan Stanley is driven by our five core values: do the right thing, put clients first, lead with exceptional ideas, commit to diversity and inclusion, and give back. These aren't just beliefs, they guide the decisions we make every day, ensuring we do what's best for our clients, communities and more than 80,000 employees around the world. And at the core of our success are the people who drive it - relentless collaborators and creative thinkers who are fueled by diverse thinking and experiences.
Wherever you are in our 1,200 global offices, you'll have the opportunity to work alongside the best and the brightest in an environment where you are empowered to achieve your full potential. We are proud to support our employees and their families at every point along their work-life journey, offering some of the most attractive and comprehensive employee benefits and perks in the industry.
Morgan Stanley's goal is to build and maintain a workforce that is diverse in experience and background but uniform in reflecting our standards of integrity and excellence. Consequently, our recruiting efforts reflect our desire to attract and retain the best and brightest from all talent pools. We want to be the first choice for prospective employees.
It is the policy of the Firm to ensure equal employment opportunity without discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, age, sex, sex stereotype, gender, gender identity or expression, transgender, sexual orientation, national origin, citizenship, disability, marital and civil partnership/union status, pregnancy, veteran or military service status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law.
Morgan Stanley is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversifying its workforce (M/F/Disability/Vet).
To qualify, applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States and must not require, now or in the future, sponsorship for employment visa status.
WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT FROM MORGAN STANLEY:
At Morgan Stanley, we raise, manage and allocate capital for our clients - helping them reach their goals. We do it in a way that's differentiated - and we've done that for 90 years. Our values - putting clients first, doing the right thing, leading with exceptional ideas, committing to diversity and inclusion, and giving back - aren't just beliefs, they guide the decisions we make every day to do what's best for our clients, communities and more than 80,000 employees in 1,200 offices across 42 countries. At Morgan Stanley, you'll find an opportunity to work alongside the best and the brightest, in an environment where you are supported and empowered. Our teams are relentless collaborators and creative thinkers, fueled by their diverse backgrounds and experiences. We are proud to support our employees and their families at every point along their work-life journey, offering some of the most attractive and comprehensive employee benefits and perks in the industry. There's also ample opportunity to move about the business for those who show passion and grit in their work.
To learn more about our offices across the globe, please copy and paste https://www.morganstanley.com/about-us/global-offices into your browser.
Expected base pay rates for the role will be between $120,000 and $165,000 per year at the commencement of employment. However, base pay if hired will be determined on an individualized basis and is only part of the total compensation package, which, depending on the position, may also include commission earnings, incentive compensation, discretionary bonuses, other short and long-term incentive packages, and other Morgan Stanley sponsored benefit programs.
Morgan Stanley is an equal opportunity employer committed to building and maintaining a workforce that is diverse in experience and background. Our recruiting efforts reflect our strong commitment to a culture of inclusion, where individuals are hired, developed, and advanced based on their skills and talents.
Our workforce reflects a broad cross-section of the global communities in which we operate, bringing a variety of backgrounds, talents, perspectives, and experiences.
For more information, please visit: https://www.morganstanley.com/people-opportunities/eeo.