UNIX & Storage Engineer at Co-operative Bank of Kenya

Are you looking for an employer who promotes individual excellence and mutual respect in a team-driven culture with a key focus on social empowerment? The Co-operative Bank of Kenya, “The Kingdom bank” is the place for those looking to new horizons.

We seek individuals who will provide guidance, standards and statements of direction for the bank’s server/storage farms in line with the banks desire to gain a competitive advantage in the market. This requires good analysis and ongoing knowledge of current and changing business, financial (budgetary) and technological environments and the ability to translate those environments into blueprints to lead the migration to the new environment.

The UNIX & Storage Engineer will be responsible for end-to-end and proactive UNIX servers including storage, backup solutions design & administration, performance monitoring & management of server, storage & backup of Infrastructure, and general ICT systems. This will involve setting up of optimal performance benchmarks and use of modern and appropriate tools coupled with best practice. The holder will also ensure high systems availability and improvements to meet business growth demands, ensure timely intervention by key stakeholders, improved performance, enhanced system security, business continuity and competitiveness in product and service development.

The Role

Specifically, the successful jobholder will be required to:

• Monitor performance and manage parameters to provide fast responses to the various applications and databases running on the infrastructure stack. This includes systems logs, events and event correlation and maintaining performance statistics and setting baseline statistics
• Monitor and manage Mission Critical servers including Oracle Supercluster, Oracle ZFS and IBM Power Systems.
• Develop, manage and test back-up and recovery plans and ensuring that storage, archiving, back-up and recovery procedures are functioning properly
• Allocate and manage Data Storage Systems including SAN, NAS, Tape Libraries, etc. and perform server/storage tasks such as systems design, capacity planning, maintenance, trouble shooting, and change control activities.
• Take lead role in the various I.T. audits in providing necessary information and enforcing closure of audit, change management and compliance issues
• Manage key I.T. risks for all servers, storage & backup sub-systems and ensure proper mitigation.
• Take lead role in BCP and disaster recovery preparedness through periodic testing as scheduled, update of disaster recovery procedures and sharing the results with management
• Team up with applications support, development and DBA team in the development, implementation, management applications, infrastructure, and monitor system health in order to proactively identify weaknesses and address them.
• Create new servers using best practice and Minimum baseline Security Configurations.
• Ensure compliance with all OEM license agreements and maintain upgrades and critical patches for the various systems including storage sub-systems.
• Create and maintain infrastructure documentation, including security standards, procedures & definitions and maintain all technical documentation relating to server/storage management.
• Communicate regularly with technical, applications and operational staff to ensure system integrity and security.
• Establish and maintain business relationships with vendors, consultants and other outside entities providing services to the bank. monitor performance of the SLAs to ensure that the server and storage stacks get maximum value from the SLA contracts.
• Handle queries from application/DBA support, resolve problems in a timely manner and advice accordingly.
• 24/7 availability for support of the bank’s mission critical systems.
• Continually monitor security events in the systems, take corrective actions and generate reports for management.
• Develop and maintain system documentation.
• Keep abreast of latest security, legislation, regulations, advisories, alerts and vulnerabilities and plan proactive actions accordingly.

Skills, Competencies and Experience

The successful candidate will be required to have the following skills and competencies:

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field from a recognized university.
• Minimum of 3 years’ experience in a similar role with hands on experience in planning, systems analysis, design, support and development in server/storage/backup infrastructure.
• A specialist in IT/ Engineering background with competences in EMC storage, Linux, IBM AIX, IBM DS8800, IBM TSM, Oracle Solaris, Oracle Supercluster & Exadata ,Oracle ZFS Storage and project management.
• Excellent knowledge of ICT system architectures, platforms and Infrastructure.
• Strong analytical skills; ability to analyze and correlate complex data.
• Good knowledge of various storage and server performance-monitoring tools.
• Ability to effectively communicate complex technical issues.
• Excellent knowledge of the bank’s information security policy and the legal implications.