Associate, Operations Engineer

Details

ING’s Wholesale Banking division in the Americas offers innovative financial products and services to domestic and international corporate and institutional clients. ING Americas follows a hybrid work model, allowing for in-office and work-from-home flexibility; arrangements vary by business area.

The Operations Engineer is responsible for ensuring the stability, reliability, and operational excellence of a portfolio of business-critical applications. The role combines hands-on operational management with continuous improvement responsibilities, driving efficiency, standardization, resiliency, and risk reduction across the application landscape. The successful candidate will take ownership of an application portfolio, create structure where needed, improve processes, build strong business relationships, and continuously increase the reliability and efficiency of supported services.

The role is part of a small Application Engineering team. The engineer is expected to operate independently, proactively identify improvement opportunities, and act as a trusted partner to development teams and business stakeholders.

Responsibilities

Operational Management

• Own and coordinate day-to-day operational activities for supported applications.
• Lead and coordinate incident resolution, problem management, and root cause analysis.
• Manage and support application changes and releases in accordance with change management processes.
• Coordinate and execute Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity testing activities.
• Monitor application health, availability, performance, and capacity.
• Ensure operational processes comply with risk, security, audit, and regulatory requirements.

Continuous Improvement

• Identify, propose, and implement operational improvements and automation opportunities.
• Drive standardization, documentation, and process optimization initiatives.
• Improve team resiliency by reducing key-person dependencies and enhancing knowledge sharing.
• Enhance monitoring, alerting, reporting, and operational dashboards.
• Promote a culture of operational excellence and continuous improvement.

Collaboration and Stakeholder Management

• Partner closely with application developers to improve application stability, supportability, and delivery quality.
• Build strong relationships with business stakeholders and application owners.
• Act as a trusted advisor on operational risks, reliability concerns, and service improvements.
• Coordinate effectively with infrastructure, database, security, and vendor teams when required.

Requirements

• 3–4+ years of experience in Application Support, Operations Engineering, DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering, or a similar role.
• Demonstrated experience supporting business-critical applications in a financial services environment.
• Strong experience managing incidents, problems, changes, releases, Disaster Recovery exercises, and production support activities.
• Experience operating within regulated environments with strong audit, risk, and compliance requirements.
• Ability to work independently and manage priorities with minimal supervision.

Preferred Technical Skills

• Strong SQL skills.
• Working knowledge of Oracle databases.
• Understanding of application architecture and system integrations.
• Experience with monitoring, alerting, and observability tooling.
• Familiarity with CI/CD concepts and release management processes.
• Scripting and automation experience using PowerShell, Python, Shell scripting, or similar technologies.
• Middleware engineering experience with MQ, XFB, and SFTP.
• Basic development knowledge and ability to interact effectively with software engineers.
• Understanding of Java, Python, APIs and web services, and PowerShell automation and scripting.
• Experience with reporting and BI platforms such as Cognos and Power BI.
• Experience with DevOps and automation tooling.
• Exposure to cloud platforms and modern engineering practices.

Behavioral Competencies

• Self-starter with a strong ownership mentality.
• Highly organized and structured approach to work.
• Proactive problem solver who identifies opportunities before issues arise.
• Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management abilities.
• Comfortable challenging existing processes and driving improvements.
• Able to balance operational support responsibilities with strategic improvement initiatives.
• Team player who can work effectively across technical and business teams.

Preferred Background

• Experience supporting multiple business applications within Banking, Capital Markets, Treasury, Lending, Payments, Finance, Risk, or Regulatory Reporting domains.
• Familiarity with operational processes in wholesale banking or financial markets environments.
• Experience interacting with auditors, risk teams, and regulatory stakeholders.

Benefits

• Discretionary bonus program.
• Comprehensive health benefits.
• 401(k) savings plan.
• Competitive paid time off.
• Adoption, surrogacy, and fertility services.
• Student debt assistance.
• Subsidies for commuting and fitness expenses.
• Hybrid work flexibility.