Liberty Life Assurance Kenya is a life insurance provider that has been providing relevant products to Kenyans for over 50 years. Our purpose at Liberty is to make a difference in people’s lives by making financial freedom possible. We change realities and make freedom possible by providing innovative and relevant solutions that help our customers protect their greatest assets. Our diverse and flexible products include life insurance, investment solutions, education and retirement savings plans. We pride ourselves in putting the customers’ needs first. With a proud heritage of over half a century, Liberty Kenya has been a pioneer in knowledge sharing and making a significant contribution to the financial services industry. We continue to strive to change realities in Kenya because Liberty is not just our name; it’s what we do!Job Summary The purpose of the Application Specialist role is to provide specialized technical support, and maintenance of the enterprise business applications across the organization by ensuring the availability, performance, security, and continuous improvement of insurance systems. The role is responsible for the end-to-end application lifecycle, including solution implementation, testing, deployment, operational support, vendor management, and continuous service improvement while applying ITIL best practices to deliver reliable and business-aligned technology services. Key Responsibilities Ensure that all service level agreements (SLAs) for applications support services across the organization are delivered according to specifications Provide first line and second line support and maintenance services to all enterprise systems Ensure business-critical systems operate at agreed service levels and availability targets Ensure adequate monitoring systems that provide timely, accurate, real-time, and historical data on performance and other critical parameters Maintenance and administration of the enterprise system Ensure that enterprise systems are adequately sized to meet SLAs with the business Define and monitor data and application availability for the enterprise system Document and update processes and procedures in use for the enterprise system Support month-end, year-end, claims-processing, policy-renewal, and financial reporting activities Manage the deployment of application upgrades, fixes, and code releases across SIT, QA, staging, and production environments, ensuring compliance with approved change management and deployment processes Coordinate and oversee User Acceptance Testing (UAT), integration testing, performance testing, and deployment readiness activities Drive process optimization through data analytics, technology adoption, and continuous improvement methodologies Apply ITIL best practices across Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Enablement, Service Request Management, Knowledge Management, Availability Management, and Continual Service Improvement to enhance service delivery effectiveness Promote adoption of DevOps, Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD), automation, and modern application lifecycle management practices to improve deployment efficiency, system reliability, and operational agility Key Performance Measures Customer satisfaction Reduction in recurring incidents through problem management Vendor SLA compliance and Issue Resolution Turnaround Time Number of process improvement initiatives delivered System availability Qualifications Education, including specialised training Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology, Computer Science or Telecommunication Engineering or equivalent degree from a recognized university Relevant Certification in software technologies Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert Professional Scrum Developer (PSD) Microsoft Applied Skills: Querying Data with Transact-SQL Experience in the following will be an added advantage: Containerization and cloud technologies (Azure/AWS, Docker, Kubernetes) Solutions architecture and systems integration Data platforms, including SQL/NoSQL databases, analytics, and data migration Experience At least four years’ experience in a busy business systems environment Competencies Technical Competencies Experience with web servers and application servers e.g. Apache, IIS, Apache Tomcat, JBoss, WebSphere, WebLogic Experience in data warehousing, business analytics, knowledge in Business Systems Modelling and data retrieval Proficiency in designing, developing, deploying, and supporting cloud-based applications ITIL Governance Standards Strong knowledge of SQL and NoSQL databases, data modelling, data migration, and data quality management Experience in designing, implementing, and supporting web services, REST APIs, middleware, microservices, and enterprise integrations Experience with CI/CD pipelines, release management, infrastructure automation, containerization technologies (e.g., Docker and Kubernetes) IT Security and Security appliances Core competencies Delivering results and meeting customer expectations Relating and networking Working with people Adapting and responding to change Planning and organising Presenting and communicating information Persuading and influencing Leading and supervising Working with people Adhering to principles and values Achieving personal work goals and objectives