Head of Support, Delivery and Operations

Location: Remote

Timezone: Central European

Work hours: 8 AM – 6 PM

Job Type: Full-time

Company Overview

SoftSolutions is a leading Italian company specializing in software solutions for regulated financial markets.

Since 1997, we have supported major banks and financial institutions in optimizing bond issuance processes and trading fixed-income instruments.

With headquarters in Italy and collaborators worldwide, we are recognized for innovative platforms such as nexRates, XTAuctions, and BestX:FI-A. Our clients include major investment banks and global financial institutions that rely on us for production-grade reliability, operational discipline, and trading-critical software.

Role Overview

We are seeking a senior leader in Trading Support, Delivery, and Operations to own the production quality, delivery execution, and operational discipline of our capital markets platforms.

The HOSDO is accountable for ensuring reliable support, predictable client deliveries, operational readiness, and strong client trust. This role requires deep experience in trading platform support and delivery, combined with the ability to lead and coordinate highly technical teams responsible for infrastructure, cloud, and automation.

The HOSDO is the owner of production outcomes. While hands-on technical capability is appreciated, the primary responsibility is to govern, guide, and ensure excellence through strong technical specialists.

Key Responsibilities

Trading Support Ownership

• Own first- and second-level support quality across all trading platforms.
• Ensure structured incident handling, root cause analysis, and effective escalation management.
• Act as the final operational owner for production issues impacting clients.

Delivery Ownership

• Own delivery execution for new clients, platform rollouts, and upgrades.
• Ensure environments, documentation, and operational handover are production-ready.
• Coordinate closely with Product and Development on release planning and timelines.

Client Confidence and Communication

• Act as the main operational counterpart for client IT and operations teams.
• Ensure professional, clear, and timely communication during incidents, deliveries, and maintenance activities.
• Build long-term trust through predictable and transparent operations.

Operational Governance

• Define, maintain, and evolve operational processes and runbooks.
• Ensure consistency, repeatability, and quality of operational procedures.
• Drive readiness checks, operational reviews, and continuous improvement.

Team Leadership

• Lead and develop the Support, Delivery, and Operations team.
• Ensure clear ownership between trading support, infrastructure, and DevOps roles.
• Enable specialists to perform at their best by providing structure, priorities, and accountability.

Cost Control and Efficiency

• Monitor and control operational costs.
• Identify opportunities for efficiency, automation, and process optimization.

Technical Governance

• Ensure that infrastructure, cloud, security, and automation are correctly designed and operated.
• Validate technical approaches and operational models.
• Drive accountability for reliability, resilience, and security, without necessarily implementing solutions personally.

Technical Competence

The role requires strong technical understanding sufficient to evaluate designs, ask the right questions, and govern complex production systems. Hands-on implementation is supported by a strong technical team.

The candidate should have solid understanding of:

• Cloud infrastructure, especially AWS
• Networking and security concepts
• Messaging and integration platforms
• Application servers and production deployments
• Automation, CI/CD, and infrastructure-as-code principles

Experience Areas

• Experience overseeing Windows and Linux production environments for enterprise or trading systems.
• Experience managing production databases and defining backup, recovery, and reliability strategies.
• Experience operating and governing AWS-based systems, including EC2, VPC, IAM, networking, and VPNs.
• Experience with production trading platforms or similar mission-critical financial systems.

Additional Useful Experience

• Infrastructure as Code (CloudFormation, Terraform)
• Monitoring and observability tools (CloudWatch, ELK, Prometheus, Grafana)

Qualifications

• Proven experience in trading platform support and delivery in capital markets environments.
• Strong background in production support, trading operations, or delivery management.
• Minimum 5 years’ experience in capital markets support or operations roles.
• Experience managing remote and distributed teams.
• Strong client-facing experience with operational ownership.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Business, or related fields (or equivalent experience).
• Fluent English (C1/C2 level).

Prior experience in roles such as:

• Head of Production Support
• Trading Operations Manager
• Application Support Manager for trading platforms
• is strongly preferred.

Personal Traits

• Strong sense of ownership and accountability.
• Clear understanding of the business impact of trading systems.
• Business-oriented mindset on time, delivery, and cost.
• Excellent written, verbal, and interpersonal communication skills.
• Ability to operate under pressure and take responsibility for production outcomes.

We Offer

• Fully remote work environment.
• Flexible working hours within CET coverage.
• High-impact role with ownership of mission-critical trading platforms.
• Opportunity to shape operational excellence in a growing fintech company.
• Culture focused on responsibility, quality, and continuous improvement.