Functional Production Support - Asset Management - Freelance

Context

A leading asset management company is delivering a strategic integration program following the acquisition of a major investment management firm. The program aims to migrate and integrate the acquired firm’s assets and business activities into the existing operating model and the BlackRock Aladdin platform. During the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) phase, an efficient production support organization is essential to ensure that issues identified by business users are rapidly analyzed, prioritized, and routed to the appropriate resolution teams.

The role involves joining the Production team and acting as the central point of contact for all functional issues reported during UAT, ensuring an efficient defect management process, supporting business users throughout the testing phase, and facilitating communication between the business, support teams, development teams, and BlackRock when required. Expertise in the Aladdin platform and investment management processes will enable the candidate to evaluate reported issues, determine their impact, prioritize them according to business criticality, and ensure timely resolution before Go-Live.

Missions

• Act as the first point of contact for all incidents and defects raised during the UAT phase.

• Collect, review, and validate defects reported by Key Users and Test Leaders.

• Perform initial functional analysis to understand the root cause and business impact of reported issues.

• Differentiate between application defects, configuration issues, data issues, user misunderstandings, and enhancement requests.

• Prioritize issues based on business criticality, operational impact, and Go-Live readiness.

• Assign defects to the appropriate Production Support, Application Support, Development, or BlackRock teams.

• Monitor defect progress throughout the resolution lifecycle and ensure SLA compliance.

• Coordinate defect clarification sessions between business users and technical teams when necessary.

• Provide adequate communication with business stakeholders regarding issue status and expected resolution timelines.

• Support defect validation and coordinate retesting activities after fixes have been delivered.

• Produce regular reporting and dashboards on defect status, priorities, and resolution progress.

• Escalate critical production risks and blocking issues to management.

• Participate in daily UAT support meetings and defect review committees.

• Contribute to the continuous improvement of incident and defect management processes.

• Establish and maintain strong relationships with Business Users, Application Support teams, Development teams, and BlackRock support teams.

Mission Requirements

Essential skills / competencies (technical / behavioural / leadership):

• Knowledge of the BlackRock Aladdin platform.

• Good understanding of Portfolio Management and Asset Management business processes.

• Experience in Production Support, Application Support, or Functional Support.

• Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills.

• Ability to quickly assess business impact and prioritize issues.

• Experience with defect management tools (JIRA, ServiceNow, Azure DevOps, or equivalent).

• Excellent communication skills with both business and technical stakeholders.

• Strong organizational skills and ability to manage multiple priorities simultaneously.

• Customer-oriented mindset with a strong sense of ownership.

• Ability to work under pressure during critical testing periods.

• Fluency in English (written and spoken).