IT Technical Systems Analyst (Applications Team)

About Withers

A law firm focused on people, performance, and collaboration.

For the past 130 years, we have supported some of the world’s most remarkable people and organizations at defining moments in their lives. 40% of our business comes from Europe, 40% from the US and 20% from Asia and we are one profit sharing partnership globally.

We are united in our commitment to integrity, quality and collaboration. We have a culture of high performance and deliver excellent service consistently across the firm. We provide tailored solutions built on trust and partner with our clients to achieve their goals.

Many of our clients are shaping the future and creating solutions to tackle some of the world’s most difficult problems. It makes for a fascinating and challenging practice.

Our role is to get to know each individual client, find out where they want to be, and help them to get there – whether they are building a business, buying a home or protecting and defending their interests.

To meet their unique needs we are exceptionally collaborative, working together across teams and time zones. And we are agile – focusing on strategy rather than rigid ideas and traditional hierarchy.

Join us to be part of a team that is always looking to the future. Where initiative, big ideas and bold moves are always encouraged. Where you can truly be yourself.

What are we looking for?

We are looking for an experienced Technical Systems Analyst who can operate as a broad-based technology generalist rather than a traditional single-application SME. The role will support, maintain and enhance the firm’s legal and business systems estate across both established platforms and a growing SaaS and cloud landscape, with a strong focus on how systems connect, how data flows between them, and how services are secured, integrated and improved.
You will provide 3rd line support and act as a technical lead across assigned business applications, while also contributing to wider service improvement across the estate. This is less about being the deepest specialist in one product or managing traditional on-premise systems, and more about understanding the wider technology landscape with working knowledge of APIs and integrations, identity and access management, data and reporting, security considerations, and emerging AI capabilities. The role also requires someone who stays abreast of product features, functionality and technology trends, identifies opportunities to improve how systems are used, and helps ensure the firm gets the best return from its technology investments.

The role will work closely with application business owners, senior IT leaders, project teams, data, development, architecture, infrastructure, security, service delivery and third-party vendors. While other colleagues may hold deeper specialist expertise in individual areas, this person must be able to speak the language across the full landscape, join the dots between teams, ask the right questions, and help drive practical, joined-up outcomes for the firm. They will also be expected to provide informed advice to management on the direction, roadmap and strategic development of their assigned systems.

The role is based in the London office and sits within the Global Systems group, which is responsible for supporting and implementing the firm’s technology across all regions. The successful candidate will join the Applications team and will need experience in a medium to large multi-site professional services environment. 
The ideal candidate should demonstrate excellent written and verbal communication, strong organisation and professionalism, and work independently while being a collaborative team member. Curiosity, positivity, friendliness, supportiveness, and a 'can-do' attitude are also essential.

Areas of focus and responsibilities

• Support systems, ensuring that the highest levels of stability and reliability are maintained.
• Identifying, documenting and undertaking maintenance and administration processes on IT systems globally
• Provide a technical resource for projects run by the Head of IT Systems or Project Management Office and progress projects and tasks on time and to budget.
• Develop, present and implement proposals to improve assigned systems or platforms.
• Monitor the team queue in the Service Desk call-logging system to ensure incidents are managed in a timely manner and escalated using the correct procedures.  Close calls when a satisfactory resolution has been achieved.
• Produce and maintain technical documentation and articles for the knowledge base.
•  Define and track SLAs for key systems with special emphasis on legal applications.
• Maintain technical leadership in assigned technologies, and ensure that responsibilities for key technologies are appropriately allocated and understood by colleagues.
• Continually maintain and expand strong working knowledge of current Firm-supported and future technologies to provide technically accurate solutions to end-users.
• Correctly diagnose software and hardware faults and liaise with 3rd party engineers where needed. Incidents should be actioned within agreed timescales and monitored to resolution.
• Working with the IT Applications Manager, ensure that support contracts are in place for all systems and appropriate support, backup and capacity procedures are in place and documented.
• Assist with occasional infrastructure / server support and patching out of other office core hours.
• Identify major support incidents and liaise with support teams, following the Major Incident process. Inform the manager and senior IT Management of any escalating support issues in order that they may be resolved within reasonable time scales.
• Establish and maintain contact with colleagues in all offices to ensure that a consistent approach is being adopted across the firm.
• Adhere fully to the Change and Release management processes.
• Adhere fully to the Problem management process and to the investigation of the root cause of outages.
• Ensure that the housekeeping and administration of systems are carried out in accordance with the firm's policies and procedures.
• Ensure security is maintained in line with the Firm’s security standards.
• Contribute to the IT Risk register to identify and manage operational risks and work to eliminate areas of vulnerability.
• Occasional assistance with cover for the IT Helpdesk telephones.

This list of duties and responsibilities is not exhaustive.  It is intended to describe the general content of, and requirements for the performance of this job, and as such, the role may also include undertaking additional tasks as required.

Technical skills and experience

• Broad experience of legal and business application platforms in a professional services environment, with the ability to work across multiple technologies rather than acting solely as a deep SME for one product. This should include experience of core legal platforms such as iManage Cloud, Elite 3E, Intapp, BigHand, Interaction or similar enterprise applications.
• Strong knowledge of SaaS and cloud-based application environments, including configuration, administration, release awareness and the practical implications of vendor-led change.
• Strong understanding of APIs, integrations and data flows between systems, with awareness of best practice for resilience, supportability and security. Experience of working with SQL and integration tooling in support of business applications would be an advantage.
• Good working knowledge of identity and access management, including SSO and related authentication and provisioning concepts used to support application integration.
• Good knowledge of Microsoft 365 services and the wider Microsoft cloud ecosystem, including Azure and related platform capabilities, with the ability to understand how core services support business applications, identity, security and user productivity.
• Good knowledge of data, reporting and insight tools, including Power BI, Microsoft Fabric and SQL-based reporting, with the ability to use information to support service improvement and better decision-making.
• Working knowledge of modern legal technology platforms, with the confidence to work across a varied application estate.
• Working knowledge of generative AI tools and related automation capabilities, including practical usage, governance and security awareness across major platforms, large language models, agents and future innovations, with the ability to identify opportunities to improve efficiency, user experience and value from the firm’s technology investments.
• Strong awareness of security principles relevant to application and platform management, including access control, data protection, secure configuration and the impact of change across integrated services.
• Experience of working within an ITIL-aligned support environment, with good understanding of incident, problem, change and release management processes and the importance of clear technical documentation.

The essentials

• 9.30 am to 5.30pm but flexibility is a must
• 8.00am to 4.00pm early shift in place, one week in six
•  24/7 on call rota in place, rotates every 5-7 weeks
• Hybrid working policy with a minimum of 2 days per week in the office
• 12 week probation period
• 12 week notice period
• Flexible benefit package including pension, private medical insurance, denplan, season ticket loan, discounted gym memberships, lifestyle discount scheme, the ability to buy and sell holidays, flu jabs, doctors consultation service, cycle to work scheme, on site café and more

Information for Recruitment Agencies

Withers endeavours to recruit and fill vacancies directly. However, when we do need to engage with agencies, Withers operates a preferred supplier list and will not be accepting unsolicited applications from non-PSL agencies for this role.                                                                                                                            

Equal Opportunities Employment Statement

It is the policy of Withers to provide equal opportunities for all employees in relation to recruitment, training and promotion.  Decisions in these areas will be made only by reference to the requirements of the job and shall not be influenced by any consideration of ethnic origin, religion, sex, age, sexual orientation or disability.