Role Summary
The IT Application Support Lead is responsible for leading the support and maintenance of critical business applications, ensuring high availability, stability, and timely resolution of incidents and service requests. This role combines technical leadership, operational oversight, stakeholder management, and continuous improvement to support business continuity and service excellence. The role reports to the Technology Operations Manager.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead and develop the application support team, including coaching, mentoring, hiring, and performance management.
- Oversee day-to-day support for business-critical applications, ensuring incidents, problems, and service requests are resolved within agreed service levels.
- Drive incident management, root cause analysis, and corrective action implementation to reduce recurring issues.
- Coordinate with infrastructure, development, security, and business teams to resolve application issues and improve service performance.
- Monitor application health, availability, performance, and support tooling to ensure operational stability.
- Promote proactive support practices, including problem prevention, knowledge management, and continuous improvement.
- Evaluate and implement tools, automation, and process improvements that enhance support efficiency and user experience.
- Develop and enforce application support standards, procedures, and best practices.
- Prepare regular operational reports, service metrics, and updates for senior leadership.
- Support release and change management activities, including testing, deployment readiness, and post-release validation.
- Manage support priorities, resources, and escalations to ensure effective service delivery.
- Support audit, compliance, and security-related activities as required.
Leadership Competencies
- Drives Results: Delivers stable application support services and ensures timely issue resolution.
- Builds Talent: Coaches and develops team members to strengthen capability and performance.
- Collaborates and Influences: Works effectively across technical and business teams to drive alignment.
- Thinks Strategically: Aligns support priorities with business needs and technology goals.
- Demonstrates Accountability: Owns incident response, governance, and follow-through on actions.
- Champions Improvement: Promotes automation, innovation, and continuous improvement.
Technical Skills
- Strong knowledge of application support processes, incident management, and problem management.
- Experience supporting enterprise applications in a production environment.
- Hands-on experience with monitoring, logging, alerting, and service management tools.
- Familiarity with databases, operating systems, middleware, APIs, and integration technologies.
- Understanding of release management, change management, and deployment support.
- Strong troubleshooting and analytical skills to identify and resolve application issues.
- Ability to use automation and scripting to improve support efficiency.
Soft Skills
- Strong service mindset with a focus on customer satisfaction and timely support.
- Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain technical issues clearly to non-technical stakeholders.
- Strong problem-solving and analytical thinking skills.
- Ability to work under pressure and manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.
- Collaborative and team-oriented, with the ability to build effective working relationships across functions.
- Proactive, accountable, and detail-oriented in managing support activities and follow-through.
- Adaptable and open to change, with a continuous improvement mindset.
- Strong sense of ownership and commitment to service quality and operational excellence.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related field.
- Minimum 8–10 years of relevant experience in application support or IT operations.
- Proven people management or team leadership experience.
- Experience in financial services or insurance preferred.
- Strong English communication skills.
- Experience working with regional and global IT teams in a multinational environment.
