Application Support Tech Lead

Role purpose 

Be the technical authority for a cluster of applications: lead knowledge acquisition during transition, resolve complex L3 issues, and drive modernization, consolidation and automation that lets a smaller team support more applications. 

Key responsibilities 

Transition & knowledge acquisition 

• Lead technical knowledge transfer for the assigned application cluster; validate understanding through reverse-shadow. 

• Reverse-engineer and document undocumented applications: architecture, integrations, data flows, dependencies, deployment and recovery procedures. 

• Verify environment access, source code, CI/CD pipelines, monitoring and DR readiness (RTO/RPO) before go-live. 

Technical leadership & L3 support 

• Lead technical triage of incidents, defects and client tasks: estimation, assignment to engineers, technical review and closure. 

• Own L3 resolution, root cause analysis and permanent fixes for recurring problems. 

• Lead major incident technical bridges for Critical/High applications. 

• Review code changes, deployments and change requests; enforce engineering and security standards. 

• Define runbooks, monitoring/alerting standards and shift-left knowledge articles. 

Modernization, merging & innovation 

• Assess applications technically (technical fit, debt, risk) to feed rationalization decisions. 

• Design and lead solutions for merging overlapping applications, re-platforming (e.g., containerization on Kubernetes, serverless), upgrades (.NET Framework to .NET 8, Java versions) and SaaS migration. 

• Build automation: self-healing scripts, synthetic monitoring, automated health checks, CI/CD improvements, AI-assisted triage. 

• Evaluate and pilot new tools and GenAI capabilities that reduce support effort. 

Team leadership 

• Mentor engineers, drive cross-skilling so each engineer can support multiple applications. 

• Plan work allocation, on-call rotas and technical capacity for the cluster. 

Required qualifications & skills 

• Strong hands-on background in one or more of: .NET/.NET Core, Java, PHP, JavaScript (Angular/React). 

• Solid cloud experience on AWS (EC2, ECS/EKS, Lambda, RDS, S3, CloudWatch); GCP or Azure a plus. 

• Databases: SQL Server, MySQL, MongoDB – query tuning and troubleshooting. 

• Experience with Kubernetes/containers, CI/CD (GitHub/GitLab/Azure DevOps/Jenkins) and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform/CloudFormation). 

• Proven delivery of application modernization or consolidation projects. 

• Strong RCA/problem management skills and ITIL-aligned ways of working in ServiceNow. 

Nice to have 

• AWS Solutions Architect / Kubernetes (CKA/CKAD) certifications. 

• Experience with integrations/APIs, middleware, SaaS platforms (e.g., Shopify, DocuSign) and COTS. 

• Observability (Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic, Splunk) and scripting (Python, PowerShell, Bash). 

• Experience taking over applications from another vendor. 

Core competencies 

• Ownership mindset and calm under pressure in high-impact incidents. 

• Fast learner able to support many applications with varied technologies. 

• Clear written and verbal communication in English with business and technical stakeholders. 

• Continuous-improvement and automation-first thinking.