Application Support Lead (L3 / Production Support)

Job Title: Application Support Lead (L3 / Production Support)

Role Summary

We are seeking a proactive and ownership-driven Application Support Lead, to oversee

production stability, incident management, and continuous improvement for enterprise

applications. This role goes beyond traditional support—focusing on preventing issues,

driving root cause resolution, and improving system reliability across the application

landscape.

The ideal candidate brings strong production support experience, solid SQL and

application troubleshooting skills, and a mindset centered on operational excellence

and business continuity.

Key Responsibilities

Production Stability & Ownership

• Own end-to-end health and stability of critical applications in production

• Monitor system performance, batch jobs, and integrations proactively

• Identify risks and prevent incidents before they occur

Incident & Problem Management

• Lead L2/L3 incident triage, troubleshooting, and resolution

• Drive war rooms for high-severity incidents (P1/P2)

• Perform detailed Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and ensure permanent fixes

• Reduce recurrence through systematic improvements

Monitoring & Observability

• Leverage tools (Splunk, App Insights, Dynatrace, etc.) for: 

o Log analysis

o Performance monitoring

o Trend identification

• Enhance alerting mechanisms to improve signal vs noise

• Build dashboards for real-time system visibility

Application & Data Troubleshooting

• Debug issues across: 

o .NET applications / APIs

o Batch processes (SSIS or equivalent)

o Database layers

• Use SQL to: 

o Analyze data issues

o Support reconciliation scenarios

o Validate system behavior

Continuous Improvement & Automation

• Identify opportunities to automate repetitive support tasks

• Develop and maintain runbooks/playbooks

• Improve MTTR, incident trends, and support efficiency

Release & Environment Management

• Support production deployments and post-release validation

• Perform smoke testing and environment sanity checks

• Ensure stability across environments and dependency systems

Cross-Team Coordination

• Collaborate with Development, Infrastructure, DB, and Vendor teams

• Own issues end-to-end and drive closure across teams

• Act as a bridge between technical teams and business stakeholders

Stakeholder Communication

• Provide clear, concise updates during incidents

• Translate technical issues into business impact

• Present RCA findings and improvement plans to leadership

Required Skills & Experience

Core Skills (Must-Have)

• Strong production support (L2/L3) experience

• Excellent incident management and RCA skills

• Solid SQL querying and data analysis capabilities

• Experience with monitoring/logging tools (e.g., Splunk, Dynatrace, App Insights)

• Working knowledge of: 

o .NET applications / APIs

o Batch processing (SSIS or similar)

Behavioral & Leadership Skills

• Strong ownership mindset (thinks beyond tickets)

• Highly proactive in identifying and mitigating risks

• Excellent communication and stakeholder management

• Ability to lead incident bridges and coordinate multi-team resolution

Nice-to-Have

• Exposure to automation scripting (PowerShell, Python)

• Knowledge of ITIL processes

• Experience in healthcare payer or similar domain

• Familiarity with cloud environments (Azure preferred)

Success Metrics (What Good Looks Like)

• Reduction in incident recurrence

• Improved MTTR (Mean Time to Resolve)

• Increased monitoring coverage & alert effectiveness

• Stable production releases with minimal post-release issues

• Strong stakeholder confidence and communication

Experience

• 10+ years in application/production support

• Prior experience in lead or senior support role preferred

Important Note:

This role is not ticket-driven support. It is focused on ownership, reliability engineering,

and proactive problem solving, ensuring long-term stability and continuous improvement

of production systems.