Application Support Manager

Role purpose

Own the end-to-end delivery of application support for hundreds of applications, lead the transition of the application to new teams and run a lean, automation-driven support organization that continuously reduces effort through modern ization, cons oli dation and in novation.

Key responsibilities

Transition & takeover

- Plan and lead the  t ransition : due diligence, knowledge transfer, shadow and reverse-shadow phases, readiness gates and go-live sign-off.

- Define the target operating model for the new teams , application clustering by portfolio/technology, and coverage model (L2/L3, on-call, follow-the-sun if needed).

- Identify and mitigate transition risks, especially for the Critical/High applications

- Ensure complete knowledge capture: runbooks, architecture views, SOPs, access, credentials handover and CMDB data quality.

Service delivery & governance

- Own SLAs/KPIs (MTTR, backlog, SLA adherence, first-time fix, CSAT) and lead monthly service reviews and QBRs with client stakeholders.

- Run ITIL processes: incident, problem, change, release, knowledge and major-incident management.

- Manage ~14,400 tickets/year with a smaller team through demand reduction, problem elimination and shift-left .

- Manage budget, capacity planning, contractor onboarding and performance within the commercial envelope.

Incident, defect & task management

- Run day-to-day management of incidents, defects and client-created tasks in ServiceNow/Jira: assignment, prioritization, SLA tracking and closure quality.

- Run daily stand-ups/triage with the Tech Lead and align the backlog priorities agreed with the client via the Service Client Manager.

- Balance capacity between break-fix, defect resolution and client task delivery; flag capacity risks early.

- Own problem management so recurring incidents become permanent fixes.

Modernization, merging & innovation

- Partner with portfolio owners on application rationalization

- Build a roadmap for consolidation/merging of overlapping applications, decommissioning and cloud/SaaS modernization.

- Drive automation (self-healing, monitoring, AIOps, GenAI/Copilot-assisted support) to deliver measurable FTE and cost reduction year on year.

- Present business cases for modernization initiatives with clear ROI and risk.

People leadership

- Hire and onboard the team including Tech leads and core/key team members

- Lead, coach and grow Tech Leads and engineers; build a multi-skilled, cross-trained team that can cover many applications.

- Foster a culture of ownership, continuous improvement and knowledge sharing.

Required qualifications & skills

- Proven track record leading application support, including the transition/takeover.

- Strong ITIL v4 knowledge and hands-on ServiceNow (or similar ITSM) experience.

- Experience running lean, outcome-based support models and achieving productivity gains through automation.

- Good understanding of cloud-hosted application landscapes (AWS primary; GCP/Azure a plus ), SaaS and COTS.

- Experience with application portfolio rationalization (Gartner TIME or similar) and modernization programs.

- Excellent stakeholder management, executive communication and commercial awareness (budgets, SOWs, SLAs).

Nice to have

- ITIL v4 Managing Professional, PMP/PRINCE2, AWS certification.

- Experience in media, music or entertainment (royalties, rights, metadata, supply chain, D2C).

- Exposure to AIOps, observability platforms (Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk) and GenAI for support.

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.