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 modernization, consolidation and innovation.

Key responsibilities

• Transition & takeover
• Plan and lead the transition: 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.