Director, Application Support

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

• Execute and operationalize the vision, strategy, and operating model for Application Support as defined by the Sr Director, Support Excellence, translating them into concrete goals, priorities, and expectations for managers and their teams.
• Translate strategy into clear annual/quarterly priorities, metrics, and execution plans for Application Support managers and their teams.
• Own department-level KPIs for Application Support (e.g., FRT, backlog age, SEV MTTR, CSAT/CES) and run regular business reviews to track performance and drive decisions.
• Lead, develop, and mentor front-line Application Support Managers, building a strong bench of people leaders.
• Set clear expectations for managers around queue management, communication standards, coaching, and performance accountability.
• Drive consistent people leadership practices (1:1s, team meetings, performance management, recognition, succession planning) across all Application Support teams.
• Partner with HR/People teams on hiring, workforce planning, and career pathways for Application Support (IC and leadership tracks).
• Establish and enforce standard operating rhythms for Application Support managers (daily queue reviews, SLA monitoring, SEV reviews, backlog hygiene).
• Use data to proactively identify risks, trends, and bottlenecks and hold managers accountable for remediation plans.
• Govern ticket quality and communication standards within Application Support, ensuring consistent client-ready updates and documentation across teams, in alignment with Support Excellence frameworks.
• Oversee on-call and incident coverage models for Application Support, ensuring sustainable rotations and clear ownership for after-hours support.
• Serve as the escalation point for complex or strategic client issues owned by Application Support, supporting managers in de-escalation and communication.
• Ensure Application Support managers and teams follow a disciplined SEV process, including timely engagement, clear roles, and executive-ready status updates, in alignment with global incident governance.
• Drive post-incident reviews across Application Support, ensuring learnings translate into durable changes in process, tooling, or product.
• Partner with Client Care, CSMs, and Support Escalation Managers to ensure coordinated engagement for red or at-risk accounts that rely on Application Support.
• Represent Application Support in cross-functional forums (Product, Engineering, Release Management, InfoSec, Client Care) to align on priorities and trade-offs.
• Influence roadmaps, defect prioritization, and release readiness based on Application Support data and client impact, providing domain-level input into the governance led by Support Excellence.
• Help define and enforce governance for ticket flow across Delivery, Support, and other teams from an Application Support perspective, minimizing “ping-pong” and ownership gaps.
• Ensure Application Support practices align with corporate policies, security, and regulatory expectations, especially for financial services clients.
• Provide clear, timely communication to internal and executive stakeholders around major incidents, emerging risks, and support trends within Application Support.
• Contribute to client-facing narratives about Application Support performance, improvements, and commitments, partnering with CXG leadership as needed.

Required Knowledge, Skills, & Qualifications

• Proven success leading leaders in a technical support or operations environment, ideally across distributed/remote teams.
• Deep understanding of B2B application support for n-tier, API-driven, or cloud architectures (e.g., C#, SQL Server, IIS, web services/APIs).
• Strong experience with incident management and crisis leadership, including executive-level communication.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, comfortable operating with executives and strategic clients.
• Experience with ServiceNow (or similar ITSM/Ticketing platforms) and Jira/Confluence or equivalent tools, specifically in the context of running Application Support.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity, balance short-term fire-fighting with long-term improvements, and lead teams through change.