Application Support Lead

We are a world class research-intensive university. We deliver teaching and learning of the highest quality. We play a leading role in economic, social and cultural development of the North East of England. Attracting and retaining high-calibre people is fundamental to our continued success.

The Role
As a senior technical leader in the Application Support Team, you will be the primary technical authority and a proactive driver of service excellence across our diverse application landscape. You will take end to end ownership of multi-platform systems, actively pinpointing areas for continuous improvement and setting technical standards. In addition to delivering resilient services and advising University stakeholders, you will lead new application hosting and mentor team members to build capability across the service.

The Application Support Team consists of 10 people with a broad set of skills, with diverse interests, and experiences. We support roughly 60 services, made up of about 80 applications across Windows, Linux, Azure and SaaS platforms. Our support ranges from building management systems to core teaching and learning services.

To succeed in this role, you should have experience in the following areas:

• Multi-Platform & Cloud Troubleshooting: Expert level root cause analysis and diagnosis across Windows Server, Linux (RHEL and other distributions), Azure, and SaaS environments hosting mission critical services.
• Database Administration & Data Integrity: Advanced, hands-on database management skills across SQL Server, MySQL, and MariaDB, including query optimization, maintenance, data integrity, and disaster recovery.
• ITIL Frameworks & Service Governance: Strong discipline and complete comfort working within structured ITIL processes. Highly proactive with change management, problem management, incident escalation, and diligent ticket documentation.
• Major Incident & Technical Leadership: Proven ability to oversee high-priority incidents from a technical standpoint, coordinating resolver groups and guiding subject matter experts, with the hands-on capability to step in directly whenever necessary.
• Application Onboarding & Lifecycle Management: Extensive experience taking complex corporate applications from requirements and hosting architecture through to live production, support standards, and staff training.
• Adaptive Mentoring & Team Development: Ability to tailor your coaching and leadership style to individual team members, instilling technical confidence, encouraging knowledge sharing, and building team capability.
• High Capacity & Stakeholder Advisory: Strong ability to absorb vast amounts of system knowledge quickly, balance multiple operational priorities simultaneously, and communicate complex technical concepts clearly to non-technical stakeholders.

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