- Company Name
- Softwire
- Job Title
- Application Support Lead (Fixed Term Contract)
- Job Description
-
Application Support Lead – (12-month Fixed term contract)
About Softwire
Softwire is one of the UK’s leading digital technology consultancies, offering services in software engineering, design, innovation, cloud, mobile and data. We deliver high-profile and cutting-edge digital projects for household names across the public and private sectors.
Softwire was founded on one simple idea: if we can create the best possible culture and working environment then everything else will fall into place. And it seems to be working – We’ve been voted as the number 1 company to work for in the UK at the Best Company awards for the last two years, and we have a loyal and growing client base who trust us with their hardest problems and their mission critical projects.
Summary
We’re looking for an Application Support Manager to take ownership of improving and maturing our Managed Service offering and the teams responsible for client application support. This role is a critical leadership position that will drive the evolution of our support operations, ensuring they align with industry best practices and deliver outstanding service to our clients.
We provide a supportive environment with a strong focus on individual career progression, where you will have the mentorship and project opportunities needed to develop your technical leadership skills.
As Application Support Manager, you will be responsible for the success and continual improvement of our managed service offering and the clients it serves. You will define standards, improve processes, and drive a more proactive and automated approach to support.
Key Responsibilities
Client Relationship Management
- Serve as the primary point of contact for multiple clients, ensuring their needs are met and relationships are effectively managed.
- Act as a trusted advisor to clients, understanding their business needs and driving improvements in service delivery.
- Work closely with Delivery Directors, Principals, and Client Directors to align support strategies with broader client account goals.
- Shape the commercial approach for managed services, including defining SLAs, OLAs, and contractual agreements to ensure client satisfaction and commercial viability.
Managed Service Development & Process Maturity
- Define and standardize ways of working for managed services, aligning with industry best practices (ITIL, SRE, DevOps).
- Drive process maturity, automation adoption, and efficiency improvements within support teams.
- Develop and expand the managed service offering to ensure scalability, resilience, and proactive support methodologies.
- Establish key metrics and reporting structures to track and improve service performance over time.
Operations & Incident Management
- Oversee 24x7 operations, ensuring smooth service delivery and management of high-traffic, critical applications.
- Act as the Incident Manager during critical issues, leading urgent triage and bug management to ensure quick resolution.
- Implement incident response playbooks, observability strategies, and automation-first approaches to reduce manual effort and increase service resilience.
- Collaborate with development teams to drive root cause analysis and long-term remediation of recurring issues.
Onboarding & Continuous Support
- Oversee seamless onboarding of new clients into the managed service function, ensuring efficient transition into ongoing support.
- Drive continuous service improvements for existing clients, proactively identifying opportunities for optimization and increased automation.
- Ensure client satisfaction by actively managing issues and enhancing the quality of service delivery.
Delivery Oversight & Commercials
- Define and manage support agreements, SLAs, and reporting structures to ensure transparency and accountability.
- Monitor costs, timelines, and resource allocation to ensure services remain commercially viable and effectively delivered.
- Work with finance and leadership teams to optimize pricing models and cost efficiency.
- Implement performance tracking metrics to drive accountability within teams.
Building a High-Performing Team
- Build and mentor a high-performing support team, fostering a culture of continuous learning, knowledge sharing, and innovation.
- Support engineers in adopting an SRE mindset, leveraging observability, proactive monitoring, and automation-driven problem resolution.
- Drive a culture of collaboration and excellence, ensuring the team can take ownership of service delivery and process improvements.
- Encourage upskilling and professional development to keep the team aligned with emerging industry trends.
Experience & Qualifications
Technical Expertise
- 5+ years of experience in a technical support, software engineering, or SRE-related role.
- Strong breadth and depth of technical knowledge across front-end, back-end, and infrastructure.
- Experience solving complex technical challenges and supporting full-stack applications.
- Ability to quickly become effective in unfamiliar tech stacks and novel situations.
- Understanding of best practices in technical architecture, service management, 24x7 operations, and client support.
- Familiarity with monitoring, observability, and incident management tools (e.g., Datadog, New Relic, Prometheus, Grafana, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, ServiceNow).
People & Leadership Skills
- Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
- Strong client-facing experience, with the ability to engage effectively and build trust.
- Comfortable coaching teams, handling performance conversations, and developing individuals.
- Experience working with senior internal stakeholders and contributing to bids and pitches for managed service offerings.
Approach & Mindset
- Passionate about leveraging technology to deliver outstanding client outcomes.
- Focused on efficiency, automation, and service excellence.
- Comfortable in fast-paced, changing environments and able to work with ambiguity.
- Outcome-driven and proactive, with a track record of driving service maturity and continuous improvement.
Desirable Experience
- Experience transforming support functions from a reactive to proactive service.
- ITIL certification or strong knowledge of ITIL and SRE best practices.
- Exposure to multi-region, nearshore, and onshore support operations.
- Experience structuring commercial agreements and pricing models for support and managed services.
- Strong understanding of DevOps and automation principles.
What We Offer
Softwire operates transparent pay scales and a profit share scheme based on role and overall company performance.
Base salary is based on experience and ranges from £66,700 - £82,400
You can expect to receive an average of between £8,500 and £21,750 in profit share depending on your experience and company performance
Pension: Additional 5% of salary
25 days annual leave (with the option to buy and sell)
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