Support Lead

Project overview

This contract role is an Application Support Lead position responsible for the day-to-day stability and availability of critical business applications, while leading L2/L3 support operations and coordinating with development, infrastructure, vendors, and business stakeholders. The core requirements are 10–12+ years of application or production support experience, ITIL-based incident/problem/change/release practices, major-incident leadership, SQL troubleshooting, Linux/Unix and scripting, modern application architecture, cloud support, monitoring/observability, and ITSM tooling.

Agile/Scrum and CI/CD exposure are preferred, as are Hospital Information Systems (HIS) experience and familiarity with the iMED product domain. The description asks for 10–12+ years, while the structured input specifies 10–14 years; this analysis preserves both as a range to verify during screening. The location is Bonn, Germany, the employment type is contract, and no onsite, hybrid, or remote work arrangement is specified.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and guide a team of Level 2 (L2) and Level 3 (L3) support engineers, fostering a collaborative, customer-centric culture.
• Manage shift schedules, on-call rotations, and resource allocation to ensure 24/7/365 or follow-the-sun operational coverage where required.
• Set clear performance objectives, conduct regular 1-on-1s, and support technical upskilling and career development for team members.
• Manage vendor and partner relationships for third-party tools, applications, or outsourced support tiers.
• Serve as an escalation point for critical (Severity 1 / Severity 2) application issues and service outages.
• Facilitate crisis calls and bridge communications during outages, coordinating with infrastructure, DevOps, development, and external vendors to expedite restoration.
• Deliver timely and professional stakeholder communication to business executives, internal users, and end customers during major incidents.
• Ensure strict adherence to defined Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Operational Level Agreements (OLAs).
• Lead thorough post-incident reviews (PIRs) and root cause investigations for recurring or critical defects.
• Partner with product and software development teams to prioritize permanent bug fixes, code enhancements, and tech-debt remediation in development backlogs.
• Identify operational bottlenecks and implement preventative measures to reduce ticket volume and recurrence.
• Participate in Change Advisory Board (CAB) reviews to evaluate the operational risks of proposed software releases, system patches, and infrastructure updates.

Requirements

• 10–12+ years of hands-on application support, production support, or IT service operations experience
• Team leadership for L2/L3 support and operational coverage
• Incident and major-incident management, escalation coordination, and SLA/OLA adherence
• ITIL incident, problem, change, and release management knowledge
• Problem management, post-incident reviews, and root cause analysis
• Complex SQL querying and optimization for relational database troubleshooting
• Linux/Unix shell familiarity and scripting with Bash, Python, or PowerShell
• Working knowledge of multi-tier web architectures, microservices, REST/SOAP APIs, message queues, and network protocols
• Experience supporting applications in cloud environments
• Hands-on application monitoring, alerting, and logging
• Proficiency with enterprise ITSM or ticketing tools

Project details

• Start: flexible
• Remote: hybrid
• Location: Germany, DE