Manager Application Development Support

The IT Customer Support Manager leads a technical support team responsible for supporting enterprise software applications and the underlying environments in which they operate. This role combines people leadership, customer service management, application troubleshooting, and hands-on technical problem solving.

The Manager will oversee day-to-day support operations, ensure customer issues are addressed within established service commitments, maintain a high standard of case quality, and serve as an escalation point for complex or business-critical incidents. The environment includes Windows-based systems, enterprise applications, databases, and modern infrastructure and deployment technologies, requiring a leader who is comfortable working across both application and systems layers.

This position is particularly well suited for someone who has supported government, defense, or other highly regulated customers, where security, documentation, change control, communication, and operational discipline are critical.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

Team Leadership & Support Operations

• Lead and develop a team of application support engineers, help desk analysts, and technical support professionals.
• Manage daily support operations, including case assignment, prioritization, escalation, workload balancing, and resolution quality.
• Conduct regular one-on-one meetings, provide coaching and performance feedback, and support employee development.
• Participate in recruiting, interviewing, onboarding, and training new support team members.
• Establish clear expectations for case ownership, customer communication, technical documentation, and follow-through.
• Monitor service levels, response times, resolution trends, backlog, and other support performance indicators.
• Identify recurring support issues and recommend improvements to processes, training, tooling, or product functionality.

Technical Application Support

• Provide technical leadership during the investigation and resolution of complex application and infrastructure-related issues.
• Support enterprise applications operating primarily within Microsoft Windows Server environments.
• Troubleshoot application behavior across services, databases, operating systems, networking, authentication, and related infrastructure components.
• Analyze application, system, and database logs to isolate root causes and identify patterns contributing to recurring incidents.
• Use SQL to investigate application data, validate system behavior, assist with troubleshooting, and support issue resolution.
• Develop or utilize PowerShell, Python, batch, or other scripting tools to gather diagnostic information, automate repetitive support tasks, and accelerate troubleshooting.
• Work with engineering and infrastructure teams when issues require deeper product, code, database, or platform investigation.
• Support application deployments, upgrades, configuration changes, patches, and production maintenance activities.

Infrastructure & DevOps Collaboration

• Work effectively within environments utilizing modern infrastructure automation and container technologies.
• Assist with troubleshooting systems deployed through technologies such as Ansible, Kubernetes, containers, and automated deployment pipelines.
• Partner with DevOps, engineering, systems administration, database, and security teams to resolve issues that cross traditional technical boundaries.
• Understand dependencies between applications and the infrastructure supporting them, including Windows services, networking, databases, authentication, storage, and containerized services.
• Support continuous improvement initiatives designed to make deployments, diagnostics, monitoring, and support processes more reliable and repeatable.

Customer & Incident Management

• Serve as a senior escalation point for critical, high-impact, or technically complex customer issues.
• Coordinate technical resources during major incidents and maintain clear communication with customers and internal stakeholders through resolution.
• Build strong working relationships with customer technical teams, administrators, project managers, and leadership.
• Support customers operating in federal government, Department of Defense, defense contractor, classified, or similarly controlled environments.
• Ensure sensitive customer issues are handled in accordance with applicable security, access, documentation, and communication requirements.
• Participate in customer reviews and provide clear explanations of technical issues, root causes, corrective actions, and preventative measures.

Service Management & Continuous Improvement

• Apply ITIL-based service management practices across incident, problem, change, and knowledge management activities.
• Ensure support cases contain accurate troubleshooting history, technical findings, customer communication, and resolution documentation.
• Lead root cause analysis for significant or recurring incidents and ensure corrective actions are tracked through completion.
• Maintain and improve knowledge base articles, troubleshooting procedures, escalation paths, and standard operating procedures.
• Analyze support data to identify trends, recurring failure points, training needs, and opportunities for automation.
• Partner with leadership to improve support processes, tools, service delivery standards, and overall customer experience.

Qualifications

• 7 years of experience in technical support, application support, systems support, help desk, or related IT operations, including experience leading or supervising technical personnel.
• Strong background supporting enterprise software applications in production environments.
• Demonstrated experience managing technical support queues, escalations, priorities, and service-level commitments.
• Strong knowledge of Windows Server and Microsoft-based enterprise environments.
• Experience troubleshooting applications involving databases, services, networking, authentication, and infrastructure dependencies.
• Working knowledge of SQL for application troubleshooting, data investigation, and issue diagnosis.
• Experience reviewing and interpreting application, operating system, database, and infrastructure logs.
• Experience using scripting or automation to assist with diagnostics and operational support.
• Familiarity with Ansible, Kubernetes, containerization, configuration management, CI/CD, or comparable DevOps technologies.
• Understanding of ITIL principles and service management practices, particularly Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, and Knowledge Management.
• Experience supporting federal government, DoD, defense, classified, or highly regulated customers strongly preferred.
• Experience operating within environments requiring formal security controls, change management, documentation, and access restrictions is highly desirable.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to communicate effectively with technical teams, customers, and senior leadership.
• Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills with the ability to remain organized and effective during high-priority incidents.

Preferred Qualifications

• ITIL Foundation or higher-level ITIL certification.
• Experience supporting on-premises, cloud-hosted, and/or containerized enterprise applications.
• Experience with PowerShell, Python, or similar scripting technologies.
• Familiarity with monitoring, logging, ticketing, or observability platforms.
• Experience with SQL Server and Microsoft enterprise technologies.
• Prior experience working with software development, DevOps, infrastructure, or product engineering teams.
• Experience supporting mission-critical applications with defined SLAs and formal escalation procedures.
• Experience supporting customers subject to federal cybersecurity, compliance, or controlled-environment requirements.

Ideal Candidate

The ideal candidate is a technical support leader rather than a traditional call-center manager. They are capable of managing people and customer expectations while still understanding the technology deeply enough to lead troubleshooting efforts, challenge assumptions, interpret logs and system behavior, and coordinate effectively with engineers.

They will be comfortable operating between customer support, application support, systems administration, and DevOps, and will bring the structure and professionalism required to support demanding enterprise and government customers.