Job Description:
A Service Delivery Leader (SDL) is responsible for end-to-end service delivery for application support, platform operations, and production support environments. This role ensures SLA adherence, operational stability, incident/problem management, proactive monitoring, and continuous service improvement across business-critical systems.
The SDM acts as the primary interface between clients, engineering teams, platform operations, and third-party vendors while driving operational excellence using ITIL best practices, monitoring tools, and automation.
Experience: 15+ Years
Key Responsibilities
Technical Skills & Requirements:
- Service Delivery & Operations Management
- Own and govern end-to-end service delivery for application support and platform operations.
- Ensure compliance with SLAs, OLAs, KPIs, and contractual commitments.
- Drive 24x7 production support models for mission-critical applications.
- Conduct regular service reviews, operational dashboards, and executive reporting.
- Act as an escalation point for major service-impacting issues.
- Application Support & Production Support
- Manage L2/L3 application support teams across multiple business applications.
- Oversee incident, problem, and change management processes.
- Ensure swift root cause analysis (RCA) and preventive corrective actions.
- Support production releases, hotfixes, and emergency changes.
- Coordinate war rooms for critical incidents and major outages.
- Platform Operations
- Manage operations of platforms such as cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP), middleware, databases, and DevOps toolchains.
- Ensure platform availability, performance, scalability, and security.
- Collaborate with SRE, infrastructure, and DevOps teams to improve reliability.
- Govern capacity planning, patching, backup, DR, and resilience strategies.
- Monitoring, Observability & Automation
- Implement and optimize monitoring and observability tools, including:
- Splunk
- Dynatrace
- AppDynamics
- Prometheus & Grafana
- ELK Stack
- New Relic
- Drive shift-left and shift-right operational practices.
- Improve MTTR, MTTD, and system availability using proactive alerting.
- Lead automation initiatives using scripts, runbooks, and AIOps tools.
- Stakeholder & Client Management
- Serve as the trusted partner for clients and internal business stakeholders.
- Facilitate governance meetings, service reviews, and operational planning.
- Manage vendor performance and third-party service providers.
- Translate business requirements into operational delivery models.
- Continuous Improvement & Governance
- Drive ITIL-based continual service improvement (CSI) initiatives.
- Improve process efficiency through standardization and automation.
- Ensure compliance with audit, security, and regulatory requirements.
- Mentor and develop service delivery and operations teams.
Key Responsibilities:
- Strong understanding of application support, production support, and platform operations
- Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS/Azure/GCP)
- Hands-on exposure to monitoring and observability tools
- Knowledge of DevOps, CI/CD pipelines, and SRE principles
- Familiarity with ITSM tools such as ServiceNow, BMC Remedy, or Jira Service Management
- Tools & Technologies:
- Service Delivery & Operations Leadership
- End-to-End Service Delivery Management (ADM & Support), Application Support (L2/L3) & Production Operations, SLA / KPI / SLO Governance, Major Incident & Escalation Management, Risk, Issue & Dependency Management, Transition & Transformation Management, Cost, Budget & Resource Management, Continuous Service Improvement (CSI)
- SRE Mindset & Reliability Engineering (Mandatory Exposure)
- Service Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles, Availability, Reliability, Scalability & Performance management, MTTR / MTTD / Error Budget awareness, Root Cause Analysis (RCA) & Problem Management, Proactive Monitoring & Incident Prevention, Automation-first mindset for support operations, Post-release Hypercare & Production Stabilization
- Client & Stakeholder Management
- Client Engagement & Relationship Management, Executive Communication & Escalation Handling, Quarterly / Monthly Business Reviews (QBRs / MBRs), CSAT Management & Service Reporting, Vendor & Third-Party Coordination
- Agile & Delivery Methodologies
- Agile / Scrum / SAFe / Kanban, Hybrid Delivery Models (Agile + ITIL), Sprint Planning, Backlog Grooming, Release Management, DevOps & SRE Collaboration Models
- Application & Platform Knowledge
- Java & J2EE Applications, Microservices Architecture (REST-based systems), Application Lifecycle Management (SDLC / ALM)
- Cloud Platforms: AWS / Azure / GCP (Ops & Support view)
- Production Support for Cloud & Hybrid Environments
Preferred Skills:
- Experience: 15+ years in program or delivery management roles within IT services.
- Technical Skills: Deep knowledge of Java technologies, microservices, application lifecycle management, and cloud infrastructure.
- Agile Proficiency: Extensive experience with Agile delivery practices.
- Soft Skills: Strong leadership, communication, negotiation, and conflict resolution skills.
