Associate Director - Production Support

Location: Hyderabad

Experience: 18+ Years

Employment Type: Full-time

Function: Technology / IT Operations / Application Production Support

Job Summary:

We are looking for an experienced Associate Director - Production Support to lead enterprise application production support and operational governance across Tier 1 and Tier 2 digital platforms.

The role will be responsible for defining and executing the offshore production support strategy, driving application stability and resilience, leading major incident management, and ensuring operational excellence across a highly interconnected digital ecosystem.

The successful candidate will lead a Hyderabad-based organization comprising FTEs, contractors, and strategic partners, while partnering with engineering, SRE, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and business stakeholders to improve service reliability, reduce operational risk, and accelerate AI and automation-led transformation.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Production Support Leadership & Operational Governance:

- Define and execute the offshore production support strategy and target operating model across enterprise digital platforms.

- Establish governance frameworks, service standards, decision rights, risk controls, and executive review mechanisms.

- Drive portfolio-level objectives and performance measures covering availability, resilience, customer experience, regulatory compliance, and SLA attainment.

- Lead cross-platform prioritization and investment decisions based on business impact, operational risk, capacity, and modernization priorities.

- Provide executive-level accountability for service health, operational risks, and transformation outcomes.

2. Major Incident & Problem Management:

- Provide leadership and decision-making oversight for L1.5, L2, and L3 production incidents, ensuring timely impact assessment, escalation, communication, and recovery.

- Establish and govern an integrated major incident, problem, and crisis management framework across application, infrastructure, security, vendor, and business teams.

- Drive effective root cause analysis (RCA), permanent corrective actions, and closure of systemic issues.

- Lead reliability reviews to identify recurring incidents, operational risks, concentration risks, and critical dependencies.

- Ensure high-severity incidents are managed with clear ownership, mitigation plans, and timely executive communication.

3. Team Leadership & Delivery Management:

- Build and lead a multi-platform production support organization comprising Hyderabad-based FTEs, contractors, and strategic partners.

- Define organizational structures, leadership roles, workforce strategy, and sourcing models to deliver resilient 24x7 support.

- Develop leadership capability through succession planning, coaching, and targeted technical and operational development.

- Establish outcome-based accountability across teams, fostering ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

- Own workforce capacity planning, financial stewardship, vendor performance, and operational readiness for business-critical applications.

4. AI, Automation & Operational Modernization:

- Define and execute the AI, automation, observability, and operational modernization roadmap for L2 production support.

- Sponsor initiatives such as intelligent incident triage, event correlation, predictive detection, automated remediation, and self-healing operations.

- Partner with engineering, SRE, architecture, data, cybersecurity, and platform teams to embed reliability and operational readiness into the delivery lifecycle.

- Establish measurable outcomes across incident prevention, MTTR reduction, automation adoption, productivity, service quality, and cost efficiency.

- Promote responsible AI adoption, operational controls, risk management, and sustainable support practices.

5. Stakeholder & Vendor Management:

- Act as the senior offshore partner and escalation point for onshore technology and business leaders, product teams, SRE, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and strategic vendors.

- Translate business priorities and customer impact into operational strategy, investment proposals, and transformation roadmaps.

- Lead executive service reviews covering performance, risks, capacity, financials, transformation progress, and decisions required.

- Influence cross-functional teams to resolve systemic dependencies and improve business-critical digital journeys.

- Own strategic vendor and partner governance, including service quality, commercial performance, accountability, and continuous value improvement.

Required Qualifications & Experience:

- 18+ years of experience in Application Production Support, IT Operations, Application Operations, or related technology operations functions.

- Minimum 10 years of experience in a leadership role managing large-scale production support or application operations teams.

- Strong experience supporting large-scale digital platforms, including web, mobile, APIs, or enterprise applications in a 24x7 environment.

- Proven expertise in Major Incident Management, Problem Management, cross-functional escalation, and executive stakeholder communications.

- Experience managing offshore delivery organizations comprising FTEs, contractors, and strategic partners.

- Strong understanding of ITIL, SRE, operational excellence, service reliability, and production support governance.

- Demonstrated ability to drive operational performance, service stability, risk management, and continuous improvement.

- Strong executive communication, decision-making, and leadership skills.

Preferred Qualifications:

- Experience supporting healthcare, financial services, or other regulated digital platforms.

- Exposure to AI-driven operations, AIOps, automation, and L2/L3 operational efficiency initiatives.

- Familiarity with observability, monitoring, APM, and ITSM platforms such as ServiceNow.

- Experience implementing automated remediation, event correlation, predictive monitoring, or self-healing capabilities.

- Experience managing large-scale technology transformation and operational modernization programs.