Johannesburg: Production Support Manager posted by iOCO Digital Pty Lty

The Production Support Manager is responsible for leading and managing the team that ensures the stability, performance, and availability of all production software applications and systems. This role is a critical link between development, operations, and the business, focusing on swift incident resolution, effective problem management, continuous service improvement, and maintaining high levels of service for customers and internal stakeholders.

What you’ll do:

• Leadership & Management

  • Lead, mentor, and manage a team of Production Support Analysts and Engineers, fostering a high-performance, customer-focused, and collaborative culture.
  • Manage team resources, schedules, and on-call rotations (including 24/7/365 coverage) to ensure adequate support and coverage for all critical systems.
  • Set performance goals, conduct reviews, and manage professional development for team members.
  • Manage relationships with external vendors, outsourced support partners, and internal cross-functional teams (Development, QA, Infrastructure, etc.).

• Incident, Problem, and Change Management

  • Oversee the Incident Management process, ensuring timely identification, triage, escalation, communication, and resolution of production issues and outages.
  • Act as the Major Incident Manager during critical system failures, coordinating all necessary teams and communications until resolution.
  • Drive the Problem Management process, including leading and performing Root Cause Analysis (RCA) for all significant incidents, documenting findings, and ensuring preventative measures are implemented by the appropriate teams.
  • Ensure adherence to Change Management policies for all production system changes, updates, and releases, minimizing risk to the live environment.
  • Develop, refine, and enforce production support processes and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) in alignment with ITIL best practices.

• System Monitoring & Service Improvement

  • Establish, monitor, and report on key service metrics (KPIs) and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) such as Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR), system availability, and incident volume.
  • Oversee and manage system monitoring, alerting, and logging tools to proactively identify and address potential system health and performance issues.
  • Collaborate with Development/Engineering teams to improve the supportability, resiliency, and performance of applications.
  • Drive continuous service improvement by identifying and implementing automation opportunities for routine support tasks, monitoring, and problem resolution.

• Stakeholder Communication & Documentation

  • Provide timely, clear, and professional communication of system status, outages, and resolutions to business stakeholders, executive leadership, and customers.
  • Oversee the creation, maintenance, and distribution of comprehensive operational documentation, knowledge base articles, and runbooks.

Your Expertise:

• Minimum of 5+ years of experience in a technical support, application support, or production operations role within a software-driven environment.
• Minimum of 2-3 years of proven experience leading, managing, and mentoring a Production Support or Technical Support team.
• Proven experience managing critical incidents, coordinating technical teams, and providing executive-level status updates.
• Demonstrated experience with the full Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and deployment processes.
• Proven experience is Agile and Scrum methodologies including KanBan

Qualifications:

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• ITIL Foundation Certification is highly desirable.