Director, of Application Support

Versant Health•Troy, NY

About The Position

The Director of Application Support leads the operational stability, performance, and health of enterprise applications across production, pre‑production, and test environments. This role is the owner of Tier 2 application support and ensures timely incident response, proactive issue prevention, and efficient remediation of system disruptions. The Director establishes and operates the enterprise Application Support function, serving as the primary escalation point between the IT Service Desk and other teams, including Software Engineering, Infrastructure, Security, etc. The Director partners closely with development, infrastructure, vendors, and business teams to optimize application reliability, ensure seamless business operations, and continuously enhance support processes and documentation. This role has authority to define application support standards, escalation models, and operational metrics across the supported application portfolio.

Requirements

Deep understanding of enterprise application ecosystems, system architecture, and infrastructure dependencies, including SaaS platforms and internally developed applications.
Demonstrated ability to build and scale Tier 2 application or production support organizations in complex enterprise environments.
Strong service ownership mindset, balancing customer experience, operational stability, and engineering partnership.
Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to non‑technical audiences.
Exceptional verbal and written communication skills.
Strong listening skills, patience, and customer‑service orientation.
Proven ability to manage conflict, build consensus, and guide cross‑functional teams through complex problem‑solving.
Critical thinking with strong analytical and investigative skills.
Ability to remain calm under pressure and meet deadlines during high‑severity incidents.
Strategic decision‑making aligned with organizational policies and regulatory requirements.
Ability to rapidly assess issues, prioritize response, and coordinate across technical and business stakeholders.
IT, Computing, Studies, Information Systems, Business Administration, or related field Experience in enterprise application environments, including experience leading or building application support, production support, or SRE-adjacent teams supporting both SaaS and custom-developed applications.
All Associates must comply with the Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) as it pertains to disclosures of protected health information (PHI) as described in the Notice of Privacy Practices and HIPAA Privacy Policies and Procedures.
As a component of job roles and responsibilities, Associates may have access to covered information, cardholder data or other confidential customer information which must be always protected.
As a result, Associates must explicitly adhere to all data security guidelines established within the Company’s Privacy & Security Training Program.

Responsibilities

Lead, mentor, train, and develop team members across the application support and technology stack.
Design, build, and scale the Application Support organization, including intake models, triage standards, escalation paths, service ownership, and analyst skill development.
Establish clear roles, responsibilities, and career progression for Application Support staff.
Monitor the overall performance, functional health, and stability of production, pre‑production, and test environments for all supported applications.
Serve as the accountable owner for Tier 2 application support outcomes, including escalation quality, mean time to resolution (MTTR), repeat incident reduction, and customer experience.
Define and enforce clear boundaries between Tier 2 Application Support responsibilities and other teams such as Software Engineering, Infrastructure, etc.
Lead incident management across all supported systems, ensuring investigation, root‑cause analysis, remediation, accurate escalation to other teams when appropriate, and responsible communication.
Partner with development, engineering, and infrastructure teams to enhance system performance, reliability, and operational maturity, while maintaining clear ownership boundaries between support and engineering functions.
Collaborate closely with software and hardware vendors; coordinate troubleshooting, escalate issues, and ensure timely resolution.
Act as an escalation arbiter when responsibility, ownership, or prioritization conflicts arise across technical teams.
Develop, maintain, and enforce documentation, runbooks, and standard operating procedures for application support.
Review application logic, configuration, logs, data flows, and integration behavior to identify functional defects, misconfigurations, or performance bottlenecks, escalating true code defects to engineering teams with clear reproduction steps and impact analysis.
Develop and execute complex queries across large datasets to support impact analysis, data reconciliation, auditing, and validation tasks.
Design and govern the Application Support on-call model and participate directly during organizational build-out, major incidents, or periods of elevated operational risk.
Monitor key processes, integrations, and reports for custom applications to proactively identify anomalies or failures.
Perform routine system configuration changes, environment updates, and maintenance activities within defined Application Support boundaries and approved change processes.
Conduct trend analysis and monitor performance metrics to identify recurring issues, improvement opportunities, or emerging risks.
Participate actively in business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) testing and preparedness efforts.
Ensure applications meet defined operational readiness and supportability standards prior to production releases.
Create reports and dashboards for business and technology stakeholders.
Define, track, and report key application support KPIs, including MTTR, escalation accuracy, repeat incident rates, and application health indicators.
Oversee the full incident lifecycle, ensuring proper documentation, communication, and closure in systems of record.
Conduct trend analysis on incidents and problems to identify systemic issues and drive preventative remediation.
Drive operational excellence by identifying, proposing, and implementing process improvements and automation opportunities.
Own and evolve application support tooling, workflows, and alerting to improve signal quality and reduce operational noise.