Application Production Support Specialist

Job Summary / About the Role

Client is seeking a technically strong and self-sufficient Tier 1 Application Production Support Specialist to provide 24x7 support for critical enterprise integration, messaging, and event-driven applications. This is not a pure monitoring or escalation role. The ideal candidate is expected to independently identify root causes, apply fixes, and resolve the majority of incidents without Tier 2 involvement. Tier 2 is engaged only for complex or architectural issues that go beyond Tier 1 resolution scope. The candidate must have solid working knowledge of the full technology stack and the ability to triage, diagnose, and remediate issues end-to-end.

Key Responsibilities

- Provide 24x7 support for incidents, alerts, and operational issues with a strong bias towards independent identification and resolution.

- Triage and diagnose incidents using logs, monitoring dashboards, and platform knowledge; resolve issues directly without defaulting to escalation.

- Engage Tier 2 only when incidents involve architectural complexity, infrastructure-level failures, or changes beyond Tier 1 resolution authority.

- Support client-submitted iTrack incident tickets and maintain end-to-end ticket ownership including resolution and closure.

- Respond to PagerDuty and automated alerts; validate, investigate, and remediate before escalating.

- Monitor production and non-production environment health; proactively identify anomalies and take corrective action.

- Monitor application support mailboxes and manage operational follow-through.

- Provide C2W emergency support as the first responder; independently handle and resolve wherever possible.

- Share client profile data and usage reports on request.

- Maintain clear incident communication to clients even when Tier 2 is engaged.

- Track and report operational metrics including MTTR and ticket resolution trends.

- Develop and maintain Tier 1 SOPs and operational runbooks based on real resolution patterns.

Required Qualifications / Must-Have Skills

- 4+ years of experience in application production support with a strong track record of independently diagnosing and resolving incidents.

- Solid working knowledge of the full technology stack in scope including event streaming platforms, integration middleware, AKS-hosted microservices, and observability tooling.

- Hands-on experience with incident lifecycle management in ticketing systems (iTrack or equivalent), including root cause identification and resolution documentation.

- Proficient with Splunk, PagerDuty, Prometheus, and Grafana for active troubleshooting and issue resolution, not just monitoring.

- Hands-on operational experience with Kubernetes, especially Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), including pod-level diagnostics, restarts, and health investigation.

- Practical working knowledge of Confluent Kafka and Azure Event Hub: consumer lag analysis, topic health checks, and message flow troubleshooting.

- Solid SQL/Postgres skills for data-level investigation and validation during incidents.

- Working ability to read and interpret Java, Spring Boot, and React application logs for issue identification.

- Basic Python scripting capability for operational checks and quick-fix automation.

- Good Linux/Unix command-line skills for real-time log analysis and system diagnostics.

- Strong written and verbal communication skills for incident updates, resolution documentation, and client coordination.

- Willingness to work in rotational 24x7 shifts.

Good-to-Have / Nice-to-Have

- Awareness of hybrid streaming ecosystems including Confluent Cloud, AWS-MSK, and Apache Flink.

- Exposure to IBM Sterling Integrator integration flows for context during incident triage.

- Telecom or high-availability enterprise support experience.

- Experience with CI/CD-driven deployment pipelines in a support context.