Associate Director - Production Support

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.