Application Support Lead

This occupation is found in the IT teams of a variety of different types of organisations where software applications are inextricably part of the client/customer product/service delivery model and their clients/customers are generally, but not exclusively, business customers; these include but are not limited to law firms, accountancy firms, financial services organisations, technology providers and public sector.

The broad purpose of the occupation is to provide tactical advice, training and support on core technology applications (both hardware and software) to internal colleagues and external clients and customers to enhance and enable the delivery of application-based products and services. This includes any IT based environment providing a customer-facing service such as websites and mobile applications. An application support lead  delivers the roll-out of upgrades to existing technologies, implement new technologies for use by colleagues and provide change management support to them. They will implement and operate a support desk function. They assist with the planning of IT application and infrastructure change projects, implementing, testing and rolling out software and hardware relating to these change projects. They will build, implement and support the creation of remote working environments and collaborative working platforms for colleagues and external clients and customers.

In their daily work, an employee in this occupation interacts with senior stakeholders directly, both internally and externally, and as part of both the ‘front of house’ external client/customer facing team and the ‘back of house’ internal delivery team alongside, for example, learning and development and business information services colleagues. They report to IT service delivery leads but are expected to prioritise their workload and act without supervision or approval of their day-to-day work product.

An employee in this occupation will be responsible for their own workload and will be expected to problem solve and prioritise independently. They will deliver a ‘first line fix’ service in many cases to both internal colleagues and external clients and customers. They will maintain ownership of issues (vis-a-vis the internal user/external client) even where elements are escalated to subject matter experts.