Director, Technical Support

This role will manage the production support team which consists of on-shore and off-shore members who work 24/7/365 to provide level 1 and level 2 support as well as level 3 software maintenance for API’s customer facing applications. This role requires a leader who is comfortable supporting the team during on/off hours, including weekends/holidays if necessary. This role must continuously strive to improve the support process, the team’s efficiency, the time to closure for issues, and the overall team’s knowledge of the underlying products so the team can independently resolve issues.

The role will act as an incident manager within the engineering team to ensure incidents are declared, worked by the appropriate team members, escalated when necessary, followed through to completion and documented. This role will operate together with the designated infrastructure incident manager, when necessary, to ensure all joint engineering and infrastructure incidents are appropriately handled.
This role will actively work with the development tech leads and QA leader to expose commonly seen deficiencies within the software and help to prioritize their resolution.
The role also involves participating in high level architectural design and solutioning sessions with technical leads, architects, and other members of the engineering teams.
This role must have strong conceptualization and communication skills in order to synthesize and convince teams of the approaches and tools in improving the overall process of production support and the response back to our customers, both internal to API and external.

Essential Functions

Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• Effectively manage the local and the offshore production support team.
• Manage software development maintenance team.
• Manage and refine ticket tracking system and associated processes to drive continuous improvement of service levels, support responsiveness, ticket categorization and resolution time and associated client satisfaction levels.
• Refine and publish support metrics including responsiveness, resolution time, escalation tracking.
• Manage root cause analysis process, corrective actions and preventative action plans.
• Work with product management, quality engineering, and program management to define, estimate level of effort, and prioritize production issues.
• Partner with the IT Operations team to ensure Service Level Agreement (SLA) requirements are met.
• Work with Product and Technology management to handle software licensing, budgeting, and vendor management.
• Develop a high degree of product knowledge and subject matter expertise.
• Adjust priorities and realign activities to manage unexpected changes.
• Provide feedback to the team to help to enhance manual and automated tests for issues found in production.
• Guide the team on various processes and procedures that enhance productivity.
• Review functional and design specifications to ensure full understanding of individual deliverables.

Competencies

• Management: Experience in managing onshore and offshore support and development engineers, project plans, schedules, and milestones.
• Solution-driven attitude. Understands systems impact and long- term effects of decisions/solutions on business case and customer commitments.
• Experienced agile project planning, scheduling, and tracking of software development and testing process. Disciplined to create business cases when resources are needed.
• Ability to manage and resolve complex and ambiguous issues.
• Self-managed proactive work style.
• Demonstrated track record of making sound management decisions to meet stringent deadlines.
• Experience leading geographically separated teams, a must.
• Experience managing a 24/7/365 support organization, a must.
• Experience managing a budget and software licenses.
• Communication Skills: Outstanding verbal/written communication and interpersonal skills are a must to address issues with both internal and external users.
• Strong skills in presenting technical concepts in technical and non- technical settings.

Technologies
Familiarity with the following technologies is a plus: Java/Spring/hibernate, C#/WSF/WCF/ASP.NET, HTML, CSS, Android/iOS, SQL, Relational/Document/Graph Stores, NoSQL, ETL, RESTful Web Services, SaaS, PaaS.
Supervisory Responsibility
This position has supervisory responsibilities
Travel
This position is expected to travel up to 10%
Required Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s Degree (Computer Science and/or Information Systems).
• Advanced degree a plus.
• 7+ years of experience in managing/leading Technical Support teams.
• 5 years of agile project management experience.
• Desirable experience includes:
• airline/hotel industry experience/knowledge, support process expertise (ITIL, others)

Reasonable Accommodation for Individuals with Disabilities
It is API’s policy to provide reasonable accommodation for qualified individuals with disabilities. If you require assistance or accommodation for any part of the employment process due to a disability, please contact the Human Resources Department at hr.recruiter@apihotels.com to be directed accordingly.

Who We Are

API is the global leader for crew accommodation solutions, and we are changing the way businesses manage travel. Our technology platform streamlines the entire crew planning process, making day-to-day operations more efficient and elevating the crew layover experience. API’s proprietary technology, mobile solutions and our experienced team are positioned to offer our clients a complete, end-to-end platform that integrates seamlessly into their process. We are looking for dynamic, creative, and tech savvy individuals to join our team. If you are passionate about hard work, providing impeccable service, technology, and solutions to our clients then API may be a great fit for you!

Other Duties

Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time according to business needs.

Work Environment

This position operates in a professional office environment. This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, filing cabinets and fax machines.

Physical Demands

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to talk or hear. The employee frequently is required to stand, walk; use hands to finger, handle or feel; and reach with hands and arms.

AAP/EEO Statement

Accommodations Plus International is an Equal Opportunity Employer that does not discriminate on the basis of actual or perceived race, creed, color, religion, alienage or national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, age, disability or handicap, sex, marital status, veteran status, sexual orientation, genetic information, arrest record, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state or local laws. Our management team is dedicated to this policy with respect to recruitment, hiring, placement, promotion, transfer, training, compensation, benefits, employee activities and general treatment during employment.

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