Summary
The Head of Application IT Service Operations is responsible for the end-to-end stability, performance, and continuous improvement of the organization's business-critical applications in production. This role owns the operational lifecycle of applications post-go-live — incident, problem, and change management — ensuring service levels are met, risks are proactively managed, and the application landscape supports business objectives reliably and efficiently.
This is a senior leadership role that bridges business stakeholders, application development/vendor teams, and infrastructure operations to deliver a seamless, high-quality service experience.
Responsibilities
Service Operations & Delivery
- Own overall accountability for application availability, performance, and stability across the enterprise application portfolio (ERP, CRM, FP&A/CPM, and other line-of-business systems)
- Establish and manage IT Service Management (ITSM) processes: incident, problem, change, release, and configuration management ,aligned to ITIL best practices
- Define, track, and report on SLAs/OLAs/KPIs with application vendors, managed service providers, and internal teams
- Drive root-cause analysis and permanent resolution for recurring or high-severity incidents
Team & Vendor Leadership
- Build, lead, and develop a high-performing application support organization (internal staff and outsourced/managed service partners)
- Manage relationships with internal and external application vendors and system integrators, including contract performance, escalations, and roadmap alignment
- Establish an effective on-call/escalation model for24x7 critical application support where required
Governance, Risk & Compliance
- Ensure application operations comply with relevant regulatory, data residency, security, and audit requirements
- Own disaster recovery and business continuity planning for in-scope applications, including regular DR testing
- Maintain application support documentation, run books, and knowledge management standards
Continuous Improvement & Strategy
- Drive automation and self-service initiatives to reduce manual effort and improve mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR)
- Partner with Application Development/Delivery teams to ensure smooth transition of new releases and projects into steady-state operations (hypercare-to-BAU handover)
- Monitor emerging trends in AIOps, observability, and service management tooling, recommending adoption where it improves service quality
- Manage the application operations budget, including licensing, support contracts, and tooling costs
Stakeholder Management
- Act as the primary escalation point for business stakeholders on application service issues
- Provide regular service performance reporting to senior leadership (steering committees, IT leadership team)
- Chair or contribute to Change Advisory Board (CAB) meetings
Requirement
- Degree / Master in Information Technology, Computer Science, or related field;
- 12+ years of progressive IT experience, with 5+ years in a leadership role managing application support/service operations teams
- Proven experience managing production support for large-scale enterprise applications (e.g., ERP such as SAP, CRM, financial planning/CPM platforms, or similar)
- Strong knowledge of ITIL framework (ITIL v4 certification preferred)
- Demonstrated experience managing outsourced/managed service provider relationships and contracts
- Experience with ITSM tooling (ServiceNow, BMC Remedy, Jira Service Management, or similar)
- Track record of managing 24x7 support operations and major incident management
- Experience operating in a regulated or enterprise environment with data residency/compliance requirements is a plus
- Strong leadership and people management skills, with experience building and scaling teams
- Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, able to translate technical issues for business and executive audiences
- Vendor and contract management expertise
- Certifications: ITIL v4, PMP, or Six Sigma is a plus
- Experience with cloud-hosted and hybrid application environments is preferred
- Familiarity with AIOps/observability tools (Dynatrace, Splunk, Datadog, etc.) is an added advantage
- Experience in [industry-specific — e.g., financial services, manufacturing, retail] is advantageous
- Able to commute for work daily.
- - Work Location: 60 Pioneer Road, Tuas
- - Work Days & Time : Monday to Friday, 8am - 5.30pm