Director - Application Support and Site Reliability Engineering

JRD Systems; Southfield (MI); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

JRD Systems is seeking a Director of Application Support and Site Reliability Engineering to lead a global team ensuring the operational health of 50+ business-critical applications and middleware. You will own uptime, performance, and resilience against strict targets and drive permanent fixes for recurring issues.

You will partner with infrastructure, cloud, network, and security teams to design for resilience, modernize integration, and manage third-party vendors within formal service

Qualifications

• Proven leadership of enterprise application and production support teams.
• Experience managing business-critical apps in complex environments.
• Strong incident/problem/change/release and service management practices.

Responsibilities

• Lead a global team of engineers responsible for 50+ business-critical applications and middleware.
• Own uptime and performance targets and drive root-cause resolution.
• Create scalable support models, runbooks, and escalation paths.

Skills

Leadership

Incident management

Vendor management

SRE

Stakeholder management

Executive communication

People leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

ITIL knowledge

Monitoring tools

Job description

Job Role: Director - Application Support and Site Reliability Engineering

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the global team of 12 engineers responsible for the operational health of 50+ business-critical applications, middleware platforms, and third-party products.
• Own uptime, performance, and resilience against targets of 99.9-99.95%, and drive root cause resolution when targets are missed.
• Build support models, escalation paths, and runbooks that scale as the application portfolio grows.
• Lead major incident response and turn recurring issues into permanent fixes rather than repeat tickets.
• Ensure new systems and releases are genuinely production-ready before they land in support.

2. Middleware & Integration Engineering

• Lead operational support for middleware, integration platforms, and interfaces connecting the application portfolio.
• Keep middleware environments secure, monitored, and performant through patching, upgrades, and capacity planning.
• Partner with infrastructure, cloud, network, and security teams to design for resilience and fast recovery.
• Modernize integration architecture over time, reducing fragility and technical debt in how systems communicate.

3. Third-Party Product & Vendor Partnership

• Own the relationship and performance of externally supplied applications, SaaS products, and middleware vendors.
• Hold vendors accountable to SLAs and resolution targets, and escalate firmly when service quality slips.
• Shape vendor selection, onboarding, renewal, and exit decisions.
• Ensure third-party products are woven into the team's support and security practices from day one.

4. Resilience & Continuous Improvement

• Define the KPIs and dashboards that show the team, and leadership, how the portfolio is actually performing.
• Get ahead of operational and supplier risk before it becomes an incident.
• Run post-incident and problem-management reviews that produce real fixes, not just documentation.
• Lead modernization initiatives, including cloud adoption, platform rationalization, and support model redesign.
• Build and grow a high-performing global team of 12 engineers: hire well, coach directly, and create real paths for advancement.
• Set clear expectations and give direct, useful feedback.
• Design coverage and on-call models that are sustainable, not merely compliant.
• Build a culture where engineers own outcomes and want to solve hard problems, not just close tickets.

6. Stakeholder Partnership & Communication

• Build trusted relationships with business leaders, engineering, architecture, cybersecurity, and vendors.
• Translate technical issues into business impact for senior leadership, clearly and without spin.
• Represent the team in governance and planning forums, and bring outside perspective back to the team.

Knowledge, Skills, and Experience

• Significant experience leading enterprise application support, production support, middleware operations, or related technology service teams, ideally at global scale.
• Track record leading teams responsible for business-critical applications and platforms in a complex environment.
• Strong grounding in incident, problem, change, release, and service management practices.
• Experience managing third-party vendors and externally supplied technology within formal service frameworks.
• Sound judgment on operational risk, control design, and resiliency.
• Experience leading major incident response and driving stabilization.
• Strong stakeholder management across business and technology functions.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including executive-level reporting.
• Proven people leadership: hiring, coaching, performance management, and team growth.

Preferred

• Experience in a regulated, high-availability, or global enterprise environment.
• Familiarity with middleware and integration technologies such as APIs, message brokers, ESBs, application servers, iPaaS platforms, or comparable technologies.
• Experience supporting hybrid environments spanning on-premise and cloud-based application estates.
• Knowledge of service monitoring, observability, automation, and operational tooling.
• Experience with vendor contracts, commercial support models, and cost management.
• ITIL certification or equivalent practical service management experience.
• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.