Purpose
The Support Team Lead is accountable for the effective delivery of platform support services within their assigned platform. The role leads a team of Support Engineers, owns the day-to-day triage and resolution of platform support tickets, and drives continuous improvement in service quality and SLA performance.
The Support Team Lead acts as the primary escalation point within the support team, the key liaison between support and engineering, and the face of platform support to business stakeholders. This role operates within DMGE's agile framework and participates in relevant ceremonies to ensure support workloads are visible, prioritised and continuously improving.
This role is generic across all platforms. Where platform-specific nuances apply, these should be documented in platform-level addenda.
Responsibilities
- Lead and facilitate the daily triage process, ensuring all incoming support tickets are assessed, categorised, and prioritised in a timely manner within JIRA Service Desk.
- Manage the support team's workload and allocation across the platform support queue, ensuring balanced distribution and appropriate coverage.
- Act as the primary escalation point within the support team for complex, high-priority, or sensitive issues.
- Ensure clear and consistently followed escalation pathways to the Engineering Lead when issues require engineering intervention or platform backlog prioritisation.
- Oversee the triage of change requests from business stakeholders, routing items appropriately to the support backlog or engineering team.
- Monitor the support queue to identify emerging patterns, recurring incidents, and systemic issues that warrant engineering attention.
- Own and monitor SLA performance across the platform support queue, ensuring agreed response and resolution targets are consistently met.
- Produce regular reporting on support metrics (ticket volumes, resolution times, SLA adherence, backlog age) for the Platform Director.
- Identify and drive service improvement initiatives based on ticket trend analysis and team feedback.
- Ensure all tickets are accurately recorded, categorised, and closed in JIRA Service Desk to support reliable reporting and audit trails.
- Continuously seek to reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR) and improve first-contact resolution rates.
- Provide line management for Support Engineers, including regular one-to-one meetings, performance feedback, and career development support.
- Lead onboarding and upskilling of new Support Engineers, ensuring they have the platform knowledge and tooling access required to be effective.
- Set clear expectations for the support team around quality standards, responsiveness, communication, and customer experience.
- Foster a culture of continuous improvement, knowledge sharing, and accountability within the support team.
- Act as a role model for professional, empathetic, and effective support practice.
- Participate in relevant sprint ceremonies including sprint planning, sprint reviews, and retrospectives, representing the support function.
- Collaborate closely with the Engineering Lead to ensure support issues requiring engineering work are captured and appropriately prioritised in the platform backlog.
- Work with the Product Owner to ensure support-driven change requests are backlogged correctly and aligned to platform priorities.
- Contribute support insights (ticket trends, recurring issues, user pain points) to the Product Owner and Platform Director to inform roadmap decisions.
- Attend and contribute to the daily triage ceremony, ensuring cross-functional visibility of support priorities.
- Maintain and continuously improve the support team's knowledge base, ensuring common issues, workarounds, and resolution steps are documented and accessible.
- Ensure the team follows documentation standards for ticket resolution notes, enabling accurate reporting and knowledge transfer.
- Contribute to end-user and platform documentation where the support team holds unique operational knowledge.
- Ensure knowledge base articles are reviewed and kept up to date, particularly following platform releases or significant changes.
- Act as the primary support contact for business stakeholders using the platform, ensuring timely and professional communication on open incidents and requests.
- Communicate service updates, known issues, and resolution timelines proactively to affected stakeholders.
- Liaise with platform vendors and suppliers on support-related matters, managing escalations where third-party involvement is required.
- Maintain strong relationships with platform business owners and Platform Owners to understand service expectations and prioritise accordingly.
Decisions
In this role I take decisions on:
- Day-to-day prioritisation and assignment of tickets within the support queue
- When to escalate issues to the Engineering Lead versus resolving within the support team
- Support team workload management and task allocation
- Team-level SLA exceptions and communication to stakeholders
- Knowledge base content creation and retirement
- Support CoE — on SLA standards, service improvement priorities, and cross-platform support consistency
- Platform Director — on platform-level operational issues, resource requirements, and escalated stakeholder concerns
- Engineering Lead — on technical escalations and backlog prioritisation of support-driven items
- Product Owner — on the triage and backlog prioritisation of change requests
Recurring tasks
In this role I take care of:
- Daily triage session facilitation (JIRA Service Desk queue review and ticket assignment)
- Weekly SLA and support metrics reporting to the Platform Director
- One-to-one meetings with Support Engineers (at least fortnightly)
- Sprint planning, sprint review, and retrospective participation
- Knowledge base review and maintenance (at least monthly)
- Regular stakeholder updates on open incidents and service status
- Change request triage and routing to the appropriate backlog
Key Relationships
- Platform Director (line manager)
- Support CoE (functional governance)
- Support Engineers (direct reports)
- Engineering Lead (escalation and backlog collaboration)
- Product Owner (change request triage and roadmap input)
- Business stakeholders using the platform
- Other Support Team Leads across DMGE platforms
- Platform vendors and suppliers
- Third-party support providers (where applicable)
Approach to decision-making
My approach to decision-making is centred on service quality, team effectiveness, and continuous improvement. When support issues arise, I aim to resolve them quickly and well, using the team's knowledge and escalating promptly when issues exceed our capability.
For prioritisation decisions, I balance urgency, business impact, and SLA commitments. I make these decisions transparently, communicating trade-offs clearly to stakeholders and the team. For escalation decisions, I err on the side of earlier escalation to the Engineering Lead to prevent SLA breaches or stakeholder dissatisfaction.
When engaging with business stakeholders, I communicate openly about timelines, known issues, and constraints, building trust through honesty and consistency rather than over-promising.