Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Operations Support Team Leader

🎯 Role Definition

The Operations Support Team Leader is a hands-on frontline leader responsible for driving operational excellence across support, incident response, and service delivery functions. This role combines people leadership, SLA and KPI ownership, real-time incident and escalation management, and continuous process improvement to ensure reliable, scalable operations. The ideal candidate is experienced with ticketing systems, workforce scheduling, root cause analysis, and coaching high-performing teams to meet business and customer outcomes.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Operations Support Specialist / Analyst
Customer Support Supervisor
IT Support Analyst / Incident Coordinator

Advancement To:

Operations Manager / Senior Operations Manager
Service Delivery Manager / Head of Support
Global Support Lead / Director of Operations

Lateral Moves:

Workforce Planning Manager
Quality & Process Improvement Lead
Change & Release Coordinator

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Lead a team of operations support agents and first/second-line engineers, providing daily coaching, performance feedback, 1:1 development plans, and career growth guidance to achieve SLA and quality targets.
Own end-to-end incident management for complex service disruptions by orchestrating cross-functional response, ensuring timely triage, categorization, and escalation to engineering and product teams until resolution.
Manage and optimize SLA, KPI, and performance reporting (MTTR, MTBF, SLA compliance, queue age) to provide executive-ready dashboards and drive data-driven improvements.
Design, maintain, and enforce standard operating procedures (SOPs), runbooks, and escalation matrices to reduce resolution time and ensure consistent, auditable operational practices.
Drive root cause analysis (RCA) and post-incident reviews, coordinating corrective actions and tracking remediation to closure to prevent recurrence and improve system reliability.
Act as the escalation point for customer-impacting events and high-priority tickets; communicate status, impact, and mitigation plans clearly to stakeholders and customers.
Implement and manage workforce planning, shift rotas, on-call schedules, capacity forecasting, and holiday coverage to maintain uninterrupted service delivery and meet peak demand.
Improve first-contact resolution and reduce backlog by introducing targeted coaching, quality assurance checks, and knowledge base enhancements for agents.
Collaborate with product, engineering, and site reliability teams to identify systemic issues, prioritize fixes, and shape roadmaps that reduce operational toil and drive automation.
Oversee ticket and queue management in enterprise ticketing systems (e.g., ServiceNow, JIRA, Zendesk), ensuring SLAs are met and escalations are recorded and handled according to policy.
Lead continuous improvement initiatives (Lean, Six Sigma principles) to streamline processes, reduce handoffs, and eliminate waste across incident and support workflows.
Monitor and manage operational budgets, vendor performance, and third-party support agreements to ensure cost-effective and reliable external services.
Create and deliver training programs, onboarding curricula, and knowledge transfer sessions to continuously elevate team capability and reduce knowledge silos.
Facilitate regular stakeholder reviews, operational business reviews (OBRs), and weekly incident summaries to provide transparency and align priorities across functions.
Drive quality assurance and compliance by conducting audits of tickets, communications, and process adherence to maintain regulatory and contractual standards.
Coordinate change and release activities with change management teams to ensure safe deployments, minimize service interruptions, and validate rollback procedures.
Champion automation and tooling improvements (scripts, macros, automated workflows) to reduce manual, repeatable tasks and accelerate mean time to resolution (MTTR).
Manage customer communications during incidents and planned maintenance, ensuring timely, accurate, and empathetic updates that protect customer trust and satisfaction.
Use operational metrics and trend analysis to proactively identify capacity constraints, recurring incidents, and opportunities to optimize platform performance and cost.
Recruit, onboard, and retain high-performing talent by defining role expectations, conducting structured interviews, and developing succession plans to ensure team resilience.
Establish and enforce quality standards for incident tickets, including clear problem descriptions, reproducible steps, and actionable owner assignments to accelerate handoffs.
Support business continuity and disaster recovery planning by participating in tabletop exercises, validating runbooks, and ensuring team readiness for major incidents.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
Maintain and improve internal knowledge base articles and documentation for common incident scenarios and fixes.
Provide input into tooling procurement and evaluate operational software that improves ticketing, monitoring, and reporting capabilities.
Support internal audits and prepare operational evidence for compliance reviews and customer SLA audits.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Incident Management and Escalation: demonstrated experience owning major incidents, incident lifecycle management, and post-incident RCA.
Ticketing Systems Administration: proficiency with ServiceNow, Jira Service Management, Zendesk, or similar platforms for queue, SLA, and workflow management.
SLA / KPI Ownership: proven ability to define, measure, and drive performance against SLAs (MTTR, MTTA, resolution SLA) and operational KPIs.
Root Cause Analysis & Problem Management: structured RCA experience and tracking remediation with corrective/preventative action plans.
Workforce Management & Scheduling: capacity planning, shift design, on-call rotations, and forecasting to meet coverage requirements.
Process Improvement & Automation: experience applying Lean/Six Sigma concepts, building automation (scripts, macros, orchestration) to reduce manual work.
Data Analysis & Reporting: strong Excel, SQL, or BI tool skills to generate trend analysis, dashboards, and executive reporting.
Change & Release Coordination: knowledge of change management practices and staging deployments to minimize operational risk.
Monitoring & Observability Tools: familiarity with monitoring stacks (Datadog, New Relic, Prometheus) or logging tools to interpret alerts and escalate appropriately.
Quality Assurance & Compliance: ability to run QA checks, audits, and ensure operational processes comply with internal and external standards.
Basic Scripting / Automation (preferred): experience with Python, PowerShell, or scripting to implement simples automations and integrations.

Soft Skills

Leadership & Coaching: ability to inspire, develop, and hold the team accountable while creating a high-trust, high-performance culture.
Communication & Stakeholder Management: clear, concise status updates for technical and non-technical stakeholders; skilled at managing customer communications during incidents.
Problem Solving & Decision Making: judgment to prioritize actions under pressure and make trade-offs that balance risk and speed.
Collaborative Mindset: works cross-functionally to remove blockers, influence without authority, and align priorities.
Time Management & Prioritization: manage multiple competing issues, ensuring focus on highest-impact work that preserves service levels.
Resilience & Stress Management: maintain calm and lead effectively during high-severity incidents and operational pressure.
Empathy & Customer Orientation: commitment to customer experience, ability to communicate with empathy and urgency in customer-facing situations.
Attention to Detail: strong documentation hygiene and insistence on reproducible ticketing and handoff standards.
Continuous Learning: eagerness to learn new tools, processes, and best practices to keep operations modern and efficient.
Conflict Resolution: ability to mediate disputes, resolve escalations, and align teams on corrective actions.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field; OR equivalent practical experience in operations/support leadership.

Preferred Education:

Bachelor's degree plus relevant certifications such as ITIL Foundation, Lean Six Sigma (Yellow/Green Belt), PMP or Scrum certifications.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Business Administration / Operations Management
Information Technology / Computer Science
Engineering (Industrial, Systems, Software)
Data Analytics / Business Intelligence

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

3–8 years of progressive experience in operations, technical support, or incident management roles with at least 1–3 years in a supervisory or team lead capacity.

Preferred:

5+ years leading operational support teams in a 24/7 or high-throughput environment, proven track record of managing SLAs, major incidents, and continuous improvement programs.