Application Decommissioning Lead

Job Title: Application Decommissioning Lead

Location: Glasgow, Scotland

Setup: Hybrid (3-4 days in office per week initially for workshops, reducing as the project matures)

Contract Length: 4 Months (with scope to extend)

Start Date: ASAP

IR35: Outside

Interview Process: 1 Stage, MS Teams

We are supporting a client in hiring an Application Decommissioning Lead, to lead and coordinate application decommissioning discovery activities, acting as the end-to-end discovery orchestrator across Application, Infrastructure, Network, Database, Security, Integration and Operations workstreams.

This is a hands-on discovery and strategy role, requiring strong experience of application decommissioning, retirement, rationalisation or technology modernisation programmes. The successful candidate will define information requirements and assessment templates, build and maintain an integrated Dependency Register, define decommissioning Runbooks, and produce the consolidated Assessment Report and supporting Discovery deliverables.

This role suits an experienced technology consultant comfortable facilitating technical workshops across multiple SME groups, reconciling conflicting information, and translating complex, cross-functional dependencies into a clear, executable decommissioning roadmap.

Key Responsibilities

• Define information requirements and assessment templates for each workstream
• Develop and maintain an integrated Dependency Register
• Define a Runbook template for decommissioning, covering Application, Infrastructure, Network, Database, Security, Integration and Operations workstreams, alongside governance approval and backup requirements
• Challenge and reconcile conflicting information received from different SME groups
• Define the recommended decommissioning approach for each application
• Identify prerequisites, sequencing considerations and key activities required for execution
• Develop a high-level decommissioning roadmap and execution strategy
• Review and update the decommissioning strategy, including governance model, RACI, approval gates and success criteria
• Produce the consolidated Assessment Report and supporting Discovery deliverables
• Support development of the Decommissioning Entry Criteria Checklist

Essential Skills

• 15+ years of experience in application/technology consulting, application rationalisation, transformation or IT service management
• Proven experience in application decommissioning, retirement, rationalisation or technology modernisation programmes
• Experience facilitating technical workshops with multiple SME groups, alongside strong stakeholder management and communication skills
• Strong understanding of enterprise application landscapes and dependencies
• Experience working across Application, Infrastructure, Network, Database, Security and Operations teams
• Strong understanding of Java/web applications, APIs and integrations, databases and batch processing
• Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure, network dependencies, IAM/AD and certificates
• Strong understanding of monitoring and operational tooling
• Experience with application dependency mapping and impact assessment