Senior Manager - Application Operations

About Rasan

Our journey began in 2016 when we realized the burning needs of KSA’s insurance sector. To fulfil the unmet needs in the market, we had to disrupt legacy approaches with technology needed for a digital age. Today, we are market leaders, committed to improving digital experiences for thousands of people and businesses every single day.

Job Summary

The Senior Manager – Application Operations is responsible for ensuring the stability, availability, performance, and continuous improvement of enterprise applications that support critical business operations. This role leads application operations, release management, monitoring, incident resolution, and operational excellence initiatives while partnering closely with development, infrastructure, security, and business teams. The position plays a key role in driving reliable service delivery, operational efficiency, and scalable application support through automation, observability, and best practices.

Job Objectives

• Maintain application availability and operational reliability by achieving defined service level targets and minimizing business disruption
• Ensure successful and timely deployment of application releases with minimal production incidents and rollback events.
• Improve application performance and operational efficiency through proactive monitoring, automation, and process optimization.
• Reduce incident resolution times and recurring issues through effective root cause analysis and preventive actions.
• Establish and maintain comprehensive operational documentation, runbooks, and knowledge management practices.
• Ensure applications comply with organizational security, networking, and governance standards.
• Foster strong collaboration between application operations, development, infrastructure, and security teams to support business objectives.

Job Responsibilities

Application Operations & Service Reliability:

• Lead the day-to-day operational management of multiple business-critical applications.
• Ensure high application availability, reliability, and performance in accordance with service level agreements (SLAs).
• Monitor application health, system performance, and operational metrics to proactively identify and resolve issues.
• Manage incident, problem, and escalation processes, ensuring timely resolution of production issues.
• Conduct root cause analysis for major incidents and implement corrective and preventive actions.
• Coordinate application support activities across internal teams and external vendors where applicable.

Release Management & Deployment Operations:

• Oversee application deployment activities across development, testing, staging, and production environments.
• Plan, coordinate, and execute software releases, updates, patches, and enhancements in collaboration with development teams.
• Manage release schedules, environment readiness, deployment validation, and rollback procedures.
• Drive adoption of deployment automation and CI/CD practices to improve release quality and efficiency.
• Ensure post-deployment monitoring and validation activities are completed successfully.
• Establish release governance standards and deployment best practices.

Monitoring, Performance & Operational Excellence:

• Implement and manage monitoring, logging, and observability solutions to maintain operational visibility.
• Analyze application performance trends and implement optimization initiatives.
• Utilize Application Performance Management (APM) tools to identify bottlenecks and improve user experience.
• Lead continuous improvement initiatives focused on operational workflows, automation, and service quality.
• Develop and maintain operational dashboards, KPIs, and reporting mechanisms.
• Evaluate and introduce new tools and technologies that enhance operational effectiveness.

Governance, Security & Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with security, infrastructure, and network teams to ensure compliance with security and regulatory requirements.
• Ensure application environments adhere to organizational standards for access control, networking, and data protection.
• Develop and maintain operational documentation, including runbooks, standard operating procedures, system configurations, and troubleshooting guides.
• Provide operational readiness reviews for new applications, enhancements, and technology implementations.
• Support audits, risk assessments, and compliance activities related to application operations.
• Mentor and guide operational teams, promoting best practices and knowledge sharing.

Job Requirements:

Educational Qualification

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field.

Previous Work Experience

• 6+ years of experience in Site Reliability engineering filed or IT Infrastructure.
• Experience implementing and managing CI/CD pipelines using tools such as GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or equivalent.
• Experience with containerization and orchestration technologies including Docker and Kubernetes.
• Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
• Knowledge of DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) practices.

Skills and Abilities

• Knowledge of leading operational teams in fast-paced, high-availability environments.
• Programming and scripting experience in Python, Java, Shell Scripting, or similar technologies.
• knowledge with Application Performance Management (APM) tools such as New Relic, Dynatrace, AppDynamics, or Datadog.
• Relevant certifications in cloud, DevOps, IT service management, or application operations disciplines.