Team Lead, Engineering

Role Overview The Shift Lead is a senior member of the Central Support Team and is responsible for overseeing the smooth operation of a four‑person shift supporting a wide range of bespoke applications and services used across Worldpanel by Numerator. Each shift consists of one Shift Lead and three 2nd Line Application Support Engineers. In this role, you will provide advanced 2nd Line technical support while also leading and coordinating your shift team. You will act as the primary escalation point for complex incidents, manage major incidents during your shift window, and ensure consistent delivery of high‑quality support across global users and systems. This is a shift-based position operating on a 28‑day rotating Pitman schedule across both days and nights. You will ensure operational coverage, maintain SLA adherence, and oversee incident, service request, and application issue handling throughout your shift. The ideal candidate has strong technical troubleshooting capabilities, experience working within ITSM/ITIL environments, and demonstrated leadership qualities within a support or application engineering function.

Role Description (What You Will Be Doing)

• Acting as the Shift Lead for a team of three 2nd Line Application Support Engineers.
• Owning the end‑to‑end management of incidents during your shift, including triage, assignment, escalation, and resolution tracking.
• Leading Major Incident Management (MIM) when required, coordinating communication between stakeholders, technical teams, and management.
• Providing hands-on 1st and 2nd Line technical support across a diverse set of applications and services.
• Overseeing shift workload, ensuring effective prioritisation and SLA compliance.
• Providing guidance, mentoring, and real‑time support coaching to the 2nd Line Engineers on shift.
• Ensuring all incidents and requests are logged, updated, and documented clearly in the ITSM system (e.g., Jira).
• Serving as the shift’s primary point of contact for cross‑functional teams including Dev, QA, Infrastructure, SME groups, and 1st Line support.
• Conducting handover briefings between shifts to maintain continuity and visibility of ongoing or high‑priority issues.
• Upholding and aligning the team’s work with ITIL practices (Incident, Problem & Change Management).

The shift will be based on a 28-day rotating pitman model:

Shift pattern and will be rotating between the Early, Middle and night shifts so for example will do 3 days on the early shift, have 2 off, then 3 days on middle shift, 2 off, 3 on night.

• Shift
• IST
• Early
• 06:00 - 15:00
• Middle
• 14:00 - 23:00
• Night
• 22:00 - 07:00

Leadership & Operational Skills (Shift Lead–specific)

• People & Shift Management
• Experience leading support or technical teams (formal or informal leadership).
• Ability to allocate work, manage priorities, and supervise the performance of engineers during the shift.
• Provide coaching and guidance to less-experienced team members.
• Major Incident Management
• Confident in taking ownership of major incidents, driving resolution, and coordinating multi‑team responses.
• Ensuring timely stakeholder communication and accurate incident updates.
• Ability to remain calm, structured, and decisive under pressure.
• Governance & Quality Assurance
• Ensuring shift adherence to SLAs, KPIs, and support processes.
• Reviewing ticket quality, ensuring clear, consistent documentation.
• Supporting continuous improvement initiatives and identifying process enhancements.

Core Technical Skills

• Operating Systems

• Strong knowledge of Windows Server and Windows OS

• Basic–intermediate Linux skills

• Application Troubleshooting

• Strong understanding of application architectures (web apps, client/server, APIs)

• Ability to diagnose issues using:

• Event logs

• Application logs

• Monitoring tools

• SQL queries

• REST/API calls

• Databases

• Strong SQL proficiency, often including:

• Writing SELECT queries

• Joining tables

• Tracing application issues to data problems

• Familiarity with databases such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, or PostgreSQL

• Networking Basics

• DNS, DHCP, TCP/IP

• Understanding how applications communicate across networks

• Proxy/firewall impact on applications

• Scripting / Automation

Not required, but highly valued:

• PowerShell
• Bash
• Python
• Basic automation of repetitive tasks
• Debugging Tools
• Postman or similar for API testing
• Fiddler/Wireshark for traffic analysis
• Browser dev tools for web application issues

1.1 Soft Skills

• Analytical & Problem-Solving Skills
• Ability to investigate complex technical issues and break them down logically.
• Communication
• Explaining technical issues clearly to non-technical users
• Producing good documentation and clear incident notes, including RCA’s and change documentation.
• Strong English verbal and written language skills as will be interacting with global teams.
• Customer Service Orientation
• User empathy and professionalism
• Managing expectations around SLAs and timelines
• Teamwork
• Working with other teams to help them escalate effectively
• Collaborating with Dev, QA, Infrastructure teams or other SME’s for deeper issues
• Mentoring lower tiers and uplifting supportability.

Experience & Qualifications

• 5–8+ years in Application Support / Systems Engineering / SRE, with substantive leadership responsibilities
• Certifications in Linux, WebSphere, or database management would be an added advantage.
• Experience in cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud)
• ITIL experience (Incident, Problem, Change) desirable; formal certification is a plus.