Data Operations Support Lead – L1/L2 – Financial Services (Remote)

Role Summary

We are seeking a techno‑functional lead to run the L1/L2 support desk for data operations platforms supporting a top‑tier financial services client. You will lead a distributed team across time zones, own incident/problem/change processes, ensure platform stability and SLAs, and partner closely with engineering, product, business operations, and vendor teams. Deep hands‑on knowledge of Azure and Snowflake is essential, along with strong stakeholder, shift, and people management.

Key Responsibilities

Leadership & Service Governance

• Lead and mentor a multi‑site L1/L2 team; manage hiring, coaching, scheduling, and performance, including shift management, handover/takeover, and on‑call rotations.
• Own ITIL‑aligned Incident, Problem, and Change processes; chair daily standups, MIM bridges (as needed), and weekly/monthly service reviews; drive SLA/OLA compliance and continuous improvement.
• Establish and report application/platform health and capacity metrics; publish dashboards and service reports to stakeholders.
• Build and maintain SOPs, runbooks, and knowledge articles to accelerate L1 resolution and left‑shift.

General Services

• Program management of the L1/L2 book of work, including roadmap, risk/issue management, and governance cadences.
• Define and track application metrics (MTTD/MTTR, incident volume, change success rate, availability, capacity/utilization).
• Ensure documentation of supported applications, support procedures, and dependencies is current.
• Application onboarding: accept into support with readiness checks, KT (knowledge transfer), runbook creation, and SLAs defined. (Aligned to Cognizant ITIL artifacts and KM practices.)

Application / Platform Maintenance

• Routine maintenance: coordinate and validate upgrades/patches across Azure/Snowflake and dependent services.
• Corrective maintenance: drive incident/problem/defect resolution, including hotfix orchestration.
• Preventative maintenance: instrument proactive monitoring/observability, trend analysis, and problem management to reduce recurrence.

Production Support (Run)

• Incident management: triage, restore, and resolve incidents within SLAs; lead MIMs for P1/P2; ensure business communications and post‑incident reviews/RCA.
• Queue management: track, manage, and resolve tickets for in‑scope apps/platforms; ensure prompt categorization/prioritization/assignment.
• Trend & root‑cause analysis: identify systemic issues and implement fixes or knowledge entries to prevent recurrence.
• Continuity/DR: execute DR playbooks and keep continuity plans updated.
• Maintain knowledge base/runbooks; raise and validate Change tickets; handle job failures/abends and perform impact assessment & recovery steps.
• Engage engineering/development teams for complex issues; ensure clean shift handover/takeover across locations following the standard WI.
• Recommend best practices and implement process improvements and automation/left‑shift opportunities (e.g., scripts, SOPs, self‑healing).

Operations Support (Monitor/Deploy)

• Own application/platform monitoring and event management: thresholds, alerts, runbooks, and noise reduction.
• Support implementation/deployment activities (pre‑checks, smoke tests, post‑deployment validation) in partnership with engineering and release teams.

Service Requests / Releases

• Fulfill service requests within agreed turnaround times; maintain request catalog & automation where feasible.
• Coordinate releases with dev/engineering: change windows, release notes, rollback plans, and controls.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years in application/platform production support with 4+ years in team leadership
• Strong Azure and Snowflake experience in production environments
• Solid command of ITIL processes (Incident/Problem/Change), MIM handling, RCA, and service governance/reporting.
• Hands‑on SQL and at least one scripting language (Python, Shell/PowerShell) for diagnostics and automation.
• Familiarity with job scheduling and orchestration (e.g., Control‑M, Airflow, Azure native), CI/CD pipelines, and secrets/config management.
• Experience creating runbooks/SOPs, knowledge articles, and performing structured shift handovers.
• Excellent stakeholder management and clear, concise communication with technology and business audiences.

Nice‑to‑Have

• Certifications: ITIL Foundation/Intermediate, SnowPro Core, Microsoft Azure (AZ‑104/AZ‑305 or data track).
• Exposure to data observability and platform health dashboards; experience with ServiceNow/Jira ITSM and monitoring (e.g., Azure Monitor, Grafana/Datadog).
• Experience in left‑shift initiatives, SOP creation at scale, and automation to reduce ticket volume.

Salary and Other Compensation:

The annual salary for this position is between $90,000 – $109,000 depending on experience and other qualifications of the successful candidate.

This position is also eligible for Cognizant’s discretionary annual incentive program, based on performance and subject to the terms of Cognizant’s applicable plans.

Benefits: Cognizant offers the following benefits for this position, subject to applicable eligibility requirements:

• Medical/Dental/Vision/Life Insurance
• Paid holidays plus Paid Time Off
• 401(k) plan and contributions
• Long-term/Short-term Disability
• Paid Parental Leave
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan

Disclaimer: The salary, other compensation, and benefits information is accurate as of the date of this posting. Cognizant reserves the right to modify this information at any time, subject to applicable law.

Cognizant will only consider applicants for this position who are legally authorized to work in the United States without requiring company sponsorship now or at any time in the future.