About this role
Job Role: Lead, Production Support, CHIP Platform Operations (L1 Support) Department: BI&T CT CHIP Platform Engineering — Production Operations
Position Overview
The Lead Application Support, Platform Operations (L1 Support) serves as the first point of contact for operational support of the CHIP (Cell Health Intelligence Platform) platform and its constituent applications. This role is responsible for receiving and triaging incoming incidents and service requests, monitoring platform health, executing documented operational procedures, and ensuring timely resolution or escalation to L2 (BMS Hyderabad CHIP Engineering) or L3 (BMS US Technical Delivery Leads). CHIP is a multi-tier platform running on AWS, comprising FastAPI/Django Platform APIs, a React micro frontend shell, PostgreSQL/Aurora databases, Camunda workflow orchestration services, and a set of domain microservices (applications).
The platform supports cell therapy manufacturing and quality control operations necessitating high availability. This role plays a critical part in ensuring that platform reliability, user access continuity, and workflow execution health are sustained within defined SLAs.
Key Responsibilities
The successful candidate will be responsible for fully engaging a remote team of engineers who will meet their performance targets by providing high quality technical support to our site users. The Lead Engineer will also be responsible for identifying opportunities for process improvements. . The successful candidate will be responsible for ensuring the smooth support operations in direct communication with remote site lead and his team of remote engineers who will identify and resolve technical issues including developing and maintaining relationships with key stakeholders. The candidate will be responsible for ensuring the team provides high-quality support services, meets its performance targets, and lead opportunities for process improvements.
Incident Management & User Support: Serve as the primary front-line support contact for all CHIP platform applications including the Platform API, React shell frontend, authentication service, workflow engine, and domain microservices. Receive, categorize, prioritize, and track incidents and service requests through ServiceNow and Jira. Communicate proactively with users and stakeholders regarding issue status, expected resolution timelines, and any required user actions. Ensure all support tickets are handled in accordance with established CHIP SLAs, differentiating between P1 (platform down), P2 (degraded functionality), and P3/P4 (non-critical) severity tiers.
Operational Monitoring: Monitor CHIP platform health using AWS CloudWatch dashboards, CloudWatch Logs Insights, and Grafana observability boards — covering API response times, error rates, and infrastructure metrics across ECS/EKS services. Monitor scheduled jobs and microservice workflows executed via Camunda and AWS Step Functions; identify failures, stuck tasks, and execution anomalies. Track database availability, connection pool saturation, and query error rates on the PostgreSQL/Aurora RDS clusters.
Monitor Ping SSO integration health, authentication failure spikes, and JWT validation error patterns surfaced in CloudWatch. Execute predefined recovery actions — service restarts, workflow resubmissions etc. Escalate recurring or unresolved anomalies to L2 (BMS Hyderabad Engineering) with full diagnostic context.
Access & User Administration: Support user onboarding activities, including CHIP application access setup, and RBAC role provisioning workflows. Process access requests using approved procedures, validating that required business approvals and security requirements are in place before acting. Assist users experiencing authentication failures, Ping SSO redirect issues, JWT token expiry errors, and RBAC permission denials. Coordinate with L2 for access changes that require direct database or role modifications beyond the L1 scope.
Runbook Execution: Follow established CHIP runbooks, knowledge articles, and standard operating procedures stored in the GitHub repository (docs/runbooks/). Execute approved routine operational tasks: API health restarts, ECS task replacements, database connection resets, Camunda workflow resubmissions. Document all troubleshooting steps, actions taken, and resolution outcomes directly in the ServiceNow or Jira ticket. Identify gaps in existing runbooks and raise improvement requests to L2.
Issue Triage & Escalation: Perform initial diagnosis to determine issue root cause, impact, and severity — distinguishing between application-layer bugs, infrastructure failures, data integrity issues, and user error. Gather supporting evidence: CloudWatch log excerpts, API error responses (HTTP status codes, stack traces from /api/* endpoints), database query results, screenshots, and user reproduction steps. Route escalated issues to L2 (BMS Hyderabad Engineering) with complete diagnostic context — do not escalate without attaching logs and reproduction steps. For P1/P2 incidents, follow the CHIP major incident escalation path: L1
- L2 BMS Hyderabad Engineering
- L3 US Technical Delivery Leads, with bridges opened per the incident response procedure. Track escalated issues through resolution and communicate status updates to affected stakeholders. Knowledge Management: Maintain CHIP operational knowledge articles, FAQs, and runbooks in GitHub and the ServiceNow Knowledge Base. Identify recurring incidents that indicate documentation gaps; propose runbook additions. Capture lessons learned from incidents, particularly for authentication flows, database connectivity failures, and workflow execution errors. Support end-user enablement through basic guidance on CHIP platform features, API usage, and access workflows. Reporting & Metrics: Maintain complete and accurate ticket documentation including timestamps, severity classifications, actions taken, and resolution details. Track incident volumes, mean time to acknowledge (MTTA), mean time to resolve (MTTR), and recurring failure patterns. Contribute to weekly operational reviews with L2 (BMS Hyderabad Engineering). Support generation of CloudWatch and Grafana operational dashboards for CHIP platform KPIs.
Key responsibilities
Develop and implement strategies to improve the quality and efficiency of the support services provided by the team. Identify opportunities for process improvements and automation, and work with Global Manager to implement these changes. Develop and maintain relationships with key stakeholders, including users and team managers. Work with Global Manager Front Line Application Support to develop and maintain policies and procedures for the application support team, ensuring that they are up-to-date and compliant with relevant regulations and standards.
Work closely with Remote FLS Global Manager and report on the performance of the application support team, providing regular updates to senior management. Provide technical guidance, mentoring, leadership and support to the application support team, ensuring that team members have the necessary skills and knowledge to perform their roles effectively and the team members remain motivated and engaged. Team members will… be focused on identifying and resolving complex technical issues, ensuring the issues are resolved in a timely and efficient manner, document and record issues and escalations to help build a knowledge base, and escalate to the successful candidate as needed.
Develop and maintain knowledge of CHIP infrastructure, ensuring that you are up to date with the latest features and functionality. Participate in training and development activities to enhance your skills and knowledge. Collect feedback and voice-of-customer and share with internal teams. Work closely with support team and global manager to develop and maintain policies and procedures for the application support team, ensuring that they are up-to-date and compliant with relevant regulations and standards
Required Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Technology, Computer Engineering, or related field. Experience in application support, platform operations, service desk, or technical operations roles. Hands-on experience with AWS CloudWatch — including dashboards, log groups, Logs Insights queries, and metric alarms. Solid SQL skills sufficient to validate data integrity, query PostgreSQL databases, inspect application records, and diagnose data-layer issues without modifying production data. Ability to navigate GitHub repositories to locate runbooks, configuration files, deployment documentation, and release notes.
Familiarity with Git fundamentals: clone, pull, branch, commit. Experience with ITSM ticketing platforms: ServiceNow or Jira. Working knowledge of HTTP APIs — able to read API error responses, understand HTTP status codes (401, 403, 404, 500, 503), and use tools like curl or Postman to reproduce issues. Understanding of JWT authentication concepts: token structure, expiry, signature validation errors — sufficient to triage user-reported authentication failures. Strong troubleshooting and analytical skills; ability to isolate whether an issue is in the frontend, API, database, or identity layer.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills; ability to communicate technical findings clearly to non-technical users and to L2 engineers. Ability to work within structured processes and adhere to operational procedures without deviation unless authorized by L2. Comfort working across time zones; coordination with L2 (Hyderabad, IST) and L3 (Seattle/NJ, PST/EST) is part of the daily operating model.
Preferred Qualifications
Experience supporting REST APIs built on Python frameworks (FastAPI or Django); ability to read Python stack traces and identify error origins. Experience with AWS services relevant to the CHIP platform: ECS/EKS (container health, task failures), RDS/Aurora PostgreSQL (connection issues, slow queries), S3 (data access errors), Lambda, Step Functions, and CloudWatch. Familiarity with Docker concepts: container restarts, health check failures, image versioning — sufficient to understand ECS task failure events. Exposure to Camunda or similar BPMN workflow engines: monitoring workflow instance state, identifying stuck or failed process instances.
Familiarity with Okta SSO and OIDC concepts: authentication flows, group membership, application assignments — sufficient to diagnose user login and permission issues. Familiarity with Grafana dashboards for reading platform observability metrics. Understanding of ITIL processes: Incident Management, Problem Management, and Change Management. Ability to read GitHub Actions CI/CD pipeline run results and identify failed deployment steps from a monitoring and support perspective — not development. Familiarity with React single-page application behavior sufficient to distinguish frontend-side errors (browser console errors, failed network calls) from backend failures. Knowledge of PostgreSQL connection pooling concepts (pool exhaustion, max connections) and how they manifest as application errors. Understanding of RBAC (role-based access control) concepts sufficient to triage user permission-related issues. Key
Competencies
Customer Focus — Manufacturing teams on sites depend on CHIP availability; user experience is key to trust Problem Solving — Ability to reason through multi-layer systems (browser
- API
- database
- identity) to isolate failure points.
Attention to Detail — Accurate ticket documentation and log collection are the foundation of L2 investigation. Process Adherence — Runbook execution must be exact; unauthorized production actions create secondary incidents. Escalation Judgment — Knowing when to escalate (not too early, never too late) is a core L1 skill. Collaboration — Daily coordination with L2 (Hyderabad) and occasional escalation to L3 (Seattle) requires clear, asynchronous written communication. Continuous Learning — CHIP evolves over time so new capabilities (RBAC, audit, Camunda, Databricks) will enter production operations scope over time. Communication Skills — Bridge between non-technical users reporting problems and engineering teams diagnosing root causes.
Equal Opportunity Employer
It is the policy of Syngene to provide equal employment opportunity (EEO) to all persons regardless of age, color, national origin, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, genetic information, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable legislation or local law. In addition, Syngene will provide reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities.