The Head of Application Support will be responsible for leading and overseeing the enterprise application support functions for critical payment systems, ensuring high availability, resilience, and compliance across a range of payment platforms. This includes cards, UPI, NETC PoS, PG gateways, and settlement platforms.
The role will drive operational excellence, manage L1, L2, and L3 support teams, and align support strategies with business, regulatory, and customer needs. As a strategic leader, this role will bridge the gap between operations, technology, vendors, and executive stakeholders to ensure seamless and secure payment processes.
Define and execute the application support strategy for all payment systems, ensuring high availability, compliance, and operational resilience across platforms (cards, UPI, NETC PoS, PG gateways, settlement systems).
Establish and enforce governance frameworks for incident management, problem management, and change management, adhering to industry best practices such as ITIL, PCI DSS, and ISO 27001 standards.
Drive continuous improvement initiatives to enhance system stability, reduce downtime, and optimize the overall transaction throughput for payment systems.
Align support strategies with business goals and regulatory requirements, focusing on improving customer experience, reducing costs, and enhancing security.
Ensure 24x7 availability of payment applications by implementing robust monitoring tools and proactive issue detection mechanisms.
Oversee incident triage, escalation, and resolution across L1–L3 support teams, ensuring that service-level agreements (SLAs) are met and support functions run smoothly.
Lead root cause analysis (RCA) efforts for recurring issues, ensuring long-term resolutions are implemented to prevent future disruptions.
Coordinate disaster recovery (DR) plans and business continuity planning for critical payment systems, ensuring minimal disruption to services during any unplanned outages.
Ensure adherence to key regulatory standards such as RBI guidelines, PCI DSS, ISO 27001, and DPDP (Data Protection and Privacy).
Maintain audit-ready documentation for all incidents, changes, and vendor actions, ensuring the support environment remains compliant.
Partner with Information Security teams to enforce patching schedules, vulnerability remediation, and secure coding practices across payment systems.
Track and report on operational KPIs, including Mean Time to Repair (MTTR), transaction success rates, and fraud detection metrics.
Serve as the primary liaison between business units, technology teams, and external vendors, ensuring clear communication and seamless collaboration.
Negotiate and manage vendor SLAs, ensuring that third-party vendors meet uptime requirements and maintain high support quality.
Provide executive reporting to senior leadership on the health of the payment platforms, system risks, ongoing improvement initiatives, and areas requiring attention.
Build and mentor a high-performing support organization across L1, L2, and L3 teams, fostering an environment of accountability, collaboration, and continuous learning.
Drive knowledge management initiatives, ensuring that internal documentation (playbooks, SOPs, runbooks) is consistently updated and accessible.
Foster a culture of collaboration and excellence, ensuring team members are empowered to take ownership of support activities and continuous improvement processes.
Strategic Vision: Ability to align the application support strategy with broader business and regulatory priorities.
Leadership: Skilled in building and motivating high-performing, cross-functional teams, fostering collaboration and accountability.
Risk Awareness: Strong focus on maintaining compliance, audit readiness, and ensuring operational resilience in a high-pressure environment.
Collaboration: Effective at working with diverse business, technology, and vendor teams to deliver solutions.
Execution Excellence: Ability to remain calm under pressure and make decisive decisions during critical incidents, ensuring service recovery and stability.
12–18 years of IT experience, with at least 5+ years in leadership roles specifically within the payment systems domain.
Strong understanding of payment processing flows including authorization, clearing, settlement, and reconciliation.
In-depth knowledge of compliance frameworks such as ITIL, PCI DSS, ISO 27001, and RBI guidelines, with hands-on experience implementing and ensuring compliance across payment platforms.
Expertise in monitoring tools (e.g., AppDynamics, Dynatrace, VUnet) and ticketing systems (JIRA, ServiceNow) for proactive incident management and issue resolution.
Proficiency in SQL, scripting (Shell/Python), and log analysis for in-depth troubleshooting and resolution of technical issues.
Proven track record in vendor management and contract governance, ensuring vendors deliver on SLAs and maintain the required support quality.
Strong communication skills with the ability to effectively manage stakeholders at all levels, from technical teams to senior executives.
Bachelor’s/Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.
Industry certifications (e.g., ITIL, CISSP, CISM) are a plus.
Experience in handling large-scale payment systems and platforms, with deep expertise in managing high-volume transaction environments.