Manager, Support Services Engineering (Sydney)

Manager, Support Services Engineering (Sydney) The Opportunity We are seeking a highly skilled Manager , Support Services Engineering to guide and elevate our support Service Engineering Team based in Sydney. You will play a critical role in ensuring the day-to-day efficiency of support operations, while mentoring staff, optimizing internal processes, and leading key initiatives such as automation, ticketing improvements, and knowledge base development. Why Join? This is a pivotal role, and our Sydney-based Support Engineering Team is at the heart of this mission, ensuring operational excellence and continuous improvement across our global footprint. You will have the opportunity to directly influence how we support global operations while nurturing a growing and motivated team, drive best practices, and make high-impact improvements that directly affect business success. You’ll also play a key part in establishing a high-performing team that operates smoothly with minimal oversight. If you’re adept at employing your existing leadership skills to improve morale and retention, have significant experience designing delivering new knowledge bases, and implementing support automation tools that significantly reduce ticket volume, we need to have a conversation. Your background and experience will propel the responsiveness and effectiveness for the Sydney team and in doing so, you’ll participate in guiding the transformation of a high-growth company offering products our customers need during a moment that shapes the future for those they love most. Every day you’ll tackle complex challenges using the latest technologies within an inclusive, collaborative environment where each team member is empowered by mission, committed to protection, and dedicated to creating legacies . The Role As the Manager , Support Services Engineering, you will be part of a global support team and you will be responsible for overseeing the resource planning for the support team in Australia, with global coverage if needed. This role involves looking after the support team’s performance, identifying areas for improvement and acting as an escalation point for the team. The Manager , Support Services Engineering will continuously coach and train the team in various support areas, technical details, and customer service. Additionally, the role includes leading and overseeing the development of each team member through 1-2-1 catchup meetings, ad-hoc meetings, and reviews of objectives. Responsibilities Manage, mentor, and support a technical support team during operational hours (rotating 8am–7pm coverage). Foster a positive and empowered team culture, encouraging ownership and professional growth. Oversee triage and resolution of support tickets, ensuring high-quality service across multiple regions (AU, UK, CA, US, Ireland, Vietnam). Collaborate cross-functionally with product, engineering, and operations teams to improve service delivery. Own and the and advance the ITSM platform (Zendesk) e.g., ServiceNow/Jira Service Management) and its integrations with monitoring, CMDB, and identity systems, including Jira, Shortcut. Deploy AI-assisted diagnostics, virtual agents, and RPA to eliminate low-value manual work Incident Management – by leveraging toolsets e.g. PagerDuty. Partner with Product Engineering to embed observability hooks that give Tier 2 direct insight into application health. Design and implement improvements to the support knowledge base and explore opportunities for automation and support bots . Contribute to process improvement initiatives, including documentation, best practices, and service workflows. Support the rollout and improvement of internal tools and systems, including SSRS , Azure DevOps , and Elastic Search querying. Participate in regulatory audits including ISO 27001-aligned playbook. Assist in creating a business-facing health dashboard showing SLA attainment, MTTR, NPS/CSAT, and backlog burn-down in real time. Adoption and advancing AI tools and automation within the support services activities. Play an influential role attaining Sub-10 minute live response, 95 %+ first-contact resolution for Tier 1 and Tier 2 issues as well as reaching ≥ 80 % of recurring requests fully automated via self-service, chatbots, or zero-touch tooling. Qualifications Proven experience managing a technical support/helpdesk or service operations team. Strong SQL skills , including ability to work with stored procedures, temp tables, joins, and data manipulation. Track record of hitting aggressive SLA targets while scaling headcount and spend responsibly. Subject matter expert in ITIL, incident/problem/change practices; ITIL 4 or HDI-SCTL certifications a plus. Hands-on familiarity with modern ITSM suites, endpoint management (Intune/Jamf), SSO/IDaaS, SaaS administration, and cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP). Operational knowledge of observability stacks (APM/logging/metrics) and how they feed L2/L3 support loops. Comfortable managing vendors, contract negotiations, and multi-million-dollar budgets. Familiarity with Python or C# for light engineering collaboration. Experience managing or building a support knowledge base or internal wiki. SSRS report generation and ad-hoc BI data analysis. Hands-on experience with Zendesk , JIRA , and incident tracking systems. Strong technical troubleshooting skills (Windows desktop/server environments, network hardware). Understanding of cloud platforms (especially Azure ) and IT infrastructure (firewalls, switches, wireless access points). Ability to collaborate globally across time zones, including with leadership and technical teams. About Neilson At Neilson , our mission is to make life insurance simple and accessible to everyone . We’re dedicated to helping families secure financial protection for their loved ones with a range of options. Since launching in 2012 , Neilson has successfully expanded from a UK-only business with 100 employees to an award-winning international operation and leader in the global life insurance market , now with 1000 employees and offices in USA, Canada, Ireland, and Australia . We Offer Neilson provides a competitive total compensation package, extensive learning opportunities, and a dynamic environment where you can grow your career. Compensation will be based on experience, skill set, and business needs. Additionally, we offer a robust benefits package, including 11.5% Superannuation (or current legislated rate). 20 days of paid annual leave. 10 days of paid personal/carer’s leave. 2 days of bereavement and compassionate leave. Public holidays (NSW). Parental leave in line with National Employment Standards. Long service leave (after applicable tenure). If you’re a driven leader with a passion for technical support and team empowerment, we want to hear from you. Join us at Neilson and help shape the future of our technology landscape. Department IT - Support Services Locations Sydney, AUS Remote status Hybrid Employment type Full-time