Application Engineering Manager

Introduction to the Role

Are you ready to lead a high-performing engineering support function that keeps enterprise platforms reliable and software-delivery pipelines running smoothly? Can you balance routine access and configuration requests with complex investigations involving CI/CD pipelines, integrations, and platform issues?

As Application Engineering Manager, you will lead and develop a team of Application System Engineers responsible for supporting and continuously improving platforms such as Jira, Confluence, GitHub, Jenkins, SonarQube, and Artifactory.

You will combine technical depth, operational judgment, and people leadership to improve platform reliability, service quality, and team performance. You will ensure work is prioritized according to its complexity and impact, expectations remain realistic, and the team can deliver consistently without compromising quality.

This is the support and operations organization for our current enterprise platforms and for new capabilities created by Platform & Forward Engineering.

Accountabilities

• Team Leadership and Coaching: Lead, coach, and develop Application System Engineers, creating a high-performing team with clear expectations, balanced workloads, and opportunities to grow.

• Support Model and Service Delivery: Define, manage, and optimize support models and service-level performance to deliver reliable, high-quality platform support.

• Technical Guidance: Provide technical leadership across enterprise platforms and DevOps tooling, helping the team diagnose and resolve complex platform, integration, and CI/CD issues.

• CI/CD Troubleshooting: Oversee troubleshooting for Jenkins pipelines and GitHub Actions workflows, ensuring issues receive the appropriate technical depth and priority.

• Platform Support and Lifecycle: Oversee platform issues, integrations, upgrades, and ongoing improvements across supported enterprise tools.

• Triage and Prioritization: Distinguish routine, lower-effort requests from high-complexity engineering work. Set realistic expectations and balance team capacity to protect service quality and efficiency.

• Upgrades and Migrations: Lead complex platform upgrades, migrations, and improvements, coordinating effectively with stakeholders and technical teams.

• Metrics and Service Insights: Deliver clear metrics, reporting, and service insights that help stakeholders understand service performance, workload, and improvement opportunities.

• Automation and Innovation: Drive automation and responsible AI adoption to reduce operational workload, improve triage, optimize processes, and increase team productivity.

• Stakeholder Partnership: Communicate clearly with stakeholders, manage expectations, and align priorities with business needs, technical complexity, and available capacity.

Essential Skills and Experience

• Experience leading, coaching, and developing technical or engineering teams.
• Strong experience with enterprise platforms such as Jira, Confluence, GitHub, Jenkins, SonarQube, and Artifactory.
• Solid understanding of CI/CD concepts and tools, including Jenkins and GitHub Actions.
• Strong troubleshooting and operational leadership experience.
• Ability to assess technical complexity and prioritize work effectively.
• Strong stakeholder communication and expectation-management skills.
• Ability to balance service delivery, technical work, and team capacity.
• Experience using automation or AI-enabled capabilities to reduce operational workload, improve triage, and optimize processes.
• Ability to encourage the responsible use of AI to improve team productivity and support efficiency.

Desirable Skills and Experience

• Experience working in DevOps or platform engineering environments.
• Knowledge of AWS or another major cloud platform.
• Experience with automation and scripting.
• Exposure to Kubernetes.

What Success Looks Like

• High-quality platform support delivered consistently within agreed service-level targets.
• An efficient team with balanced workloads and realistic expectations.
• Clear differentiation between routine requests and high-complexity engineering work.
• CI/CD and platform issues handled with appropriate technical depth and prioritization.
• Successful execution of platform upgrades, migrations, and improvements.
• Continuous reduction in manual work through automation, AI-enabled support, and process optimization.

Why AstraZeneca

At AstraZeneca, technologists and change-minded colleagues work together to simplify ways of working and accelerate progress that ultimately benefits patients.

You will collaborate across diverse teams, combining technical expertise with empathy, sound judgment, and a continuous-improvement mindset. We value kindness alongside ambition, encourage ideas grounded in data, and embrace AI and modern engineering tools to increase our impact.

This is an opportunity to lead a critical engineering function and shape how colleagues across a global organization build and deliver software in support of a meaningful mission.

Call to Action

If you are ready to lead a team that keeps critical engineering platforms reliable while creating smarter, more efficient ways of working, join AstraZeneca and help us raise the standard for application engineering support.