L2 Application Support Engineer

The L2 Application Support Engineer is a critical role within the Production Support and Operations team. This individual is responsible for providing high-quality technical support, troubleshooting, and incident resolution for complex enterprise applications and platforms. Acting as the bridge between L1 Helpdesk/Monitoring teams and L3 Development/Engineering groups, the L2 Engineer ensures system availability, stability, and adherence to strict Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in a fast-paced, enterprise technology environment.

Key Responsibilities

1. Incident & Problem Management

• Escalation Handling: Acknowledge and own incidents escalated by the L1 support team or monitoring alerts.
• Troubleshooting & Diagnosis: Perform in-depth technical analysis and root cause investigation of application, database, middleware, and infrastructure failures.
• Workaround Implementation: Apply approved temporary workarounds or permanent hotfixes to restore services quickly and minimize business impact.
• Collaboration: Partner with L3 developers, database administrators (DBAs), network engineers, and system administrators to resolve complex, multi-tiered issues.
• Incident Lifecycle Management: Track and document all incident progression within the ITSM platform (e.g., ServiceNow) from creation through to resolution.

2. Monitoring, Observability & Preventive Maintenance

• System Monitoring: Actively monitor application health, batch jobs, integration feeds, and system performance using enterprise observability suites.
• Proactive Interventions: Identify recurring patterns, error trends, or capacity bottlenecks and initiate preventative actions.
• Health Checks: Perform daily health checks, start-of-day (SOD) and end-of-day (EOD) verifications, and batch processing runs.

3. Release, Deployment & Configuration Management

• Deployment Validation: Support the verification of application deployments, system patches, and infrastructure upgrades during maintenance windows.
• Configuration Controls: Maintain and update application configuration files, environment variables, and parameter settings under strict change management processes.
• Environment Management: Assist in maintaining non-production (UAT/Staging) and production environments to ensure consistency.

4. Communication & Stakeholder Management

• Status Updates: Provide clear, timely, and precise communications to business stakeholders, product owners, and technology leadership during critical (Sev-1/Sev-2) incidents.
• Bridges & War Rooms: Participate in or lead technical incident bridges to coordinate restoration efforts.
• Post-Incident Reviews: Contribute technical inputs to Post-Incident Reviews (PIRs) and Root Cause Analysis (RCA) documentation.

5. Documentation & Knowledge Management

• Runbooks & SOPs: Document and update Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), application architecture maps, and troubleshooting runbooks.
• Knowledge Sharing: Train L1 teams on common issue resolution paths to shift-left workloads and improve first-contact resolution rates.

Required Technical Skills

• Scripting & Automation - Proficiency in writing and debugging Shell scripting (Bash), PowerShell, or Python to automate daily tasks and analyze log files.
• Databases & Querying - Strong SQL skills (Oracle, MS SQL, Sybase, or PostgreSQL). Ability to write complex select queries, joins, analyze execution plans, and run database scripts.
• Middleware & Web Servers - Working knowledge of Apache, Tomcat, Nginx, WebSphere, and messaging queues like IBM MQ, RabbitMQ, or Apache Kafka.
• Cloud & Containerization - Familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift, or cloud infrastructure (AWS/Azure) concepts and container deployments.
• Monitoring & Logging - Hands-on experience with tools such as Splunk, ELK Stack, AppDynamics, Dynatrace, Grafana, or ITRS Geneos.
• ITSM & Collaboration - Experience with ticketing tools like ServiceNow or Jira, and version control systems like Git or Bitbucket.

Required Professional & Soft Skills

• Analytical Mindset: Excellent logical reasoning and problem-solving skills; ability to systematically break down a complex issue.
• Communication: Exceptional verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to translate technical details into plain language for business teams.
• Pressure Tolerance: Calm demeanor under pressure, especially during high-severity system outages.
• Team Collaboration: Ability to work cohesively in a global, distributed cross-functional environment.

Qualifications & Experience

• Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• Experience: 5+ years of experience in an application support, technical support, or systems engineering role (preferably in an enterprise or financial services environment).
• Certifications (Desirable):
  • ITIL v3 or v4 Foundation certification.
  • Professional certifications in AWS/Azure, Kubernetes (CKAD), Linux Administration, or Oracle/SQL.

------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------

Citi is an equal opportunity employer, and qualified candidates will receive consideration without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other characteristic protected by law.

If you are a person with a disability and need a reasonable accommodation to use our search tools and/or apply for a career opportunity review Accessibility at Citi.
View Citi’s EEO Policy Statement and the Know Your Rights poster.