At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead the operational delivery of IT services and support custom applications in cloud environments.
- Company: Join Phoenix Group, a retirement specialist with over 200 years of experience.
- Benefits: Enjoy a competitive salary, generous leave, private medical cover, and flexible working options.
- Other info: Flexible roles available, promoting work-life balance and career growth.
- Why this job: Make a real impact by improving application support and enhancing customer service.
- Qualifications: Deep knowledge of cloud platforms and experience in application support are essential.
The predicted salary is between 65000 - 85000 £ per year.
We have an incredible opportunity to join us here at Phoenix Group as a Lead Application Support Manager to join our Engineering and Delivery team.
Job Type: Fixed Term Contract – 8 Months
Location: This could be based in either our Telford, Birmingham or Edinburgh offices with time spent working in the office and at home.
Flexible Working: All of our roles are open to part-time, job-share and other types of flexibility. We will discuss what is important to you and balancing this with business requirements during the recruitment process.
Closing Date: 24/07/2026
Salary and Benefits: £65,000 – 85,000 plus 16% bonus and up to 32%, private medical cover, 38 days annual leave, excellent pension, 12x salary life assurance, career breaks, income protection, 3x volunteering days and much more.
About Us: We’re Standard Life, a retirement specialist focused entirely on retirement savings and income. We champion the belief that everyone’s journey to and through retirement can be better, and for more than 200 years, we’ve been helping our customers plan and prepare for their financial futures. Life today is increasingly complicated, uncertain and unpredictable. People move through different careers, face unexpected moments and navigate important choices. We offer our colleagues flexibility, trust and benefits that work for whatever life brings. In return we expect curiosity, connection, accountability and high standards. We make room for what matters – so you can bring your best, every day.
The Role: We’re currently recruiting for a Lead Application Support Manager to join our Cloud Team to lead the successful operational delivery of one or more IT services to meet business and customer demands. Supporting the day‑to‑day delivery of applications, the L2 Application Support team are responsible for support of custom applications in Azure, AWS and on‑prem platforms, ensuring we deliver exceptional customer service consistently. This role actively contributes to the operational effectiveness of the Application Support function, progressing and delivering SIP opportunities whilst adhering to best practice and always ensuring process and control adherence.
Key Responsibilities:
- Ensure all applications are supported to a high standard and incidents, requests and problems are updated and resolved within a timely manner, within agreed SLA’s/OLA’s.
- Act as a conduit between L1 desk, other application support/platform teams, core platform teams (e.g. Cloud, Integration, Salesforce) and 3rd party providers.
- Contribute ideas and effort towards the development and delivery of service improvement initiatives and related Business Application Support projects.
- Support 3rd Party Business applications and ensure alignment to security policies ensuring that there is no vulnerability to the estate.
- Support live releases for all business applications, displaying a degree of flexibility to perform during agreed release windows, which may include evenings and weekends.
- Maintain up‑to‑date in‑depth technical knowledge in one or more specialist areas.
- Provide technical understanding to less experienced colleagues, however without line management responsibility.
- Communicate complex technical solutions effectively to a variety of stakeholders.
- Build effective relationships with a range of stakeholders, including with sourcing partners.
What We’re Looking For:
- Deep knowledge of Cloud hyperscalers (Microsoft Azure, AWS) and ideally major SaaS solutions (Salesforce and Oracle HR & Finance).
- IT related qualification (MCP/CompTIA/AWS/Azure).
- Website Portal experience – Rackspace, ORDS, OKTA, Postman, AWS CloudWatch/Secrets/ECS.
- Knowledge of Certification and related security standards.
- Scripting skills, with technology such as PowerShell.
- Strong SQL and Oracle DB skills.
Essential:
- Experience of ‘modern’ IT delivery and engineering practices, i.e. Platform and Product based organisations – ideally having experience of transitioning to this model from more traditional ways of working.
- Installing/troubleshooting Windows operating systems, deploying/packaging applications.
- Installing/troubleshooting and supporting a wide range of systems and applications.
- Previous application support or 2nd/3rd Line IT support experience essential preferably within a large multi‑site environment.
Desirable:
- Experience with automation and self‑service deployment of secure & scalable solutions.
- Risk management – understanding of the delivery risks faced by IT delivery and the controls in place to manage & mitigate these risks.
- Experience of key automation and other ‘enabling’ tooling, including but not limited to Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CDK), Observability (Dynatrace, Splunk) and DevSecOps toolchain (Atlassian Jira & Confluence, GitHub Enterprise, Artifactory).
EEO Statement: We are committed to ensuring that everyone feels accepted and welcome. Applicants from all backgrounds are encouraged to apply.
Lead Application Support Manager employer: Standard Life plc
At Standard Life, we pride ourselves on being an exceptional employer, offering a supportive work culture that values flexibility and personal growth. With competitive benefits including up to £105,000 salary, generous annual leave, and opportunities for career development, our London-based team thrives in an environment that encourages innovation and collaboration. Join us as a Principal Cloud Architect and be part of a company dedicated to making a meaningful impact in the retirement sector while enjoying a balanced work-life approach.
