Lead Sustaining Engineer

As a Lead Software Sustaining Engineer, you own the escalated (Tier 2) defect queue end to end: reproducing customer-reported issues, working through logs, telemetry, and crash dumps to true root cause, and delivering a tested fix, workaround, or a diagnosis complete enough for Tier 3 to act on immediately. You also run the function — triaging and assigning cases across junior engineers and contractors, reviewing their fixes for correctness and regression risk, leading high-severity incidents on a rotating on-call schedule, and writing the root-cause and knowledge-base record that keeps the same issue from escalating twice. 

The other half of the role is self-directed. You are expected to know the product well enough to find where it is fragile, slow, or confusing before a customer does, build the case for fixing it, and either implement it yourself or drive it into the backlog through to release. You own the long-term health, performance, and supportability of the application, and you are measured on whether it is measurably better a year from now. 

Key Tasks and Responsibilities: 

• Serve as technical lead for the Sustaining function, owning intake, triage, prioritization, and resolution of escalated (Tier 2) customer issues. 

• Direct the day-to-day work of junior engineers and contract resources, including task assignment, prioritization, and quality review (this role does not carry formal HR reporting responsibility or budgetary ownership). 

• Deliver clean, well-tested defect fixes, patches, and maintenance releases following best practices and coding standards. 

• Review fixes authored by junior engineers and contractors, gating patch quality and assessing regression risk before release to customers. 

• Independently investigate customer-reported defects — analyzing logs, telemetry, crash dumps, and field data to isolate root cause and implement a durable fix. 

• Drive rapid resolution of incoming customer issues against defined response and resolution service-level targets, escalating to Tier 3 or engineering owners when required. 

• Participate in and coordinate the on-call rotation, leading response for high-severity production incidents and completing post-incident reviews. 

• Develop and maintain technical documentation, root-cause write-ups, known-error records, and knowledge-base articles that enable Tier 1 to resolve issues without escalation. 

• Mentor, direct, and review the work of junior engineers and contract resources, assigning cases and building their diagnostic capability. 

• Partner with Customer Support, Quality, and Product Engineering to reproduce issues, feed recurring defects into the product backlog, and prevent repeat escalations. 

• Analyze case and defect trends to identify systemic problems, and propose engineering or process changes that reduce escalation volume over time. 

• Proactively identify and pursue improvements to the application without being asked — self-directed investigation of the codebase, telemetry, and support history to surface reliability, performance, usability, and supportability weaknesses before they generate customer escalations. 

• Build the business case for those improvements — scoping, sizing, and prioritizing optimization and hardening work, then implementing it directly or driving it into the product backlog through to release. 

Key Qualifications: 

• 5–8 years of relevant experience in software development, including demonstrated experience in a sustaining, production support, or Tier 2 escalation role. 

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field. A master's degree is preferred, but not required. 

• Proficiency in .NET, with the ability to read and debug unfamiliar code in a live production codebase. 

• Strong understanding of software development methodologies and hands-on proficiency with debugging, log analysis, and observability/monitoring tooling. 

• Strong independent problem solver — able to work from incomplete data, form and test hypotheses, determine true root cause, and drive the fix to closure with minimal direction. 

• Strong communication skills, including the ability to explain technical status and root cause clearly to customers and stakeholders during active incidents. 

• Proven ability to lead, mentor, and direct the work of junior engineers and contract resources. 

• Willingness and availability to participate in a rotating on-call schedule. 

• Demonstrated ownership and composure under pressure — able to manage several concurrent escalations, judge severity correctly, and keep customers informed while the investigation is still open. 

• Highly self-motivated and proactive — sets own improvement agenda, digs into the product unprompted, and consistently brings forward optimizations rather than waiting for direction. 

• Experience with version control systems (e.g., Git) preferred. 

• Experience with ticketing/case management and incident tooling (e.g., Jira Service Management, ServiceNow, Salesforce, PagerDuty) preferred. 

• Familiarity with ITIL or similar incident, problem, and change management practices preferred. 

• Relevant certifications in software development or related fields preferred.