Senior Application Engineer – Production Support & Release Management - Irvine, CA(Hybrid, 3 days onsite) - 12+ Months Contract

Key Responsibilities 

Production Support & Technical Leadership 

• Lead onsite L3 production support activities while coordinating closely with offshore technical leads and support teams. 

• Monitor application health and proactively identify and address production issues. 

• Troubleshoot and resolve application exceptions, user-reported issues, incidents, and production defects. 

• Take end-to-end ownership of production incidents and bugs, driving issues through root-cause analysis, remediation, testing, and closure. 

• Develop and implement code fixes for production defects and Jira issues as needed. 

• Work directly with Product, Architecture, Development, and Support teams to resolve production issues and provide technical clarification. 

• Track and report weekly L3 production support metrics, trends, and outstanding issues. 

Release & Deployment Management 

• Take end-to-end ownership of bi-weekly application releases and production deployments. 

• Coordinate with developers and offshore technical leads to ensure stories are deployment-ready. 

• Own the branch-cut process and prepare the application for the bi-weekly regression cycle. 

• Coordinate with Release Management to ensure required change requests and approvals are completed before deployment. 

• Participate in and support production deployments, hotfixes, and go-live activities. 

• Validate successful deployments and assist in resolving deployment-related issues. 

• Support occasional weekend deployments associated with major releases and production go-lives. 

Application Development & Sprint Delivery 

• Take ownership of assigned sprint stories and drive them from development through testing and production deployment. 

• Work closely with QA and UAT teams to resolve defects and support successful releases. 

• Provide hands-on development support for application enhancements, production fixes, and technical issues. 

• Participate in UAT and go-live support for country and vendor expansion initiatives. 

• Coordinate with onsite and offshore teams to ensure assigned deliverables are completed on schedule. 

  Required Qualifications 

  • Strong experience in enterprise application development and L3 production support. 

  • Hands-on experience troubleshooting and resolving complex production application issues. 

  • Experience developing and deploying production code fixes and hotfixes. 

  • Strong understanding of software release management, deployment processes, branch management, and production support practices. 

  • Experience supporting applications with bi-weekly or similarly frequent production release cycles. 

  • Experience working with Jira for incident, defect, and development tracking. 

  • Experience working across Development, QA, UAT, Product, Architecture, Release Management, and Production Support teams. 

  • Experience working in a distributed onsite/offshore delivery model. 

  • Ability to independently manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced, time-sensitive production environment. 

  • Strong troubleshooting, analytical, communication, and problem-solving skills. 

  • Demonstrated ability to take ownership of technical issues and drive them through resolution.