Application Support Engineer

Application Support Engineer

Client- Kroger 

Location:Blue Ash, OH

Please review the below role.

Top 3 skills

Major Incident Management experience — has actually run or driven a bridge/war-room for a P1/P2 outage, not just "participated." This is the core of the role; everything else is supporting it. Ask for a specific incident they led end-to-end.
RCA/Problem Management rigor — can articulate a structured RCA methodology (5-whys, fishbone, timeline reconstruction) and, more importantly, examples where they drove a corrective action to closure (not just wrote a doc that nobody actioned).
Production troubleshooting under pressure across a mixed stack — comfortable reading logs/dashboards (Dynatrace-type tooling) and reasoning about cloud + on-prem + store/POS systems simultaneously, since a real incident here will span all three.
Additional Information

Site Reliability Engineers will be successful but must understand this is a support role
Still lots of engineering involved, will be working in the code every day
Looking for a solid and motivated technologist
Candidate does not need to tick all skills boxes, but does need to be able to be onsite and travel
Are there any automatic disqualifiers?

No on-call/off-hours availability
Pure DevOps/CI-CD background with zero incident-response exposure
Travel Expectations

Lots of flexibility, it will ebb and flow with needs
Currently more local travel (Cincy and Louisville Stores) but as new sites go live, travel will expand
Will be traveling every 4 weeks or so
Travel and on call is split between 6 people - and expecting team to grow
On Call/ Off Hours Expectations

Split between 6 people and rotates weekly
Team is currently splitting 2 shifts a day
Periodic off hours during go lives 
This team is an escalation point - they are not fielding everything
There is flexibility and team makes sure to balance personal lives
Work location

In office 5-days a week at BTC location to work in lab
 Might be relaxed on onsite later down line once travel picks up
Relocation is fine - Candidate can start remotely and relocate within 1 month of onboarding, will most likely still have to travel during that time
 

Job Description

Level 3 (LV3) Support, Site Reliability, and Operations Engineer supporting Kroger''s Next Generation Point of Sale (NGPOS) platform
This team is embedded within the engineering organization, partnering directly with developers throughout the SDLC rather than sitting in a separate support silo
We care more about problem-solving instinct, curiosity, and drive than a checklist of prior experience — the items below describe a strong match, not a hard bar, and candidates early in their career or without every listed skill are encouraged to apply
In office, Blue Ash, OH — 5 days a week; willingness to travel and provide onsite support for new go-lives, pilots, and rollouts
Participate in a scheduled on-call rotation (nights/weekends/holidays) for 24x7 support; PTO/leave may be restricted during peak retail periods and major go-lives
Bachelor''s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field (or equivalent experience) preferred; prior experience in application support, operations, or engineering is a plus but not required
Exposure to Point of Sale systems in enterprise environments is helpful; some experience with Java is preferred, Go is a plus
Any exposure to SQL or NoSQL databases (e.g., MongoDB), scripting (Shell, PowerShell, or Python), or ITSM/monitoring tooling (ServiceNow, Jira, Confluence, Splunk, Grafana, or equivalent) is a plus — willingness to learn these on the job matters more than prior mastery
Interest in or willingness to learn payment card security standards (PCI-DSS)
Excellent oral and written communication skills; able to translate between business users and Kroger Technology teams
Familiarity with the Agile process is helpful; experience as a Scrum Master a plus
Willingness to speak up and challenge developers on Agile best practices and definitions of done during refinement and QA
Accountable for driving support tickets and emails to resolution
Good judgment under pressure; able to prioritize across competing support, testing, and scrum-master duties
 

Key Responsibilities

Key Responsibilities

Partner with cross-functional teams to expedite issue resolution and manage to SLAs
Support and maintain infrastructure and applications, including off-hours support (24 x 7) as required
Test infrastructure and application changes
Establish priorities and develop functional and programming specifications for application enhancements and modifications
Participate in the application technical design process; design, code, and unit test application changes using SDLC best practices
Complete estimates and work plans for design, development, implementation, and rollout tasks
Monitor systems, consoles, and performance for service interruptions or delays
Address and resolve infrastructure system failures
Execute, log, and report break/fix changes, service requests, and support activities
Maintain operational procedures, processes, and scripts; follow documented processes to ensure infrastructure stability
Own incident and problem management: drive major incident response, root cause analysis, and post-incident reviews
Champion engineering standards and continuously improve software delivery processes
Build partnerships across application, business, and infrastructure teams
Independently execute large projects and lead other analysts in completing projects