Lead Support Engineer

Role Summary and Impact

This role is within WPP Media, where you will be instrumental in owning production stability, observability, and system health for a mission-critical global campaign governance and compliance platform. As Lead Support Engineer, you will provide advanced L2+ and L3-oriented support for a system running natively on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). You will investigate complex production issues, implement minor code-level fixes in Python, lead root cause analysis, and improve the reliability of distributed systems. Working closely with the EMEA-based Engineering Tech Lead, Product Owner, and Quality Assurance partners, you will connect production insights with technical roadmap priorities.

The opportunity combines hands-on Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) with technical squad leadership. A foundational monitoring and alerting setup is already in place, giving you the platform to evaluate the current approach, define a clear observability direction, and strengthen system health monitoring across the environment. You will automate runbooks, reduce manual operational effort, and help shape the future support squad for a dedicated product used across global advertising campaigns.

Key Responsibilities

• Own production stability, system health, and observability for a mission-critical campaign governance and compliance platform running on GCP.
• Diagnose and resolve complex, intermittent, and high-priority incidents across application, database, infrastructure, and networking layers.
• Read, debug, and implement minor fixes and patches directly within the existing Python production codebase.
• Define and advance the observability strategy using GCP Cloud Logging, Cloud Monitoring, Error Reporting, Prometheus, PromQL, and suitable service level indicators and objectives.
• Lead incident response, post-incident reviews, and end-to-end root cause analysis, partnering with the EMEA Engineering team on permanent remediation.
• Monitor execution flows, performance, data refreshes, automated checks, and recurring compliance reporting to ensure reliable system operation.
• Identify opportunities to automate manual support activity, develop and maintain runbooks, and reduce operational toil.
• Provide technical leadership to the L2+ support squad through coaching, knowledge sharing, prioritization, and effective handovers.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, and Quality Assurance teams to assess operational risk, improve release and change management, and influence technical roadmap decisions.

Skills and Experience

• Advanced education in computer science, software engineering, information technology, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong, current Python proficiency, including the ability to read, debug, and implement fixes directly within a shared production codebase.
• Deep, hands-on experience supporting enterprise systems on Google Cloud Platform, including Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud SQL, BigQuery, Pub/Sub, Firestore, Cloud Functions, Identity and Access Management, and virtual private cloud networking.
• Complex production troubleshooting and root cause analysis experience across distributed systems, including leadership of post-incident reviews.
• Strong experience with Docker and Kubernetes, particularly deploying, managing, and troubleshooting applications running in Google Kubernetes Engine.
• High proficiency with GCP Cloud Logging, Cloud Monitoring, Error Reporting, Prometheus, and PromQL, including establishing service level indicators and service level objectives.
• Experience using Terraform for infrastructure as code, tracing infrastructure-level issues, and identifying improvements to infrastructure management.
• Strong Python and Bash scripting skills for automating support tasks, parsing logs, developing operational tools, and reducing manual effort.
• Solid querying and troubleshooting experience across Firestore, BigQuery, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.
• Experience leading, mentoring, or serving as a technical lead for a squad or technical team, along with strong knowledge of Incident, Problem, and Change Management practices and the software development lifecycle.