Sustaining Engineering Lead

About Actian: Actian is a premier, internationally recognized enterprise data management pioneer, hybrid cloud integration innovator, and high-performance database leader on an absolute mission to help organizations transform raw data assets into actionable operational intelligence. As part of a fast-growing tech collective, Actian builds the transactional engines, multi-tenant analytics grids, and data warehousing infrastructure that power critical operations for major global corporations. Operating with a high-agency, collaborative mindset, Actian provides the Actian Data Intelligence Platform to resolve abstract data fragmentation challenges, delivering unparalleled platform speed, structural durability, and information transparency across complex cloud-native architectures.

Position Overview

We are seeking a highly sophisticated, systems-minded Sustaining Engineering Lead to join our core global Engineering division in a full-time remote capacity within the United Kingdom. Positioned as the ultimate technical anchor and frontline vanguard of our development ecosystem, you will claim individual accountability for governing our central escalation framework from end to end. Moving entirely away from passive dispatch models, you will run a rotating, multi-disciplinary squad of software engineers to isolate, qualify, and permanently resolve complex, high-pressure system anomalies escalated by global customers, support tiers, and sales engineers. This high-agency role demands a seasoned technician who acts decisively as an Incident Commander during major outages, enforces strict operational performance metrics, and maintains a relentless sense of accountability under heavy enterprise stress.

Key Responsibilities

• End-to-End Escalation Governance: Oversee and streamline the entire corporate defect ticket lifecycle, managing processes cleanly from initial customer intake and triage down to verified live production deployment.
• Proactive Incident Command: Serve authoritatively as the engineering unit’s Incident Commander during high-severity platform outages, executing calm, decisive technical steps to drive rapid service restorations.
• Deep-Dive Platform Debugging: Guide rotating feature developers through intense root-cause analysis and complex debugging runs natively across the core elements of the Actian Data Intelligence Platform.
• Strict Escalation Qualification: Enforce structured, reproducible assessment criteria on all incoming technical challenges to differentiate true software defects from user feature gaps or integration friction.
• Schedule and Rotation Management: Organize, optimize, and maintain the rolling, staggered rotation calendars for incoming feature development engineers embedded temporarily within the sustaining squad.
• Cross-Functional Stakeholder Coordination: Act as the primary technical bridge connecting Engineering squads with Support, Customer Success, and Product Management divisions, confidently joining executive customer calls when high-level technical input is required.
• CI/CD Fix Verification: Monitor and track emergency software patches sequentially through automated CI/CD deployment pipelines to guarantee that platform fixes land safely in production environments.
• Data-Driven Metric Optimization: Track and report on critical engineering funnel metrics—including Response Time, Qualification Time, and Ready State—to eliminate workflow bottlenecks and report on operational health.
• AI-Driven Triage Integration: Implement and utilize next-generation artificial intelligence patterns, observability integrations, and automated anomaly classification tools to accelerate incident detection and triage logic blocks.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• Proven professional history running advanced backend Software Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), or Tier 3 Enterprise Support Engineering.
• Demonstrated experience navigating high-pressure platform emergencies, critical enterprise customer escalations, or cloud infrastructure outages with clear, communicative leadership.
• Expert-tier master mapping and modifying development issues natively within enterprise ticket tracking suites like Jira and source control portals like GitHub.
• Strong, production-tested understanding of complex SaaS architectures, multi-tenant database frameworks, high-volume data transformation setups, or distributed systems.
• Outstanding verbal and written communication mechanics in fluent English, highlighting a native capacity to translate deeply technical architectural anomalies into clear business-impact definitions for executives and clients.
• A proactive operator profile driven by extreme ownership principles, with a demonstrated capability to anticipate bottlenecks and push through code complexities independently.
• Location Context: Full-time remote parameters open exclusively to qualified engineering leads based permanently anywhere within the United Kingdom to operate 100% from home under flexible work arrangements.

Preferred Strategic Indicators (Nice to Have)

• Prior experience operating in a specialized sustaining engineering or critical customer-success engineering role for a major global B2B SaaS data engine or analytics brand.
• Familiarity with containerized cloud environments, cloud storage protocols, or microservices performance tuning.
• Hands-on familiarity with automated build tools, shell scripting, or telemetry metric collectors.

What We Offer

• The exceptional professional canvas to directly direct, code-shape, and deploy the diagnostic and remediation architectures protecting the stability of a premier global data intelligence platform.
• Highly competitive baseline salary structures supplemented by comprehensive benefits packages tailored to evaluate local regional targets.
• Profound work-from-home remote parameters offering superior workspace flexibility, complete scheduling trust, and an inclusive digital workflow.
• Immediate entry into a passionate, culturally diverse tech collective making a highly visible impact in the international data management industry.
• Structured channels for uninterrupted professional growth, developer certification access, and clear long-term career velocity.