Information Technology Specialist

Job Description

Job Title: Problem Manager – ITSM
Location: India (Pune) – Hybrid
Department: Employee Services Technology & Operations 

Love solving puzzles and getting to the real root cause? Zendesk is looking for a Problem Manager who thrives on uncovering patterns, driving systemic fixes, and preventing incidents before they happen. This role is critical to building a proactive, data-driven IT operations culture—reducing recurring issues, stabilizing key platforms, and improving the employee experience.

The Role

The Problem Manager will be responsible for the end-to-end lifecycle of problem management across Zendesk’s internal IT services. This includes identifying, analyzing, and eliminating root causes of recurring incidents; ensuring long-term stability of applications, infrastructure, and productivity platforms; and fostering a culture of continuous improvement in partnership with Service Desk, Business, and Platform teams.

This is a hands-on role that combines analytical rigor, process ownership, and stakeholder management. You will serve as the single point of contact for all problem records and drive accountability across teams for implementing permanent resolutions.

What You’ll Do

• Own the Problem Management process — ensure consistent execution across IT, HRIS, Collaboration, Network, and Workplace platforms.

• Perform root cause analysis (RCA) for major and recurring incidents; identify patterns, systemic issues, and areas for proactive remediation.

• Facilitate post-incident reviews (PIRs) and lead problem review boards to drive accountability and track resolution actions.

• Partner with Observability & Monitoring to detect emerging issues through trend and event analysis.

• Collaborate with Change Management to validate that implemented fixes are tested, validated, and successfully deployed.

• Develop KPIs and dashboards to measure problem resolution time, recurrence rate, and mean time between incidents (MTBI).

• Advise service owners and engineers on preventive measures and operational improvements that enhance reliability.

• Champion process maturity by aligning ITSM practices to ITIL principles and supporting automation opportunities within Zendesk’s Employee Services platform.

• Contribute to continuous improvement initiatives that strengthen IT Operations performance and reduce operational risk.

What You Bring

• Required: 5+ years of experience in ITSM, Service Operations, or IT Infrastructure roles.

• Preferred: Experience in a global, high-growth tech company.

• Strong working knowledge of ITIL and practical experience applying ITSM processes in an enterprise environment.

• Experience leading root cause investigations using methodologies such as 5 Whys, Fishbone (Ishikawa), or Kepner-Tregoe analysis.

• Familiarity with modern ITSM tools and CMDB relationships.

• Exposure to Observability, Monitoring, or Incident Management practices and tools.

• Excellent analytical, facilitation, and communication skills—able to synthesize complex technical details into clear business narratives.

• Strong stakeholder management and cross-functional collaboration capabilities.

• Experience with SaaS platforms and cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP)

• Understanding of APIs, integrations, and microservices architectures

• Basic SQL/data analysis skills for trend analysis
   

Nice to have: 

• ITIL 4 Practice Manager or Service Strategy certification

• Experience with automation/scripting (Python, PowerShell)

• Knowledge of Agile/DevOps practices and SRE principles

• Previous experience at a SaaS company or in a customer support tech stack environment

How We’ll Measure Success

• Reduction in recurring incidents and mean time between incidents (MTBI).

• Timely completion of RCA reports and corrective actions.

• Improved service availability and stability metrics.

• Adoption and compliance with problem management process KPIs.

• Demonstrated integration of problem management insights into change and observability practices.
   

Working Model

• Hybrid role in Pune,India collaborating with global teams; core hours aligned to IST with occasional off-hours participation for major incidents or change windows.

• Part of an on-call rotation with follow-the-sun support.

Please note that Zendesk can only hire candidates who are physically located and plan to work from Karnataka or Maharashtra. Please refer to the location posted on the requisition for where this role is based.

Hybrid: In this role, our hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection, collaboration, learning, and celebration - while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. This role must attend our local office for part of the week. The specific in-office schedule is to be determined by the hiring manager.