Help Desk Lead (Offshore) — Pod Lead, Global Service Desk

The Help Desk Lead serves as the on-the-ground "pod boss" for ACC's offshore Help Desk team, directly leading a pod of approximately six (6) analysts who deliver 24×7 Tier 1 and Tier 1.5 support to an enterprise of approximately 3,000 end users in a Microsoft Azure / Microsoft 365 / Windows PC environment. This position is accountable for standing up, onboarding, training, scheduling, coaching, and day-to-day management of the pod, and for the quality, consistency, and timeliness of every ticket the pod touches.

This is a working leadership role. The Help Desk Lead is expected to carry a ticket queue alongside the team and serve as the first escalation point for complex or high-visibility issues. The Manager IT Support is the Lead's primary point of contact and the channel through which direction, priorities, and escalations flow. Beyond that reporting line, the Lead works closely with the U.S.-based Tier 2 and Tier 3 teams as the pod's escalation path and as the source of ongoing knowledge transfer into the offshore pod. The Lead owns the follow-the-sun handoff, ensures no shift boundary becomes a service gap, and continuously drives repeatable work out of the queue through documentation, automation, and self-service enablement. This position reports to the Manager IT Support.

Critical Duties

Team Leadership, Onboarding, and Training

• Own the recruiting support, onboarding, and ramp of the offshore Help Desk pod, including building and maintaining a structured 30/60/90-day onboarding path for each new analyst.

• Build, deliver, and continuously refresh training curricula covering the ACC environment, supported applications, ticket handling standards, escalation paths, customer service expectations, and security-conscious behavior.

• Provide day-to-day supervision, coaching, and mentoring; conduct regular one-on-ones, shift huddles, and skills assessments; identify capability gaps and close them through targeted training and shadowing.

• Set clear performance expectations, deliver ongoing feedback, complete performance reviews, and partner with leadership and Human Resources on recognition, corrective action, and career development.

• Build and maintain the 24×7 shift roster, including rotations, holiday coverage (U.S. and Indian holidays), planned time off, and surge coverage, ensuring adequate skill coverage on every shift.

• Cross-train the pod to eliminate single points of knowledge and maintain a documented backup for every recurring responsibility.

Service Desk Operations

• Manage the Help Desk ticket queue end to end for approximately 3,000 end users

• triage, assignment, prioritization, aging review, and closure quality — ensuring tickets are worked to published service level targets.

• Serve as the first escalation point for the pod; personally own complex, sensitive, executive, or high-visibility incidents and requests through resolution.

• Own the follow-the-sun handoff to and from the U.S. team, including a documented shift turnover summarizing open incidents, pending escalations, and known issues.

• Monitor queue health, backlog, and inbound volume in real time; rebalance workload and escalate resourcing constraints before service levels are impacted.

• Perform quality assurance reviews on a sampled set of tickets each period, evaluating accuracy of categorization, troubleshooting depth, documentation quality, resolution correctness, and tone of customer communication.

• Drive first-contact resolution and deflection by identifying recurring ticket drivers and converting them into knowledge base articles, self-service guidance, standard operating procedures, or automation candidates.

• Participate in Incident, Problem, Change, and Request Management processes; represent the Help Desk on major incident bridges and contribute timelines, user impact, and end-user communications.

• Escalate to and coordinate with the U.S.-based Tier 2 and Tier 3 teams, and with Identity and Access Management, Information Security, and vendor support as directed; track escalations to closure rather than handing them off.

• Own the knowledge transfer relationship with the U.S.-based Tier 2 and Tier 3 teams — capture resolutions from escalated tickets, request walkthroughs on recurring issues, and convert what is learned into pod-facing documentation and training so work shifts left over time.

• Review escalation volume and quality with the Manager IT Support on a recurring cadence, identifying issues the pod should be able to resolve directly and building the capability to do so.

Technical Support Scope

• Lead pod support of the Microsoft 365 tenant, including Exchange Online, Teams, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, and Office applications, for approximately 3,000 users.

• Lead pod support of Windows PC endpoints at the Tier 1 level — break/fix, performance, application troubleshooting, peripherals, and printing

• escalating device build, configuration, and endpoint management work to the U.S.-based Tier 2 team.

• Support Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) end-user operations, including password resets, multi-factor authentication registration and reset, device registration, and sign-in troubleshooting, strictly within the scope delegated to the Help Desk.

• Route all access provisioning, entitlement, and privileged access requests to the Identity and Access Management team in accordance with company policy; the Help Desk does not grant access outside of documented, approved delegation.

• Support VPN, network connectivity, remote access, and secure-access tooling (including Zscaler) at the Tier 1 level and escalate appropriately.

• Support enterprise endpoint security agents at the Tier 1 level (including Microsoft Defender and CrowdStrike) and immediately escalate suspected security events, phishing reports, malware detections, and data-handling concerns to Information Security per the incident response process.

• Coordinate software license and application access requests with IT Operations and the appropriate application owners.

Coverage, On-Call, and Business Continuity

• Maintain overlap with U.S. Central Time business hours and remain reachable to the pod across all shifts, including flexing into evening and night shifts to observe, coach, and validate quality.

• Participate in a rotating holiday coverage schedule, including Indian holidays, to ensure uninterrupted support for a U.S.-based enterprise.

• Provide support outside normal business hours as operational needs dictate, including incident response and critical production events.

• Support a 24×7 operational environment through scheduled rotation, on-call responsibilities, and business continuity requirements.

• Serve as escalation authority during off-hours for the pod, and ensure documented call-out and escalation trees are current and exercised.

Essential Duties

• Define, track, and report Help Desk performance metrics, including first-contact resolution, average speed to answer, abandonment rate, mean time to resolution, backlog aging, reopen rate, SLA attainment, and customer satisfaction; publish results on a recurring cadence with commentary and corrective actions.

• Own the Help Desk knowledge base: establish authoring standards, assign article ownership, review for accuracy, and retire stale content.

• Document and continuously improve Help Desk processes, procedures, runbooks, and escalation matrices to create consistency and increase efficiency within the department.

• Identify and drive automation and self-service opportunities to eliminate repeatable tasks, partnering with IT Operations on workflow, scripting, and platform enhancements.

• Administer and optimize the IT Service Management platform (ServiceNow preferred) as it pertains to Help Desk intake, categorization, assignment rules, forms, dashboards, and reporting.

• Maintain a consistent, transparent reporting relationship with the Manager IT Support, including recurring status updates on queue health, staffing, escalation trends, risks, and pod development.

• Enforce company policies and procedures, including acceptable use, data handling, identity verification prior to account actions, and secure remote support practices.

• Contribute to capacity planning, staffing models, tooling evaluations, and budget input for the offshore Help Desk function.

• Maintain ongoing working knowledge of service desk and endpoint management best practices and proactively bring applicable improvements to the team and leadership.

OTHER DUTIES MAY BE ASSIGNED

Qualifications

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each critical duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed are representative of the minimum knowledge, skills, and/or abilities required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Education / Experience

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.

• 6+ years' experience in enterprise end-user support / service desk operations, with 2+ years in a lead, supervisory, or team management capacity.

• Demonstrated experience leading an offshore or geographically distributed team supporting a U.S.-based enterprise, including 24×7 shift-based operations.

• Demonstrated experience onboarding, training, and developing analysts, including building training material and ramp plans from scratch.

• 3+ years' hands-on experience supporting Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure / Entra ID in an enterprise tenant.

• 3+ years' hands-on experience supporting Windows 10/11 endpoints and Windows desktop applications at enterprise scale.

• Experience supporting an environment of comparable scale (approximately 3,000 end users) and managing to defined service level agreements.

• Hands-on experience administering an IT Service Management platform (ServiceNow preferred), including reporting and dashboards.

• Experience with ITIL-aligned Incident, Request, Problem, and Change Management practices.

• Excellent spoken and written English with proven ability to communicate effectively with a U.S.-based manager and with U.S.-based Tier 2 and Tier 3 technical teams.

Certificates / Licenses — sample of some preferred certificates and licenses:

• ITIL 4 Foundation (strongly preferred).

• Microsoft 365 Certified: Fundamentals (MS-900).

• Microsoft Certified: Security, Compliance, and Identity Fundamentals (SC-900).

• CompTIA A+ and/or CompTIA Network+.

• CompTIA SecAI+ (Security AI+) (a plus).

• HDI Support Center Team Lead or Manager certification (a plus).

Knowledge / Skills / Abilities

Knowledge of:

• Proficient in the best practices secure use of GenAI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, MS Co-Pilot, and Gemini, including appropriate data handling and the limits of AI-generated guidance in a support context.

• Applying GenAI responsibly to service desk work — knowledge article drafting, ticket summarization, triage assistance, and training content — with human validation before customer-facing use.

• Service desk leadership practices: workforce scheduling, shift rotation design, queue management, escalation design, and quality assurance frameworks.

• Microsoft Entra ID / Azure AD concepts, including authentication, multi-factor authentication, conditional access at an awareness level, and device identity.

• Windows desktop troubleshooting at the Tier 1 level, including operating system behavior, application issues, profiles, performance, peripherals, and printing.

• Role-based access control concepts and the boundary between Help Desk delegated actions and Identity and Access Management ownership.

• Endpoint security and secure-access tooling at a support level, including Microsoft Defender, CrowdStrike, and Zscaler.

• Security awareness and incident escalation expectations, including phishing reporting, social engineering red flags, and caller identity verification prior to any account action.

• IT Service Management tooling and reporting (ServiceNow preferred), and ITIL processes.

• Establishing and maintaining customer service through effective interpersonal communication, both verbal and written, with internal end users.

• Project and time management, with a systematic, detailed, organized approach to work and high attention to detail and accuracy.

• Working with cross-functional teams in a fast-growing, rapidly changing environment.

• Exercising initiative and using good judgment to make sound decisions, and translating business requirements into operational practice.

Ability to:

• Lead by example — set the standard for ticket quality, urgency, and customer tone that the pod is expected to meet.

• Build a team culture of ownership and follow-through in a remote, distributed, shift-based environment without direct in-person supervision.

• Give direct, constructive feedback and hold analysts accountable while remaining supportive and developmental.

• Think logically and work both independently and as part of a group.

• Remain calm, decisive, and organized during major incidents and periods of high volume.

• Quickly learn new concepts and software and maintain a proactive attitude toward platform enhancements.

• Comprehend multiple abstract and concrete variables simultaneously.

• Remain detail oriented while multitasking and meeting multiple deadlines.

• Define problems, collect data, establish facts, and draw valid conclusions.

• Write reports, create metrics and dashboards, business correspondence, and procedural manuals.

• Maintain a productive working relationship with a remote U.S.-based manager and with U.S.-based Tier 2 and Tier 3 teams, including asking for help early and closing the loop on escalations.

• Work flexible hours across time zones, including nights, weekends, and holidays on a rotational basis.

Performance Measures

• Service level attainment: response and resolution targets met by priority.

• First-contact resolution rate and ticket deflection through self-service and knowledge content.

• Backlog and aging: no unmanaged aged tickets; documented action on every aging exception.

• Ticket quality assurance scores across the pod and trend improvement over time.

• Customer satisfaction and escalation/complaint volume.

• Analyst ramp time to full productivity and pod retention.

• Coverage integrity: zero unstaffed shifts and clean, documented shift handoffs.

• Zero policy exceptions in identity verification and access-request routing.

How This Role Shows Up

This role is expected to embody ACC's operating values: Customer Service — leading with help, collaboration, and a genuine desire to support teams; Agility — adapting and pragmatically accommodating as needs change; Security — protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of our information and systems; and Resiliency — mitigating against, then bouncing back from, the inevitable sub-optimal exigencies.

The Help Desk exists to help the business get to "YES." We do the right things, right, the first time — and then we get better.