The Escalation Manager is a specialized individual contributor role within the Global Support organization, responsible for owning and managing critical customer account escalations from onset through stabilization and closure. This role acts as the single point of accountability within Support for escalated accounts, ensuring issues are addressed with urgency, structure, and cross-functional alignment.
The EM’s primary objective is to stabilize high-risk customer accounts by driving the resolution of critical issues, coordinating closely with Support, Engineering, Cloud Operations, and Product teams. This includes ensuring proper prioritization of P1 and high-impact cases, enforcing case hygiene, facilitating timely Engineering engagement, and ensuring that internal escalation paths are triggered proactively before the customer or Sales team raises concerns externally.
This role requires strong technical depth across ERP application architecture, infrastructure, and troubleshooting. The EM must be able to understand complex technical landscapes, challenge and guide resolution strategies, and hold teams accountable for progress. While not responsible for direct implementation or relationship management, the EM acts as the technical escalation leader for the account, ensuring a coordinated and transparent support response.
Beyond day-to-day escalation handling, the Escalation Manager plays a critical role in:
Identifying systemic or recurring issues contributing to account instability.
Driving and participating in account-level stabilization plans.
Engaging in post-escalation reviews to strengthen processes and prevent recurrence.
Ensuring clear and structured internal and external communication.
This is a high-visibility role requiring composure under pressure, strong cross-functional leadership without formal authority, and the ability to influence outcomes across multiple teams. Given the nature of escalated accounts, the position may require flexible working hours, on-call participation, and direct executive visibility.
Escalated Account Ownership:
Act as the primary escalation lead for high-impact customer accounts, ensuring structured management of escalations from initiation through stabilization and closure.
Drive internal alignment and ensure timely execution of action plans across Support, Engineering, Cloud Ops, and Product.
Stabilization and Resolution Strategy:
Develop and execute account-level stabilization plans to address critical issues, reduce ticket volumes, and restore customer confidence.
Proactively identify systemic issues contributing to escalations and drive resolution with the right internal stakeholders.
Escalation Governance:
Ensure proper prioritization, case hygiene, and timely engagement of technical resources for all escalated accounts.
Trigger and manage internal escalation paths proactively to avoid external escalations through CSM or Sales.
Set customer expectations and provide updates regarding troubleshooting and resolution action plans for internal and customer-facing communications.
Technical Engagement and Resolution Acceleration:
Leverage strong technical knowledge of ERP architecture and infrastructure to guide resolution strategies and validate progress.
Collaborate closely with Critical Support team, Tier 2/3 engineers, SMEs, and product teams to remove technical blockers and accelerate resolution timelines.
Cross-Functional Coordination and Communication:
Coordinate across Support, Engineering, Cloud Ops, Product Management, and CSM/CSDM teams to ensure alignment and accountability.
Deliver clear, structured, and timely communications on escalation status, risks, and next steps to all stakeholders.
Feedback Loop and Product Improvement:
Partner with CSM/CSDMs and Product Management to share customer feedback, recurring pain points, and systemic issues observed during escalations.
Work with Engineering teams to help prioritize critical fixes and influence product stability and supportability improvements.
Shift Coverage and Flexibility:
Participate in shift rotations, weekend shifts, and on-call coverage to provide uninterrupted global support.
Adapt to varying scheduling requirements to ensure timely assistance for customers in different time zones.
Continuous Improvement and Post-Escalation Review:
Lead or contribute to post-escalation reviews to identify root causes, process gaps, and product opportunities.
Support implementation of preventive measures to minimize future escalations and strengthen overall support readiness.
Collaborate with people managers and business leaders to drive continuous improvement in people, processes, and technology through a closed-loop process by identifying drivers for escalation.
Education:
A Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related field. Equivalent experience will be considered.
Experience:
5+ years of experience in enterprise product support, technical escalation management, or critical response roles in a SaaS or ERP environment.
Demonstrated ability to own and drive critical account escalations, ensuring cross-functional alignment and rapid resolution.
Proven experience in working closely with Engineering, Product Management, and Customer Success teams to resolve high-impact technical issues.
Strong background in ERP systems (such as QAD, SAP, Oracle ERP, or Dynamics 365) with the ability to understand complex technical landscapes and influence resolution strategies.
Experience coordinating multiple high-priority issues simultaneously under pressure, with clear accountability and customer focus.
Experience leveraging AI tools (such as generative AI assistants, diagnostic copilots, or predictive analytics platforms) to analyze incident data, perform rapid root cause analysis, and identify systemic escalation patterns across ticket histories.
Hands-on experience using Jira Service Management and Salesforce Service Cloud to manage critical account escalations, track ticket SLA compliance, enforce case hygiene, and link Tier-3 engineering bugs with customer-facing cases.
Background operating within multi-tenant SaaS or hybrid-cloud environments (AWS/Azure/GCP), managing incident workflows involving cloud infrastructure, microservices, database performance, or server deployment issues.
Proven track record of driving rapid war-room coordination, real-time stakeholder updates, and post-incident documentation.
Technical Skills
Strong understanding of enterprise ERP architecture, system integrations, and infrastructure components.
Mastery of Google Workspace (Google Docs, Sheets, Slides) for building real-time escalation trackers, publishing root cause analysis (RCA) reports, and delivering executive-ready presentations.
Cloud Infrastructure & Architecture: Knowledge of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud), including cloud infrastructure components, APIs, microservices, containerized environments, and log management tools (e.g., Datadog, Splunk, CloudWatch).
Ability to understand and validate technical resolution paths proposed by Support, Engineering, or Cloud Ops teams.
Familiarity with incident and escalation management frameworks and best practices in SaaS or on-prem environments.
Preferred / Bonus Qualifications: Prompt Engineering & Generative AI Tools: Hands-on experience utilizing Generative AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude, MS Copilot, or custom internal LLMs) for prompt-driven summary generation, ticket sentiment analysis, incident documentation, and automated stakeholder communication drafting.
QAD PKS or relevant industry certifications are a plus.
Your health and well being are important to us at QAD. We provide programs that help you strike a healthy work-life balance.
Opportunity to join a growing business, launching into its next phase of expansion and transformation.
Collaborative culture of smart and hard-working people who support one another to get the job done.
An atmosphere of growth and opportunity, where idea-sharing is always prioritized over level or Hierarchy.
Compensation packages based on experience and desired skill set
About QAD:
QAD | Redzone is redefining manufacturing and supply chains through its intelligent, adaptive platform that connects people, processes, and data into a single System of Action. With three core pillars — Redzone (frontline empowerment), Adaptive Applications (the intelligent backbone), and Champion AI (Agentic AI for manufacturing) — QAD | Redzone helps manufacturers operate with Champion Pace, achieving measurable productivity, resilience, and growth in just 90 days.
QAD is committed to ensuring that every employee feels they work in an environment that values their contributions, respects their unique perspectives and provides opportunities for growth regardless of background. QAD’s DEI program is driving higher levels of diversity, equity and inclusion so that employees can bring their whole self to work.
We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and do not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, sex, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, status as a veteran, and basis of disability or any other federal, state or local protected class.