Abstract global operations command center with dashboards and network lines

Director | CX, Customer Success, Service Delivery, Reliability & Global Operations | ITSM

I turn customer experience, service delivery, service reliability, and global operations into business impact and growth.

Director-level leader with 18+ years of progression from hands-on technical operations into customer experience, customer success, service delivery, service reliability, support engineering, global service delivery and operations, and ITIL service management leadership across IT, OTT, SaaS, SOC, broadcast, and mission-critical environments. I have led distributed teams of 15+ members across customer support, technical support, support engineering, service management, and software engineering while improving customer trust, renewal confidence, executive communication, and operational performance.

Suraj Kandel professional portrait
Suraj Kandel Greater Toronto Area, Canada CXCustomer SuccessService DeliveryService Reliability Global OperationsITSMSupport EngineeringService DeskITILSRE Incident, Change & ReleaseAI-Assisted 24/7 Enterprise Operations CXCustomer SuccessService DeliveryService ReliabilityGlobal OperationsITSMSupport EngineeringService DeskITILSREIncident, Change & Release24/7 Enterprise Operations

Business Impact & Results

When operational discipline, transformation, data insight, and customer focus work as one system, trust and business outcomes improve.

02
L1-L3SLAUptime

Operational Excellence

Built and scaled L1-L3 support, service desk, technical operations, support engineering, IT support, NOC, SOC-aligned, and service delivery functions while improving SLA discipline, ticket flow, incident flow, and service continuity.

03
AIRCARelease

Transformation & AI Workflows

Shifted support, service desk, and support engineering operations from reactive issue handling toward proactive, governed, and measurable service improvement through observability, automation, AI-assisted workflows, RCA, problem management, runbooks, change governance, and release readiness.

04
KPIMTTRInsight

Data & Executive Insight

Delivered KPI dashboards, custom reporting, SLA tracking, ticket analytics, FCR, MTTR, CSAT/NPS, backlog health, customer health insights, executive reporting, and decision support that helped customer success, support, service delivery, and engineering teams strengthen retention, renewal confidence, service performance, and revenue opportunities.

01
CSATRenewalGrowth

Customer & Revenue Impact

Strengthened customer satisfaction, customer success, onboarding, adoption, renewal confidence, expansion support, executive service reviews, and regional engagement across global enterprise accounts.

Most Recent Role Director of Reliability

Accedo, Toronto, Canada

Global Scale 100+ enterprise customers

Tier 1-3 environments across APAC, EMEA, LatAm, and NAM

Market Position Customer + Operations + Business Impact

Bridging technical teams, support engineering, customer-facing teams, and executive priorities

Executive Capability Map

One operating profile across CX, customer success, service delivery, service reliability, support engineering, transformation, technical leadership, and ITSM.

Grounded in 18+ years of progression from hands-on engineering into global support, service delivery, support engineering, customer success, reliability leadership, global service delivery, ITIL operations, and ITSM governance.

01

Customer & Commercial Leadership

CXRenewalsQBRs

Connects customer experience, customer success, onboarding, adoption, renewals partnership, expansion, QBRs, RFP/RFI support, voice-of-customer feedback, and executive customer governance.

Business value
  • Builds trust with enterprise customers
  • Supports renewal confidence, customer health, and long-term value
  • Bridges sales, customer success, delivery, and support
02

Service Reliability & Support Engineering

24/7SREITSM

Leads global service reliability across 24/7 service, service desk, technical support, and support engineering operations, including ITIL/ITSM, SLA governance, ticket lifecycle, queue health, first-contact resolution, major incident management, escalation ownership, RCA, observability, SRE collaboration, and change/release leadership.

Operating value
  • Improves visibility, ownership, and service continuity
  • Reduces repeat issues through structured problem management
  • Keeps customers and executives aligned during incidents and outages
03

Operational Transformation

AutomationKPIScale

Improves scale through operating model design, automation, human-in-the-loop workflows, KPI governance, knowledge maturity, training paths, service desk maturity, ITSM/CRM tooling, project delivery, and cost discipline.

Transformation value
  • Moves support from reactive handling to proactive operations
  • Creates measurable performance rhythms
  • Develops process, tooling, playbooks, and team maturity together
04

Hands-on Technical Foundation

SOCNOCCloud

Brings credibility from support engineering, SOC/NOC operations, broadcast master control room operations, networking, infrastructure, cloud operations, Jira Service Management, Salesforce, observability tooling, compliance-aware operations, documentation, and troubleshooting.

Leadership value
  • Understands both the technical detail and customer impact
  • Translates clearly between engineers and business leaders
  • Coaches teams with practical operating context

Transformation Portfolio

Programs that connect customer trust, service delivery, operating discipline, and measurable service improvement.

Representative leadership work showing how customer retention, CX improvement, service delivery maturity, service desk maturity, support engineering maturity, service visibility, and global governance were turned into practical operating programs.

Review Design Launch Measure Improve
CX Review

CX, Support & Service Operations Review

Reviewed end-to-end support, service desk, and support engineering operations, including escalation paths, handover quality, queue health, knowledge maturity, ticket flow, engineering collaboration, and customer communication flow.

Service Model

First-Line Support & Service Desk Model

Created a First-Line Support Offering and service desk model covering ticket intake, triage, operating processes, queue ownership, training paths, escalation rules, knowledge practices, and governance.

Governance

ITSM Governance & Service Desk Maturity

Strengthened incident, request, problem, change, knowledge, SLA, and escalation processes to improve operational discipline, service visibility, audit readiness, and consistent service delivery.

Release Readiness

Change, Release & Production Readiness

Strengthened production change visibility, release readiness, deployment coordination, regression monitoring, rollback ownership, and cross-functional handoffs to reduce operational risk and improve support preparedness.

Dashboards

Observability, Dashboards & SLA Tracking

Improved alerting, monitoring, data capture, ticket analytics, SLA dashboards, executive reporting, incident metrics, availability visibility, and service performance tracking. Led an incident reduction program by analyzing a year of incidents, summarizing root causes, resolutions, and preventive measures to reduce repeat issues.

AI Support

AI-Assisted Investigation & Resolution

Drove AI-enabled support initiatives and AI-assisted workflows with support engineering to reduce investigation effort, improve resolution speed, strengthen knowledge reuse, and move teams toward proactive operations.

Retention

Customer Retention & Service Standards

Strengthened service standards, executive customer governance, renewal support, customer health visibility, global and customer-specific outage readiness, incident communication, churn reduction efforts, and satisfaction programs tied to retention, renewal, and upsell confidence.

Regional Growth

North America Growth Enablement

Relocated from Hong Kong to Canada in January 2020 at the company's request to strengthen regional customer presence, service standards, retention confidence, satisfaction, and business growth support.

Leadership Approach

Customer-facing, support, and technical teams perform best when ownership, communication, and product feedback stay connected.

I started in technical and operational roles across broadcast and telecommunications, moved into networking and security operations, then grew into OTT software, SaaS, IT service management, support engineering, service delivery, and global leadership. That progression reflects the way I work: learn quickly, adapt across industries, and create structure, trust, and measurable improvement in complex environments.

Calm Under Pressure

I bring structure, ownership, and transparent communication into high-impact incidents so customers, executives, engineering, and vendors stay aligned.

Proactive by Design

I look for ways to reduce repeat issues through knowledge systems, self-service, customer health signals, structured learning, and stronger product feedback loops.

People Development

I build support cultures where engineers and service leaders feel trusted, coached, trained, accountable, and supported in their personal and professional growth.

Growth-Minded Operations

I adapt quickly across regions, industries, and operating models, bringing structure, customer focus, and measurable improvement into new environments.

Experience

From hands-on technical operations to director-level customer, service delivery, support engineering, and operations transformation.

Director of Reliability

Global Operations TransformationAccedo, Toronto, Canada

OTT streaming, SaaS platforms, support engineering, SRE, observability & release governance

Led global operations transformation across service reliability, support engineering, observability, automation, AI-assisted workflows, SLA dashboards, incident/change/release readiness, outage planning, executive service reporting, and ITSM governance.

Director, Support Services

Global OperationsAccedo, Toronto, Canada

24/7 enterprise support, service desk, support engineering, customer success, service delivery & lifecycle management

Owned global 24/7 support, service delivery, support engineering, and service desk operations across customer lifecycle management, SLA governance, ticket intake, triage, queue management, escalation handling, operational continuity, executive reporting, renewals partnership, and service performance improvement.

Senior Manager, Global Support

Service ManagementAccedo, Toronto, Canada

ITIL/ITSM, production support, multi-vendor operations & platform reliability

Managed ITIL-based 24/7 support operations, incident response, support engineering collaboration, ticket lifecycle performance, SLA dashboards, multi-vendor coordination, queue health, escalation control, workforce planning, and platform reliability improvements.

Operations Manager

Service ManagementAccedo, Hong Kong SAR & Toronto, Canada

Regional service delivery, escalation ownership & follow-the-sun operations

Served as Operations Manager and Team Manager across APAC, EMEA & LatAm, and NAM, strengthening regional service delivery, escalation ownership, team coordination, customer governance, and operational alignment before relocating from Hong Kong to Canada in January 2020.

Customer Support Engineer to Service Manager

Service ManagementAccedo, Hong Kong SAR

Support engineering, Tier 1 OTT customers, incident response & service governance

Progressed from Customer Support Engineer to Senior Support Engineer and Service Manager, supporting global OTT customers, Tier 1 service delivery, incident response, escalations, troubleshooting, documentation, and customer-facing service governance.

System Engineer II

Security Operations CenterDMX Technologies (Member of KDDI Group), Hong Kong SAR

Enterprise ICT, network security, infrastructure & data center support

Supported ISO 27001-certified SOC operations, customer deployments, field support, enterprise infrastructure troubleshooting, network security and management solutions, documentation, and escalation coordination for telecom, media, and enterprise customers.

Assistant Network Operations Engineer

Master Control RoomGlobecast (Subsidiary of Orange S.A.), Hong Kong SAR

Broadcasting, telecommunications, satellite/RF transmission & media distribution

Operated 24/7 Master Control Room environments, monitored satellite uplink/downlink, RF transmission, contribution/distribution feeds, and broadcast service continuity for television and media customers.

Market Trust

Trusted across global IT, digital, support, and enterprise environments where stability, escalation control, and customer confidence matter.

Instead of naming confidential customers, this section summarizes the scale, industries, and operating environments where the work was delivered. Public company references are limited to employers and recommendation affiliations already visible through public websites or LinkedIn.

Global Enterprise Coverage

Experience across APAC, EMEA, LatAm, and North America supporting Tier 1 to Tier 3 enterprise customers, regional launches, service handovers, and executive escalations.

APAC EMEA & LatAm North America
Industry Breadth

Work across high-availability IT, digital, support, service delivery, and enterprise environments where reliability, ticket flow, customer communication, operational readiness, and service continuity are critical.

Broadcasting Telecommunications Media & Entertainment IT Operations Service Desk
Technology Environments

Operating experience across software, service, infrastructure, and support ecosystems where technical depth and customer-facing ownership must work together.

OTT Streaming SaaS Managed Services SOC / NOC Digital Products Support Engineering

LinkedIn Recommendations

Voices of trust, leadership, and cross-functional partnership.

Real endorsements from team members, direct reports, senior leaders, customers, sales partners, delivery leaders, engineering colleagues, and cross-functional stakeholders.

40+ credible LinkedIn recommendations validating impact across people, customers, operations, and delivery
People Leadership Coaching, growth, accountability, team trust, and high-performing support culture
Executive Confidence Operating maturity, executive communication, ownership, and business alignment
Customer & Delivery Trust Service confidence, responsiveness, incident coordination, reliability, and delivery follow-through
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Read exact LinkedIn recommendation

Education & Credentials

Technical credibility with executive operating range.

Open to the Next Chapter

Ready to lead customer experience, service delivery, service reliability, support engineering, global operations, and ITSM through the next stage of growth.

Based in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Ontario, Canada and ready to help teams improve service performance, customer confidence, operational clarity, and ITSM maturity. For privacy, the full CV and direct phone contact are shared after an initial LinkedIn conversation.

Aligned opportunities Open to senior, director-level, and adjacent leadership opportunities that align with my experience across Customer Experience, Customer Success, Global Operations, IT Operations, IT Service Management, Service Desk, Service Delivery, Support Engineering, Technical Support, Support Center / Contact Center / Call Center Operations, Incident & Change/Release Leadership, Support Transformation, and 24/7 Enterprise Operations. I am flexible on title where the scope, impact, and leadership fit are strong.
Location Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Ontario, Canada, with global operating experience across APAC, EMEA, LatAm, and NAM.
References Professional references are available upon request, with additional recommendations and endorsements visible on LinkedIn.
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