Job Summary
Job Description — GRIPS-KIT Domain Expert (SME)
Application: GRIPS-KIT · APM / App ID 15494
1. Role purpose
GRIPS-KIT is the authoring tool used to manage service information across Volvo Group truck brands and Volvo Bus, built on the “Global Real Time Information Processing” platform from SemaForge. The Domain Expert is the single accountable subject-matter authority for this application.
The role owns knowledge acquisition and validation during the Pragati transition and, in steady state, drives the shift from repetitive incident restoration to engineered prevention — focusing effort on the small core of genuine application defects rather than the large volume of monitoring-generated alert noise.
2. Role at a glance
Role title GRIPS-KIT Domain Expert / Subject Matter Expert (SME)
Program Volvo Group — Project Pragati, Digital Engineering (Design & Development)
Application GRIPS-KIT
Reports to Group Project Manager — Digital Engineering
Base location India (Bangalore / Chennai) with Gothenburg–Malmö time-zone overlap
Experience 8–12 years in application support, engineering and service transition
Engagement phase Transition (Learn → Perform) moving into steady-state SRE
Key Responsibilities
3. Key responsibilities Area Responsibilities Domain ownership Act as the single accountable authority on GRIPS-KIT functional flows — authoring, publication, ComHub / VGPO master-data flow and downstream consumption of service information for Volvo Group truck brands and Volvo Bus. Maintain the application landscape map: SemaForge GRIPS platform, SQL estate, MQ queue managers, Citrix delivery and Wintel hosting. Knowledge transfer Lead KT sessions with incumbent SMEs; own the run book / SOP set with embedded screenshots and glossary. Clear reverse-walkthrough and playback validation sign-offs against the Learn Phase scorecard. Ensure KT effort is pointed at the genuine engineering surface, not raw ticket volume. Incident & problem management Triage and resolve the true application-engineering incidents — launch failures, ComHub disconnects, publication and queue-message errors, VGPO master-data issues. Drive Problem Records for recurring signatures instead of symptom-only restoration; guard against reopened / repeat incidents. Reliability engineering (SRE) Define and govern SLIs / SLOs: user-journey availability, launch latency, alert signal-to-noise, MTTR on genuine incidents and reopen rate. Operate the error-budget policy and the 30/60/90 preventive backlog. Noise & toil reduction Partner with Wintel, DBA, MQ and monitoring teams to retire high-volume alert signatures (SQL CPU on the primary host, URL-availability synthetic monitor, disk-space alerts) and correct mis-routing. Automate repetitive restoration tasks — cleanup scripts, service restarts, auto-close of confirmed self-recoveries. Stakeholder engagement Work directly with the Volvo Group DPO / DPAO, VSM and CSM community on scope, priorities, risks and transition readiness reporting. Present evidence-based readiness views at governance and leadership forums. 4. Must-have skills and experience Skill area What we expect Service-information authoring platforms Deep hands-on experience with technical publication / service-information authoring tools; SemaForge GRIPS exposure strongly preferred. MS SQL Server Performance tuning, CPU / checkpoint behaviour, batch and ETL windows, capacity right-sizing. IBM MQ / integration Queue managers, dead-letter queue handling, publication message flows. Citrix / SBC Application launch, session lifecycle, profile, clipboard and service troubleshooting. Wintel & IIS hosting Windows server administration, IIS hosting, patch–reboot startup dependency management. Monitoring & ITSM SCOM, Splunk, Moogsoft / RBA; ServiceNow incident, problem and change workflows. SRE fundamentals Pareto and failure-mode analysis, structured RCA, toil elimination, SLI / SLO design. 5. Good to have • Python / PowerShell automation to reduce run book toil. • AI and Copilot-assisted documentation, run book generation and incident analytics. • Automotive aftermarket / service-information domain background. • Exposure to SAFe or Program Increment (PI) based delivery governance. 6. Behavioral expectations • Evidence-led — forms conclusions from ticket, log and telemetry data rather than assumption. • Comfortable presenting a clear, concise position to Volvo Group leadership and DPO stakeholders. • Documents as they learn; treats the run book as a living asset, not a transition artefact. • Coaches and cross-skills backups to remove single-expert dependency risk. 7. Success measures — first 90 days Window Expected outcome Days 1–30 Stabilise and baseline. Complete ranked KT with sign-off; raise the three priority Problem Records (SQL capacity / threshold, URL monitor, disk automation); publish the validated run book. Days 31–60 Automate and remediate. Land the SQL capacity change, consolidate duplicate alerts, automate recurring cleanup and restart toil, tune SCOM / Splunk thresholds and maintenance windows. Days 61–90 Prove and exit. Demonstrate a measurable reduction in alert volume, agree the error-budget policy, complete the reverse walkthrough and meet indep