Top 12 Technical Support Manager Skills to Put on Your Resume

In today's shifting tech landscape, the Technical Support Manager sits at the crossroads of people, process, and platforms. The job demands sharp technical instincts and steady leadership. If your resume speaks clearly to the skills employers crave, you’ll get noticed faster and land stronger opportunities.

Technical Support Manager Skills

1. ITIL Framework
2. Zendesk
3. Salesforce
4. Jira
5. SQL
6. Python
7. Active Directory
8. Linux
9. Network Troubleshooting
10. AWS
11. PowerShell
12. VMware

1. ITIL Framework

The ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) framework is a set of practices for IT service management focused on aligning services with business outcomes. It guides how to deliver reliable support, reduce friction, and drive continuous improvement across the service lifecycle.

Why It's Important

ITIL gives a Technical Support Manager a common language and structure. Predictable processes. Measurable service levels. A built-in rhythm for learning and improving. That means fewer surprises and happier customers.

How to Improve ITIL Framework Skills

Make ITIL work for the business, not the other way around. Tighten processes, measure relentlessly, and keep learning.

1. Anchor to business goals: Map incidents, requests, and problem management to what the company actually cares about—availability, risk reduction, cost control, customer experience.

2. Adopt ITIL 4 thinking: Use the guiding principles (focus on value, collaborate, progress iteratively) to avoid bureaucracy and keep improvements moving.

3. Build a CSI habit: Run regular service reviews. Pick one improvement at a time. Ship it. Measure it. Repeat.

4. Use the right ITSM tooling: Automate handoffs, enforce SLAs, and surface data you can act on. Keep workflows simple and auditable.

5. Blend with Agile and DevOps: Shorten feedback loops between support and engineering. Shared metrics, shared roadmaps, shared wins.

6. Define KPIs that matter: MTTR, first contact resolution, backlog health, change failure rate, customer effort score. Measure outcomes, not just activity.

7. Close the loop with customers: Capture feedback at key moments. Turn insights into fixes for process, docs, or product.

How to Display ITIL Framework Skills on Your Resume

2. Zendesk

Zendesk is a cloud-based customer service platform for ticketing, omnichannel support, knowledge management, and analytics.

Why It's Important

It centralizes conversations, automates repetitive steps, and surfaces insights. Your team moves faster. Customers wait less.

How to Improve Zendesk Skills

1. Automate the grind: Triggers, macros, and automations should handle routing, tagging, and status changes so humans focus on real problems.

2. Tight integrations: Connect CRM, chat, phone, and engineering tools to give agents full context without switching tabs.

3. Use AI and bots thoughtfully: Deflect simple requests, collect details up front, and hand off gracefully to agents.

4. Build a living knowledge base: Keep articles concise, searchable, and up to date. Track which ones actually resolve tickets.

5. Design for mobile: Customers and agents both. Keep responses crisp, forms short, and flows simple.

6. Instrument everything: Monitor CSAT, first response time, reopen rates, and backlog age. Fix the bottlenecks, not just the symptoms.

7. Coach the team: Blend soft skills with product expertise. Scenario-based practice beats slide decks.

How to Display Zendesk Skills on Your Resume

3. Salesforce

Salesforce is a cloud CRM platform that unifies sales, service, marketing, and analytics while offering deep customization and extensibility.

Why It's Important

For support leaders, it brings customer data, case management, and dashboards under one roof, speeding resolutions and tightening collaboration with other teams.

How to Improve Salesforce Skills

1. Shape it to your workflow: Customize objects, record types, page layouts, and permissions so the tool mirrors how your team actually works.

2. Standardize with Flow: Retire legacy Process Builder automations and move to Flow for routing, escalations, and approvals. Fewer clicks, fewer errors.

3. Integrate the stack: Connect telephony, chat, email, and bug tracking to create context-rich cases and clean handoffs.

4. Train and certify: Short, focused sessions on reports, case handling, and console productivity. Keep admins sharp, too.

5. Measure what drives outcomes: Use Reports and Dashboards for SLA attainment, deflection, backlog trends, and agent productivity. Review weekly.

How to Display Salesforce Skills on Your Resume

4. Jira

Jira is a work management and issue tracking platform widely used for software development, IT operations, and service management.

Why It's Important

It keeps tickets organized, improves collaboration, and makes SLA performance visible, so nothing falls through the cracks.

How to Improve Jira Skills

1. Right-size workflows: Keep statuses and transitions lean. Reflect reality, not wishful thinking.

2. Automate routine moves: Auto-assign, set priorities, alert stakeholders, and transition issues based on rules. Less busywork, faster throughput.

3. Dashboards with bite: Role-specific views for leads, agents, and execs: SLA heatmaps, aging queues, blockers, and trend lines.

4. Use SLAs in Jira Service Management: Define response and resolution targets by priority. Monitor breaches and root causes.

5. Extend carefully: Add-ons can help—start with a few, measure value, and avoid overlap.

6. Pair with Confluence: Build a shared knowledge base; link articles to tickets and reduce repetitive questions.

7. Teach and iterate: Periodic training plus a feedback loop on workflow pain points keeps the system healthy.

How to Display Jira Skills on Your Resume

5. SQL

SQL (Structured Query Language) is the standard language for querying and manipulating relational databases.

Why It's Important

Support leaders who speak SQL can pull data on demand, troubleshoot faster, and back decisions with facts—not hunches.

How to Improve SQL Skills

1. Lock in the basics: SELECT, JOIN, GROUP BY, HAVING, window functions. Practice until it’s muscle memory.

2. Think in sets: Write queries that operate on collections, not loops. Simpler, faster, more elegant.

3. Index with intent: Know when and where indexes help. Read plans. Watch out for accidental full scans.

4. Master transactions: Isolation levels, deadlocks, and retry logic—crucial for reliable operations workflows.

5. Optimize iteratively: Measure query time, reduce I/O, trim data early, and avoid SELECT * in production queries.

6. Use real tools: Get comfortable with SSMS, psql, pgAdmin, or your team’s preferred clients. Save snippets you reuse.

How to Display SQL Skills on Your Resume

6. Python

Python is a versatile, readable programming language used for automation, data work, integrations, and more.

Why It's Important

Automate the repetitive. Normalize data. Stitch systems together. Python turns tedious support tasks into fast, reliable scripts.

How to Improve Python Skills

1. Nail the core: Data types, control flow, functions, modules, virtual environments. Keep it clean and simple.

2. Write Pythonic code: Embrace idioms and PEP 8 conventions. Readability wins.

3. Lean on the ecosystem: Requests for APIs, Pandas for analysis, Flask or FastAPI for lightweight services, pytest for tests.

4. Automate real problems: Build scripts to parse logs, reconcile tickets, or sync data across tools. Ship small, useful utilities.

5. Improve by review: Ask for code reviews. Learn patterns from teammates. Refactor often.

6. Practice steadily: Short daily exercises beat rare marathons. Consistency compounds.

How to Display Python Skills on Your Resume

7. Active Directory

Active Directory (AD) is Microsoft’s directory service for centralized identity, authentication, authorization, and policy management in Windows environments.

Why It's Important

It secures access, simplifies user and device administration, and enforces policy at scale—bedrock for reliable support.

How to Improve Active Directory Skills

1. Audit and monitor: Track changes to users, groups, and privileged actions. Alert on anomalies.

2. Least privilege first: Role-based access, just-in-time elevation, and periodic access reviews keep risk in check.

3. Patch like clockwork: Keep domain controllers and dependent systems current to close vulnerabilities fast.

4. Harden identity: Strong password policies, MFA where possible, and conditional access in hybrid setups.

5. Govern with GPOs: Standardize baselines for security, apps, and configuration. Document, test, then deploy.

6. Back up and rehearse: Test AD restoration and recovery procedures. Know your RTO/RPO before you need them.

7. Trim the clutter: Decommission stale accounts, groups, and GPOs. A tidy directory is a safer directory.

How to Display Active Directory Skills on Your Resume

8. Linux

Linux is an open-source operating system kernel powering servers, desktops, containers, and embedded systems—known for stability, security, and flexibility.

Why It's Important

Support teams rely on Linux for dependable hosting, rich tooling, and fine-grained control. It’s the workhorse behind many critical services.

How to Improve Linux Skills

1. Stay updated: Apply security patches and package updates regularly. Automate where safe.

2. Watch the machine: Use top, htop, iostat, vmstat, and journal logs to spot bottlenecks early.

3. Harden the surface: Configure firewalls (ufw or iptables), lock down SSH, and deploy Fail2Ban for brute-force defense.

4. Backups you trust: rsync, Borg, or enterprise backup—verify restores, not just backups.

5. Accelerate boot and services: Analyze with systemd-analyze; disable dead weight using systemctl.

6. Tune the network: Adjust sysctl parameters, NIC settings, and queues for lower latency and higher throughput.

7. Automate at scale: Use Ansible, Puppet, or Chef for consistent, testable changes.

8. Teach the team: Share runbooks and postmortems. Consistency beats heroics.

How to Display Linux Skills on Your Resume

9. Network Troubleshooting

Network troubleshooting is the structured hunt for connectivity and performance issues, from physical links up through protocols and apps.

Why It's Important

When the network stumbles, everything feels broken. Quick diagnosis limits downtime, protects revenue, and calms the chaos.

How to Improve Network Troubleshooting Skills

1. Train to a method: Work the OSI layers or a top-down approach. Consistency shortens time-to-fix.

2. Use the right tools: Packet analyzers, path and latency probes, and performance monitors reveal the truth faster than guesswork.

3. Instrument proactively: Continuous monitoring with alerts on loss, jitter, saturation, and anomalies prevents fire drills.

4. Document the topology: Keep maps, IP plans, and device configs current. Clarity saves minutes when minutes matter.

5. Share knowledge: Create playbooks for common faults—DNS, DHCP, routing loops, MTU mismatches, mis-tagged VLANs.

6. Communicate crisply: Set expectations with stakeholders, give updates at intervals, and translate root causes into plain language.

How to Display Network Troubleshooting Skills on Your Resume

10. AWS

AWS (Amazon Web Services) is a broad set of on-demand compute, storage, database, and managed services delivered from the cloud.

Why It's Important

It scales with demand, improves uptime, and can reduce total cost when governed well—perfect for modern support operations.

How to Improve AWS Skills

1. Control spend: Tag resources, set budgets and alerts, rightsize instances, and use autoscaling and reserved or savings plans where they fit.

2. Fortify security: Enforce least privilege with IAM, rotate credentials, enable MFA, and protect edges with WAF and Shield when appropriate.

3. Observe everything: Centralize logs and metrics, set alarms, and trace requests. Act before customers notice.

4. Design for failure: Multi-AZ by default. Backups tested. Health checks and failover ready to go.

5. Harden incident response: Playbooks for outages, clear escalation paths, and post-incident reviews that drive real fixes.

6. Keep learning: New services and features land constantly. Schedule time to review and refine architectures.

How to Display AWS Skills on Your Resume

11. PowerShell

PowerShell is a cross-platform shell and scripting language for automating systems and managing configurations across Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Why It's Important

It turns manual, error-prone tasks into reliable scripts and gives support teams superpowers for diagnostics and remediation.

How to Improve PowerShell Skills

1. Master the core: Cmdlets, pipelines, objects—not text—flow through the shell. Learn to think in objects.

2. Script with intent: Write reusable functions and modules. Add parameters, help, and examples.

3. Handle errors well: Try/catch, error action preferences, and robust logging make scripts trustworthy.

4. Adopt VS Code: Use the PowerShell extension for linting, debugging, and test-driven scripts. Prefer it over ISE going forward.

5. Automate the routine: User provisioning, patch compliance checks, log parsing, and service restarts—ship scripts that save hours.

6. Learn by sharing: Code reviews and community snippets accelerate growth.

How to Display PowerShell Skills on Your Resume

12. VMware

VMware provides virtualization and cloud infrastructure software that lets organizations run and manage workloads efficiently across clusters and clouds.

Why It's Important

Virtualization simplifies capacity planning, high availability, and disaster recovery. Support teams gain flexibility and control without sprawling hardware.

How to Improve VMware Skills

1. Keep tools current: Update hypervisors and VMware Tools in guests for performance and security benefits.

2. Right-size resources: Tune CPU, memory reservations, and storage policies. Watch contention and ballooning like a hawk.

3. Monitor relentlessly: Track latency, IOPS, CPU ready time, and datastore health. Fix hotspots before they spread.

4. Design for resilience: HA/DRS configured well, snapshots controlled, backups verified, and recovery plans rehearsed.

5. Automate operations: Templates, desired state configuration, and scheduled tasks reduce toil and drift.

6. Stay informed: Product names and licensing have evolved; review changes periodically to avoid surprises.

7. Skill up the team: Troubleshooting hosts, networking, and storage paths should be second nature.

How to Display VMware Skills on Your Resume