What is a Technical Support Engineer?
No matter how sophisticated your product is, at one point or another there will be errors, bugs or other problems for your customers. For these reasons companies hire technical support engineers who are responsible for solving your customers’ problems.
But what exactly is a technical support engineer and what do they do?
You have come to the right place to find the answers.
At Wahl+Case we have supported dozens of people to land jobs as technical support engineers in Japan’s tech industry. We actually have a team that is solely focused on client facing technical jobs in Japan and they helped me write this article.
Reach out to them if you want to work as a presales engineer or similar role.
And now, without further ado, here is everything you need to know about technical support engineers in IT and SaaS.
What is a Technical Support Engineer?
As a technical support engineer in IT and SaaS, also known as customer support engineer or simply technical support, you will be responsible for researching, diagnosing, troubleshooting, and resolving all technical issues your customers encounter.
This is a post sales role, so you will only be interacting with existing customers. You won’t have any upsell or cross sell targets. Your job is to solve customer problems in a thorough, timely manner.
You will be the first point of contact for any errors, bugs, or other issues that your customers are dealing with and will be responsible until they get resolved. Some issues you can resolve yourself, and others have to get escalated to the development team.
A technical support engineer reacts to problems that arise, so it is important that you can work calmly under pressure and give accurate, prompt feedback to your customers to manage their expectations. Detailed feedback is crucial for your customers because their next steps depend highly on whether this problem can be fixed within an hour or in a week.
A technical support engineer is a client-facing engineer role. Check out Wahl+Case’s complete guide to client facing engineer positions to learn more.
Now let’s look at the actual responsibilities.
What are a Technical Support Engineer’s Responsibilities?
As a technical support engineer your main responsibility is to resolve all your customer’s problems with your product or service. To achieve this you need a deep understanding of your own product as well as all the different systems it can be integrated with. It’s not enough to know how your product works, you also have to know all the different ways your customers use the product. This will help you to find the root cause of problems faster when they arise.
Typical responsibilities of a technical support engineer include:
Support customers with their problems via phone, video call or in person (depends on product)
Use a ticketing system to prioritize (e.g. Zendesk, Intercom, Freshdesk etc)
Replicate problems and bugs internally / in a local environment for further testing
Find out the root cause of problems (Product, Integration, Customization, etc)
Escalate problems you can’t solve yourself to the product and development teams
Write tickets for engineers to patch up bugs
Maintain a proper documentation of all issues
What Opportunities does a Technical Support Engineer have?
Due to its hybrid nature of being technical as well as client facing the technical support engineer role comes with a lot of opportunities. It is a great stepping stone for anyone who wants to make a move out of strict IT roles.
Also, demand for technical support engineers will grow, as organizations expand and require more support services. The growing demand for technical support engineers led to increases in salaries over the last few years and this trend is likely to continue.
Becoming a technical support engineer will be great for your career as it comes with unique opportunities such as:
Developing best in class problem solving skills
Having a direct impact on the success of your customer’s business
Gaining client-facing experience that can lead to leadership positions such as technical director, project manager and CIO / CTO
Influencing the overall development and direction of your product by responding to your customers’ needs and requirements
What are the Requirements to be a Technical Support Engineer?
A technical support engineer is a client facing technical role, so you need a mix of hard technical skills and soft communication skills. You should have a deep understanding of your own product’s technology, your customers’ needs and requirements, different systems your product might integrate with, and potential customizations. On top of that, you must have the willingness and passion for solving problems for other people.
Requirements will vary from company to company but typically include:
Passion for helping customers
Strong communication skills both written and verbally
Experience working with different operating systems (Windows, Linux or Mac OS)
Extensive understanding of computer systems, networks, mobile devices, and other technological equipment
Experience in programming from prior jobs or side projects (language depends on the company but typically PHP, Ruby, Java, Python)
Knowledge of scripting languages (Perl, Python or BASH)
Ability to write technical documentation and FAQs
FAQ
What is the difference between a technical support engineer and customer success?
The main difference between a technical support engineer and a customer success can be seen as being reactive vs being proactive. As a technical support you have to respond to the issues that your customers are already experiencing.
A customer success manager on the other hand needs to engage customers on a daily basis and make sure they reap the full benefits of the product. Ideally a customer success manager solves problems before they occur. As customer success you will also be more involved in the sales process because you will most likely have upselling and cross selling targets and more sales focused KPIs.
If that sounds more like, read our blog about the 5 skills you need to get hired as a customer success manager.
And that’s it.
If this sounds like a job for you, get in touch with us and we will help you find a suitable position.
If not, read our Client-Facing Engineer Guide to learn more about other positions like Solutions Architects, Presales Engineers or Engagement Managers.
