Windows Support Engineer (ACE Bench)

Position Responsibilities

Engineer will provide services as the primary engineer assigned to customer accounts in support of their systems, infrastructure and daily administration and management.  Engineer will work closely with Service Managers and internal teams to ensure that all aspects of the customer's ongoing system support and administration are successful. Engineer will be responsible for the creation and maintenance of application flow diagrams, custom monitors, RTS (Return to Service) documents, and Knowledge base articles as needed. Engineer will be available for escalations 24x7 on an on-call basis. He/She will conduct ongoing training for first line support personnel on their assigned customer's environment. Identifies and corrects recurring technical issues within their assigned customer(s) environments. Advises customer and acts as their SME (subject matter expert) for their environment for ongoing upgrades and infrastructure improvements.

Required Skills & Experience

        5-7 years of system administration or engineering

        Experience supporting daily operations and maintenance of an enterprise server environment

        Experience maintaining operating system environments with a pro-active approach including daily, monthly, and quarterly activities to prevent service interruption.

        Experience in supporting I.T. systems and infrastructure in a 24x7 production environment.

        Experience and expertise supporting RedHat Linux and Microsoft Server operating systems

        Experience troubleshooting network backups.  Ability to identify and correct long running backups and failures.

        Expertise in Windows administration utilizing scripting and other forms of automation.

        Experience supporting and administering HP server and storage hardware.

        Experience supporting and administering virtual servers running on VMWare.

        Expertise with network troubleshooting at the server level.

        Expertise with DNS, WINS and Windows networking protocols.

        Exceptional analytical and problem solving skills, with logical problem solving from Layer 1 through Layer 7 of the OSI model.

Nontechnical

       Excellent communication and customer service skills are required.

       Exceptional documentation skills are required.

       Exceptional planning skills and ability to work within change control parameters.

       Ability to:

o   work well under pressure.

o   work in a team environment that requires a great deal of independent thinking and work execution.
Strong sense of urgency in support of all customers.  Ability to understand business requirements for technical needs and utilize the business requirements information to prioritize work, develop solutions, and set urgency for others.

o   hold others accountable for meeting agreed upon timelines.

o   track and prioritize work independently, based on information from customer and service manager.

o   express complex situational information verbally and in written form.

o   establish expected completion dates for work being performed and provide immediate status updates if the work cannot be completed by the specified date.

o   easily recover from task interruption and quickly switch between higher and lower priority tasks.

o   follow policies and procedures that dictate minimum standards for ticket handling, such as customer communication status updates, timelines for escalation, management communication status updates, etc....

o   effectively use multiple methods of communication with internal team and customers including but not limited to instant messaging, e-mail, and phone.

Desired Skills & Experience

       Experience and expertise supporting Telephony applications, Microsoft SharePoint Server, Microsoft Office Communications Server / Live Communications Server

       Experience and understanding of network hardware load balancers – F5, Netscaler or Cisco in support of Windows Web infrastructures and systems

       Experience configuring and managing Apache web server

       Expertise in Windows Server 2008

       MCITP for Windows Server 2008 in any of the following areas- Enterprise Administrator, Server Administrator, Enterprise Messaging Administrator (Exchange 2007)

       MCSE for Windows Server 2003 (either the Security or Active Directory tracks)

       RHCE

       Web technology experience for the MS Windows platform, including multiple tier web/application layer designs