Premium Engineer

Premium Engineer

Job Description:

The Premium Support Engineer is assigned to support a significant strategic customer with post-implementation product support.  The role requires the successful candidate to work pro-actively, to be flexible and technically one step ahead of the customer. The aim should be become a trusted adviser for the customer.

The Premium Support Engineer provides technical support via email and phone and is primarily responsible for the identification and resolution of SUSE Linux product related technical issues. He/she will develop business relationships with the customer's technical staff and IT management. The Premium Support Engineer will support the customer by gaining first-hand knowledge of their system configuration and business needs. The engineer will use this knowledge to shorten response times to requests and to ensure that solutions are tailored to meet customer's expectations. The engineer's goals are to pro-actively help the customer avoid potential problems and maintain the environment of SUSE Linux technology in an optimal and efficient manner.

The engineer will be available to respond in a timely manner (defined in the contract) to any issues that may arise with the SUSE Linux technologies in use at the customer and will utilize resources within SUSE as needed to assist with resolving these issues. The engineer will also listen to the needs of their customer for up-sell opportunities and forward them to the appropriate internal teams within SUSE for further development.

Additional responsibilities and skill requirements are listed below.

In this position the Premium Support Engineer will cover several SUSE Linux products and needs to be a quick learner to become familiar with new product functionality and features. The Premium Support Engineer will need a broad mix of skills and, most importantly, the ability to work in a structured way within a dynamic environment. In addition, the Premium Support Engineer candidate should be able to work well in highly charged situations, have strong teaming skills and to provide outstanding customer service.

Performance Expectations:

• Form strong business relationships with the customers at various levels of the organization
• Troubleshoot and provide accurate and timely resolution to customer issues. Serve as customer advocate within SUSE Linux by facilitating escalation of issues through appropriate internal organizations
• Pro-actively identify issues by becoming familiar with customer's technical and business environment while providing recommendations for resolution to these issues
• Prevent customer issues by reviewing their SUSE Linux environment regularly, report and correct issues per customer requirements
• Share knowledge by writing technical documents and pro-actively sending helpful technical information to customer (upcoming patches, technical news, etc)
• Document and communicate work performed in provided systems and documents as requested
• Deliver technical presentations and/or training to diverse audiences
• Assist in the implementation of SUSE Linux products/solutions in line with specific Consulting engagements
• Participation in projects and project management as requested by the customer or SUSE Linux
• Interact with the existing Premium Support team as required to meet the customer needs and always in a friendly and professional manner

General Requirements:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems or related field or equivalent experience required
• 5+ years IT/Technical support/SUSE Linux Services experience, which should include some experience in technical leadership and 2nd or 3rd line support-experience using technical support tools and supporting new software products
• Position requires a strong sense of responsibility, self-motivation and the ability to prioritize and organize workload to complete multiple, simultaneous projects
• Position requires flexibility and capacity to work across a variety of activities within a matrix and virtual organizational framework
• Ability to appropriately handle tense/stressful customer situations regarding service outages and issue resolution - a core ethos of doing whatever is necessary to keep the customer happy
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Highly developed interpersonal, oral and written communication skills
• Able to influence both internal and external stakeholders
• The ability to work seamlessly across organizations

Technical Skills:

• Fundamental knowledge of Linux operating system concepts
• Very good understanding of networking concepts and protocols
• Good understanding of Linux and network security concepts
• Familiar with other operating systems
• Familiar with Virtulazation  (Vmware, Xen, KVM) and cloud technologies
• Good understanding of hardware and computer architecture
• Experience with C/C++/Java, able to read source code effectively for troubleshooting purposes
• Experience writing scripts (bash, Perl, Python, e.g.) to troubleshoot and correct Linux issues
• Familiar with SSH and NFS
• Familiar with storage concepts (SAN, multipathing. LVM, RAID, etc.)
• Basic knowledge of SAP software is an advantage
• Basic knowledge of High Availabilty concepts (pacemaker)
• Good understanding of memory management 
• Experience troubleshooting Linux systems

Other:

• Willing to travel as needed (minimal, if any)
• May at times be required to work outside of standard business hours
• Languages: German and English business fluent

Job:

Services

SUSE, the world’s largest independent open source software company, powers digital transformation with true open source technologies for the enterprise that simplify, modernize and accelerate traditional, cloud and edge solutions. SUSE collaborates with partners, communities and customers to deliver and support solutions that enable mission-critical business outcomes. SUSE’s container and cloud platforms, software-defined infrastructure, and artificial intelligence and edge computing solutions allow customers to create, deploy and manage workloads anywhere – on premises, hybrid and multi-cloud. For more information, visit www.suse.com.