The Multidimensional Role of a Support Engineer: Navigating Technical Challenges while Delivering…
Photo by Steven Lasry on Unsplash
I had the opportunity to return to my alma mater for a sharing and networking session to share more about my career journey. A recurring question that popped out several times was : “What does a Support Engineer do?”. It dawned upon me that while there are a lot of articles and guides about being or becoming a Software Engineer, there is a lack of such materials for Support Engineer.
Through this piece, I hope to give a perspective of why I chose to take on a role as a Support Engineer, what one can expect from being a Support Engineer and provide a perspective why Support Engineering is a career worth pursuing. I hope this will spark interest for more talented individuals in the tech industry to consider taking on a Support Engineering role as well!
Why I chose to become a Support Engineer? Ironically, I graduated in 2020 and took on a Software Engineer role in my first company. While I really enjoy and love coding, I started to realize that coding for 8 hours daily on workdays is not how I would like my work life to be. I craved for a more dynamic role that would allow me to use a variety of skills, not limited to only Software Engineering. I chanced upon a Support Engineering role and was amazed by the scope of what the role entails, and the rest is history!
What does a Support Engineer do?
I relate the scope and skills of a Support Engineer back to a quote from my study of Taoism:
“Water is fluid, soft and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard”.
- Lao Tzu
A Support Engineer should be flexible and adaptable enough to learn the necessary skills to solve the most complex business problems. This has been evident in the amount of unique problems I have encountered and attempted to solve with my best effort.
I have utilised and acquired various technical skills including: (but not limited to):
- Appreciation of multiple Backend and Frontend Frameworks
- Ability to understand a variety of programming languages for code tracing
- API Technologies & Architectures
- Software Architecture
- Cloud Architecture and Deployment (AWS, Azure, GCP)
- Containers (Docker & Kubernetes)
- Database Performance Tuning
- Networking
- Cybersecurity Knowledge & Vulnerabilities Detection
- Bad Actors Detection
- Load Testing & Performance Tuning
- Process Modelling & Development
- Data Visualisation & Analysis to identify trends and gather insights
- Quality Assurance & Testing
- Automations & Scripting
I believe as a Support Engineer our soft skills are equally important to our technical skills:
- Showing empathy and ability to build rapport with clients
- Asking the right questions to gather facts for understanding technical problems
- Communicate effectively and clearly to stakeholders both internally and externally
- Intuition to solve new problems from past knowledge
- Ability to learn fast and apply new knowledge to various situations.
- Having courage to challenge current norms and policies to solve business problems
- Project Management
- Ability to share knowledge with fellow peers & Knowledge Management
Why is Support Engineering worth pursuing? While Support Engineering may have a different focus from Software Engineering, it’s no less technical. In fact, the technical skills required to excel as a Support Engineer are vast and requires you to be adaptable and willing to constantly learn new knowledge.
Moreover, there are various Support Engineer roles, such as Technical Support Engineer, Integration Support Engineer, Developer Support Engineer, Enterprise Support Engineer, and Customer Success Engineer. Each of these roles focuses on different areas but requires many of the skills I’ve mentioned above. By pursuing a career in Support Engineering, you can enjoy the thrill of solving problems in diverse areas while honing your technical skills and learning to communicate effectively with various stakeholders.
So, if you have a passion for enabling businesses and users and find solving dynamic problems exciting, Support Engineer is a role you definitely don’t want to miss!