Application Support Engineer I-IN

Job Description

FUNCTION: Application Infrastructure Support REPORTS INTO: Critical Application Services Manager

FLSA STATUS: Non-Exempt

An Application Support Engineer is a specialist in large-scale, complex, and distributed web infrastructure that engages in direct customer communications regarding the availability, scalability, reliability, and performance of their applications.

As an Application Support Engineer you will work with decision makers, developers, system administrators, and systems integrators on a daily basis, acting as the conduit between those who write the customer’s code and the infrastructure teams at Rackspace. The Application Support Engineer utilizes Application Performance Management (APM) tools along with knowledge of application development, frameworks, and web application architecture to proactively identify performance issues and likely points of failure as well as to resolve critical application-level issues impacting availability. These skills, paired with an understanding of customer growth and traffic patterns, enable the Application Support Engineer to develop, propose, test, and implement solutions for the infrastructure and application framework that will ensure maximum performance and uptime of customer applications.

An Application Support Engineer builds customer loyalty through extensive knowledge in application and infrastructure performance tuning, and works with internal teams to deliver a consistent and FANATICAL customer experience.

JOB REQUIREMENTS:

Key Accountabilities

• Provide support in tuning applications and infrastructure
• Design, develop, test, and implement new configurations, architectures, and standards
• Provide guidance, to customers, 3^rd party integration specialists, and/or internal teams, on solutions to increase application availability, redundancy, scalability, and performance
• Assist customers and internal teams to automate processes and incorporate devops methodologies
• Provide leadership and guidance when customer application-level downtime issues arise and provide RCA support as requested.
• Show ownership of issues through resolution and maintain customer loyalty by serving customers via phone, tickets, and email

Key Performance Indicators

• Customer/Internal Feedback (delivered via Unsat Ratings and/or email & phone)
• Stability and performance of customer applications, as relates to customer uptime, using internal monitoring tools
• Customer retention and growth as a result of consistently delivering high levels of service & support around customer application stability

ROLE DIMENSIONS

MAIN CONTACTS (external/internal):

Contact

Frequency

Purpose

Customers (phone and ticketing system)

Daily

To resolve issues, provide guidance, and receive feedback regarding ongoing projects or issues

Team Members

Daily

Providing recommendations and assistance and on customer issues, knowledge sharing, teamwork

Other departments

Daily

Assist issue resolution, active role in process change and improvement, active role contributing to the success of the business

PERSON SPECIFICATION:

Level-appropriate knowledge of and/or professional experience with:

• Proficient in technology troubleshooting, design, and implementation
• Ability to understand, administer, troubleshoot, and test OS and application platforms
• Proficient communicator with the ability to convey complex concepts to both technical and non-technical individuals
• Basic knowledge of performance tuning and scalability/reliability architecture best practices for a single platform (Linux or Windows)
• Ability to configure and troubleshoot platform-specific web servers and services (Including, but not limited to, IIS, Apache, Tomcat, JBoss)
• Understanding of at least one platform-specific programming language used for enterprise or large-scale web development (.Net, Java or PHP preferred)
• Exposure to Application Performance Management (APM) tools with the ability to interpret data, build dashboards, and engage in performance discussions.
• Ability to provide FANATICAL SUPPORT
• MCSE or RHCE certifications preferred

Personal:

• Minimum 2 years system administration experience, including 2 years of experience administering highly available systems.
• Prefer previous experience with an enterprise application framework (AEM, CQ, ATG, Oracle Commerce, Sitecore, Hybris, Magento)
• Ability to perform on-call functions
• Bachelor’s degree in CS or IS preferred