Sr. Support Engineer

Introduction

A career in IBM Software means you'll be part of a team that transforms our customer's challenges into industry-leading solutions. We are an infinitely curious team, always seeking new possibilities, and dedicated to creating the world's leading AI-powered, cloud-native software solutions. Our renowned legacy creates endless global opportunities for our network of IBMers. We are a team of deep product experts, ensuring exceptional client experiences, with a focus on delivery, excellence, and obsession over customer outcomes. This position involves contributing to HashiCorp's offerings, now part of IBM, which empower organizations to automate and secure multi-cloud and hybrid environments. You will join a team managing the lifecycle of infrastructure and security, enhancing IBM's cloud solutions to ensure enterprises achieve efficiency, security, and scalability in their cloud journey.

Your role and responsibilities

The ideal candidate will thrive in a fast-paced environment that values clear communication, strong collaboration, and a focus on achieving results. You are a self-starter, detail-oriented, and possess a passion for automation, process improvement, and effective problem-solving.

Reporting to the Manager of Support Engineering, this Senior Support Engineer will be a crucial member of the support organization, directly contributing to customer satisfaction and success. You will tackle complex technical challenges related to Consul and Nomad, independently identifying and implementing viable solutions. Furthermore, you will contribute to the evolution of both products through active participation in product discussions. You will engage in customer meetings as necessary to diagnose, debug, and resolve issues, acting as a key liaison between our customers and HashiCorp Engineering. Our Support Engineers are also expected to contribute to and enhance documentation, provide input on feature development, and, where feasible, implement bug fixes based on valuable customer feedback.

What you'll do (responsibilities)

• Reproduce and debug customer issues by developing and utilizing test environments and tools.
• Efficiently triage and address incoming support requests via our ticketing system within established SLAs, including managing high-severity, urgent cases.
• Thoroughly document and record all customer interactions and activities in compliance with internal and external security protocols.
• Actively participate in product engineering meetings to discuss support-related issues and provide valuable insights.
• Collaborate effectively with engineers, sales engineers, sales representatives, and account managers to schedule, coordinate, and lead technical debugging sessions with customers.
• Contribute to the creation and maintenance of product documentation, customer knowledge base articles, and best practices guides for Consul and Nomad.
• Continuously identify and implement improvements to support processes and tools to streamline common and repetitive tasks.
• Participate in a periodic on-call rotation.
• First 90 Days: (Focus on either Consul or Nomad)
• 30 Days:
• Develop a holistic understanding of the product and its interaction within the broader HashiCorp product suite.
• Successfully execute all common workflows.
• Make at least one contribution to enhance or expand the product documentation or installation guides.
• Gain practical experience with the core components
• 60 Days:
• Independently triage and effectively communicate with customers regarding inquiries.
• Participate in live customer debugging calls.
• Author at least one "customer knowledge base" article in your area of subject matter expertise.
• 90 Days:
• Demonstrate the ability to independently resolve and respond to production-down issues with minimal guidance.
• Be capable of handling any support ticket without direct assistance.
• Independently identify error sources and determine root causes by analyzing log files.
• Contribute to the ongoing development of KB articles that will benefit our customers.
• Beyond 90 Days: Expanding Expertise
• Following the initial 90 days, the expectation will be to begin developing proficiency in the other product (either Nomad, if the initial focus was on Consul, or Consul, if the initial focus was on Nomad). This journey will include:
• Actively participating in training and self-study to gain a comprehensive understanding of the second product.
• Gradually taking on support tickets related to the second product, with mentorship and guidance as needed.
• Contributing to documentation and knowledge base articles for the second product.
• Collaborating with team members who have expertise in the second product to learn best practices and troubleshooting techniques.
• Aiming to achieve a level of proficiency in the second product that allows for independent handling of a significant portion of support requests within a reasonable timeframe (e.g., within the first 6-12 months).

Required education

Bachelor's Degree

Preferred education

Bachelor's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

• 5+ years of Support Engineering experience (or comparable customer-facing technical role), preferably for mission-critical software
• 8+ years of experience in DevOps Engineering, Software Engineering, or System Administration within a Linux-based environment.
• Experience with Kubernetes and OpenShift
• Proficiency in a scripting language (e.g., Bash, Python, PowerShell) to automate reproduction environments.
• The ability to read and understand complex code (Go) for troubleshooting purposes and familiarity with GitHub.
• Experience working with REST APIs and command-line tools.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and tools.
• Knowledge of networking concepts, including TCP/IP, DNS, and load balancing.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with technical writing experience being a plus.
• Excellent organizational skills, a strong work ethic, attention to detail, and the ability to self-start.
• Proven experience in troubleshooting and resolving urgent, high-visibility technical problems.
• Familiarity with Distributed Systems, Microservice architecture, and Containers.
• Excellent problem-solving, analytical, and troubleshooting abilities.

Preferred technical and professional experience

• A Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, IT, Technical Writing, or equivalent professional experience.
• Experience with both Consul and Nomad is highly desirable.
• Experience with cloud providers like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform.
• Familiarity with monitoring and logging tools such as Prometheus and Grafana.
• Proficiency in HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL) and/or JSON.

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM Software infuses core business operations with intelligence-from machine learning to generative AI-to help make organizations more responsive, productive, and resilient. IBM Software helps clients put AI into action now to create real value with trust, speed, and confidence across digital labor, IT automation, application modernization, security, and sustainability. Critical to this is the ability to make use of all data, because AI is only as good as the data that fuels it. In most organizations data is spread across multiple clouds, on premises, in private datacenters, and at the edge. IBM's AI and data platform scales and accelerates the impact of AI with trusted data, and provides leading capabilities to train, tune and deploy AI across business. IBM's hybrid cloud platform is one of the most comprehensive and consistent approach to development, security, and operations across hybrid environments-a flexible foundation for leveraging data, wherever it resides, to extend AI deep into a business.

YOUR LIFE @ IBM

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you'll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you'll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

ABOUT IBM

IBM's greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we're also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 50 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it's time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, caste, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, veteran status, or other characteristics. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS

IBM offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits program. Eligible employees may have access to:

• Healthcare benefits including medical & prescription drug coverage, dental, vision, and mental health & well being
• Financial programs such as 401(k), the IBM Employee Stock Purchase Plan, financial counseling, life insurance, short & long- term disability coverage, and opportunities for performance based salary incentive programs
• Generous paid time off including 12 holidays, minimum 56 hours sick time, 120 hours vacation, 12 weeks parental bonding leave in accordance with IBM Policy, and other Paid Care Leave programs. IBM also offers paid family leave benefits to eligible employees where required by applicable law
• Training and educational resources on our personalized, AI-driven learning platform where IBMers can grow skills and obtain industry-recognized certifications to achieve their career goals
• Diverse and inclusive employee resource groups, giving & volunteer opportunities, and discounts on retail products, services & experiences

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.

This position was posted on the date cited in the key job details section and is anticipated to remain posted for 21 days from this date or less if not needed to fill the role.