What is Support Engineering?
A Support Engineer is an engineer that solves technical customer problems and questions.
Reader's Note:
Previously, I managed Support Engineering at Finix from the Seed to Series B stage. You can read more about my story and journey here.
What do Support Engineers do?
Support Engineers interact with customers daily through integration questions, developer support, and any issues/feature requests they might find. Questions can range from API integration questions to specific scenarios that might require hours of research.
Support Engineering is a cross-functional role working across product, engineering, and customer-facing teams.
What does the average day look like?
- Respond to customer’s inquiries and issues via email, support tickets, or zoom
- Troubleshoot and debug technical questions from customers relating to APIs or integrations
- Build strong relationships with customers and work with them to resolve their issues
- Act as a customer advocate in cross-functional product and engineering meetings
- Participate in on-call rotations for alarms
Background of Support Engineers
Support Engineers come from all different backgrounds. Support Engineers tend to have the following background.
- BS/MS in Computer Science, Engineering, or similar experience (Bootcamps!!)
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
- Strong foundational knowledge of APIs and can explain the concept to a five-year-old easily
- Python, Ruby, and or JavaScript experience
- Intermediate to Advanced SQL knowledge