We have an opening for a Dedicated Support Engineer (DSE) to be located onsite at the Department of Home Affairs in Pretoria, South Africa . This role requires the successful candidate to be heavily pro-active, adept, flexible, technically ahead of what is needed by the customer and persuasive in order to become a trusted advisor. All these qualities are required to make Novell successful in this account.
The DSE provides on-site technical support and is primarily responsible for the identification and resolution of Novell product related technical problems. The DSE will develop business relationships with the customer's technical and management staff, and support the customer by gaining first-hand knowledge of their system, configuration and business needs. The engineer will use this familiarity to accelerate response time to requests and ensure that solutions are tailored to meet customer expectation. The engineer's goals are to pro-actively help the customer avoid potential problems and maintain the environment of Novell 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 implemented Novell technologies and will utilize resources within Novell as needed to assist with these issues. An engineer will also listen to the needs of their customer for opportunity discovery and forward to the appropriate internal team (Sales, Services) for further development. Additional responsibilities and skill requirements are listed below.
In this position the DSE will cover several Novell products and need to be a quick study on new product functionality and features. The products requiring expertise are OES, ZenWorks Suite, GroupWise, eDirectory. The DSE will need a broad mix of skills and, most importantly, the ability to work well with a structured yet dynamic environment. In addition, the DSE candidate should possess the ability to work well in highly charged situations, have strong teaming skills and the ability to provide outstanding customer service.
Duties:
* Form strong business relationships with the customer at various levels of the organization.
* Troubleshoot and provide accurate and timely resolution to customer issues. Serve as customer advocate within Novell 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 Novell 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 Novell products/solutions in line with specific Consulting engagements.
* Participation in projects and project management as requested by the customer or Novell.
* Interact with the existing DSEs as required to meet the customer needs and always in a friendly and professional manner.
Required Background:
* Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems or related field or equivalent experience required
* 7+ years IT/Technical Support/Novell 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
Required Technical Skills:
* Product Expertise with all or most of the following: OES, ZenWorks Suite, GroupWise, eDirectory
* Ability to learn new technologies quickly
* Ability to install, configure and troubleshoot Linux and Windows operating systems
* Linux bash scripting fundamentals a plus
* Basic lan trace analysis helpful
* Basic web headers analysis or relevant web support experience helpful
* Practical experience supporting networks and systems management based applications
* Familiarity with datacenter operations and concepts
* Knowledge of network architecture, design and troubleshooting
Other:
* Willing to travel as needed
* May at times be required to work outside of standard business hours