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Technical staff levels

There are a number of different levels of support and technical expertise we can provide. There is no point in paying a highly-qualified and experienced senior engineer to change printer cartridges!

The Technician contracts are designed for scheduled visits (weekly, fortnightly, monthly) or full-time managed services to resolve problems and do basic maintenance not involving downtime or interruption of service. In the course of the visits, the need for more senior staff to do installation and upgrade work may be highlighted (for instance, to add new features or extend support to a new type of hardware); any such work will be quoted for at the relevant rate.

The senior technical contracts are more for adhoc installation services or upgrade work involving partial or complete interruption (perhaps scheduled to take place in holiday periods).

Junior Technician (generally for weekly visits or full-time)

• Be polite and organised
• Perform general maintenance tasks (such as adding users, password resets, clearing print jobs), perhaps using scripts and tools created by Precedence
• Basic hardware maintenance (e.g. replace projector bulbs, memory and hard drives)
• Troubleshoot and fix issues with hardware connectivity such as projectors, power loss, monitor failures
• Work though a checklist to integrate new computers from unboxing, removing unwanted software through to connecting to network and joining to domain
• Be familiar with connecting various devices to network (e.g. Android, iOS)
• Hand off problems to senior support personal after having done basic troubleshooting
• Troubleshoot network problems using tools like ping
• Install software on unmanaged systems
• Image PCs from a configured imaging system
• Update standard software (e.g. Windows updates, Chrome, Adobe Reader)
• Monitor state of user sessions and using resets, messages, etc. to take appropriate action (such as reset dead sessions or logout users who have left themselves logged in during a maintenance window)
• Monitor and restore backups

Senior Technician (generally for weekly, fortnightly and monthly visits)

In addition to above:

• Advanced hardware problems requiring disassembly, such as replacing laptop keyboards
• Understand network layout and majority of tasks, e.g. patch in new sockets
• Fix problems with guidance from senior support personal, hand-off more complex issues to allow time to concentrate on other support jobs
• Work with 3rd party support providers (e.g. server hardware support) to diagnose and fix issues
• Define checklist for integrating new computers
• Identify jobs which could be streamlined with more automation/scripting and test scripts provided by senior support
• Identify any updates required when imaging PCs and work with senior support to implement
• Update and install software on fully managed systems (such as Provisioning Services, or Machine Creation Services)
• Plan and implement file security (such as which groups may access which folders)
• Troubleshoot network problems using ping, DNS checks and MAC address lookups
• Firmware updates on hardware including servers and switches
• Define and action new items to be backed up

Network Manager (generally for weekly, fortnightly and monthly visits)

In addition to above:

• Work with SLT to define long-term development strategy
• Schedule work rota with technicians
• Manage support tickets including following up on any which have stalled
• Mentor technicians and look after their professional development
• Support systems outside the scope of usual support contracts (e.g. photocopiers, Office 365, G Suite, network infrastructure)

Support and Development Engineer (adhoc work and periodic upgrade/installation visits)

• Install and update all OS and system software, such as Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops delivery controllers and Citrix ADC
• Be accredited in appropriate technologies or have minimum of 5 years field experience
• Define and implement physical and logical network layouts including VLANs
• Build PC images from scratch
• Implement backend disaster recovery and backup solutions
• Install physical servers from unboxing and cabling to software installation
• Excellent understanding of TCP/IP including using packet analysis
• Create and extend automation tools and scripts using a variety of languages and operating systems
• Fix and extend in-house software (such as NetManager)
• Identify problems and bugs in 3rd party software and work with those developers to fix

Senior Engineer and Solutions Architect (project-specific design and implementation)

• Be accredited in all appropriate technologies (e.g. Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, Citrix Hypervisor, Citrix ADC)
• Design and implement storage systems appropriate to the solution taking performance metrics and usage into account (e.g. SANs, IOPs on storage devices)
• Define which products and solutions are appropriate to the requirements and specifying appropriate sizing for the components
• Design and document inter-connectivity of all components
• Be a full member of global development teams for core software such as NetBSD and pkgsrc
• Attend and speak at global conferences
• Define and implement new in-house products, including managing roles and development tasks for other development engineers
• Sign-off software releases