Hire Technical Support Engineer: What They Do, Salary, How to Hire

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Working with customers can be the most challenging part of any job, so there is usually a separate department for customer support. There are also different customer support professionals, one of which is a technical support engineer.

Almost all companies require a technical support engineer to help customers with any tech-related complaints. If your company doesn't already have one, it's time to complete your helpdesk team and hire a technical support engineer.

But what exactly is a technical support engineer, and what do they do?

Before hiring a technical support engineer, it's important to know what the job description entails and the expected salary. This way, you can adjust your company budget accordingly and see how their skills would be valuable to your team. After all of this, and you are still looking for an easier way to hire engineers in your company, than reach out to us at Revelo to source and hire vetted tech talent within as little as 14 days.

Keep reading to learn everything you need to know to hire technical support engineers, including their average salary and detailed job description as per the position level.

What is a Technical Support Engineer?

An IT department is incomplete without a technical support engineer, as this member helps increase customer satisfaction by providing prompt troubleshooting solutions and similar tech support services. This is why you need to choose the best talent for your team.

A technical support engineer is a vital member of a company's customer support team or IT department, providing troubleshooting solutions and tech support services. In addition, technical support engineers provide these services to various internal and external clients.

That includes clients across various industries, such as telecom, financial services, and healthcare. The IT departments of all companies also aim to provide tech support within the company and to external customers.

For bigger corporations, this tech support can be categorized in two ways:

• Technical engineers that help employees and internal departments
• Client-facing technical engineers that deal with customers who call in or seek help

Technical support engineering is typically a mid-career position in which most individuals work for about 20 years before moving to the next stage of their career. This career usually guarantees high job satisfaction.

Depending on what kind of tech support they wish to offer, those that want to pursue technical support engineering as a career seek degrees in computer engineering, computer science, engineering, or technical discipline.

Technical Support Engineer Salary

The annual salary for a technical support engineer depends on the position and an individual's skills. However, according to Indeed, an average is roughly $68,000 a year.

Here's what skills a junior/entry-level or senior technical support engineer offers and how much they make per year.

Junior/Entry Level Technical Support Engineer Salary Skills

According to Glassdoor, the estimated base salary for an entry-level technical engineer is approximately $53,000 per year. Including additional pay of about $30,500 per year, this number totals around $83,500 per year. This additional pay can be in the form of bonuses, profit, and commissions.

Here are some of the skills a junior/entry-level technical support engineer offers:

• Ability to keep up with the latest software and support system
• Vast knowledge of virtual environments
• Expert use of specific enterprise software
• Ability to handle workflow processes and write down the necessary commands
• Ability to work under pressure
• Knowledge of basic coding, scripting, and programming
• Compatibility in analyzing application logs
• Familiarity with VPN technology and other security measures
• Experience in handling, diagnosing, and troubleshooting issues
• Skilled in using IT Administration Software and Network monitoring
• Good at research, diagnostics, and internet connectivity issues
• Emotional intelligence and excellent communication skills
• Strong command of the English language for hassle-free communication with customers

Senior Technical Support Engineer Skills and Salary

According to Glassdoor, the average salary of a senior-level technical support engineer is approximately $91,000. With an additional payment of $16,000, that number totals up to around $107,000 per year. Additional pay can include bonuses, profit, and commissions.

Here are a few skills that a senior-level technical support engineer may offer:

• Strong command of the English language for hassle-free communication with customers
• Active listening and comprehensive oral communication
• Extensive knowledge of company products and their technical aspects
• Ability to work independently
• Willingness to explore new technologies and systems
• Thorough knowledge of PC and Mac operations
• Senior scripting and programming experience
• Technical skills such as UNIX/LINUX, Java and JavaScript, Microsoft SQL Server, NoSQL, and knowledge-based systems
• Ability to maintain data reports and analyze application logs
• Quick problem-solving and troubleshooting skills
• Inductive and deductive reasoning

What Does a Technical Support Engineer Do?

A technical support engineer is responsible for providing enterprise-level customer support and tech services to external and internal clients. Including ideal tech expertise, there are many other aspects that a technical engineer masters for eligibility for this duty.

Here are the few main tasks a technical support engineer handles daily.

Monitoring Systems

One of the most crucial jobs for a technical support engineer is the continuous monitoring of software and systems. The main aim of a tech engineer is to instantly identify issues before they cause trouble for the whole system. An individual should be able to come up with suitable solutions in a timely manner.

Tech support can use clever monitoring tools — whether offensive or defensive — to solve the issues right away and ensure the system stays running. These tools can be purchased from an enterprise or developed if an engineer is extra-skilled. However, the ultimate goal is to determine which tool is appropriate for each issue and how they can solve it quickly.

A better way to stay out of such issues at all times is to train your tech support team or desk employees on how to resolve an error quickly.

Troubleshooting, Diagnosis, Resolution, and Escalation

Tech support engineers have a list of issues they need to resolve but their main target should be detecting and solving the high-priority problems. After that, their responsibility is to manage the workflow and find a suitable solution for the initial issue causing damage.

Some firms might have an aligned flow chart with levels to give the estimated targets of work completion, but smaller companies tend to manage the workflow manually. In both ways, the initial attempt should be to resolve the case through troubleshooting.

Through troubleshooting, tech engineers locate the source of the issue and continue to resolve that issue using the appropriate monitoring tools. If the issue happens again, the tech support should diagnose and solve it quickly for the customer. During such times, the tech engineers should escalate a case to the proper internal department and ensure the issue is resolved on time. Unfortunately, this work is one of the most stressful parts of the job since the customers may get frustrated by the malfunctioning systems.

This is where technical support engineers need to stay patient and maintain friendly communication with the customer.

Interacting With Customers

Besides the technical skills and knowledge, another important skill that makes an outstanding technical support engineer is communication skills. While dealing with customers facing software malfunctions, tech engineers are also on board with new employees who need to be trained.

In all these consultations, tech support engineers need to stay friendly and patiently participate in any necessary conversations. Prioritizing the customer is key to being considered a high-rated tech engineer.

A tech engineer may spend their whole day talking to people and giving presentations in a webinar when required. They may also need to take masterclass sessions in organizations and do voice-overs in the training tutorials being uploaded online.

Building professional relationships with your colleagues and loyal customers is another way tech engineers set their place at the firm. However, taking note of all this communication, being a tech support engineer may not be a suitable job for an introvert who would rather work in solitude.

Technical Knowledge

Most firms expect technical support engineers to be a source of information when it comes to any tech issue. But, often, a fully-educated technical engineer fresh out of school might not understand something an experienced tech support member does.

That is why most organizations require experienced and professionally-developed tech support engineers that offer more than just academic experience. Additionally, a technical support engineer should stay up to date with the newest software, hardware, and systems.

They should also be able to educate other colleagues, their tech support team, or other internal departments on how to troubleshoot and solve customer issues at any given time.

A tech support engineer is responsible for all the monitoring and troubleshooting tools, which means the role requires someone who has quick-thinking skills. As tech professionals, they also have to communicate with people with minimum tech experience and help them understand the issue and solution in a beginner-friendly way.

Technical Support Engineer Job Description

To ensure that you don't have to start from scratch when you hire a technical engineer, we've created a technical support engineer job description template to copy and fill out according to your company standards.

Technical Support Engineer

A technical support engineer will research, diagnose, troubleshoot, and resolve tech-related issues reported by external customers or internal departments. You will work with different software, hardware, and systems and follow the company's standard procedure to escalate a situation approximately.

What To Expect From the Role

• Working with different systems, software, and hardware
• Exposure to IT and development
• Guidance from experts in the department
• Opportunity to work on IT projects
• Collaborating with IT teams or other internal departments

Responsibilities

You will be expected to take on these daily responsibilities as a technical support engineer:

• Research, diagnosis, troubleshooting, and identification of customers' tech-related issues
• Ownership of customer problems and solving the problem by the end of the communication
• Follow customer procedures to appropriately escalate the issue to the right internal departments
• Provide prompt and helpful feedback to customers
• Ensure proper closure and recording of all issues
• Prepare timely and accurate reports
• Document knowledge-based tech notes and articles
• Follow the SLA for issue severity

Skills

Here are the required skills to be eligible as an entry-level technical support engineer:

• Ability to keep up with the latest software and support system
• Vast knowledge of virtual environments
• Expert use of specific enterprise software
• Ability to handle workflow processes and write down the necessary commands
• Ability to work under pressure
• Knowledge of basic coding, scripting, and programming
• Compatibility in analyzing application logs
• Familiarity with VPN technology and other security measures
• Expertise in handling, diagnosing, and troubleshooting issues
• Skilled in using IT Administration Software and Network Monitoring
• Good at research, diagnostics, and internet connectivity issues
• Emotional intelligence and excellent communication skills
• Strong command of the English language for hassle-free communication with customers

Requirements

Here are the education and professional experience requirements to apply for a technical support engineer position:

• BS degree in computer engineering, computer science, engineering, or technical discipline
• X years of experience in enterprise technical support

Salary

The annual salary of a technical engineer ranges from $83k to $107k, depending on the position level. Our package also includes a 401(k), paid leaves (paternal leave, sick leave, personal, emergency leave, etc.), medical allowance, loans, quarterly bonuses, and other competitive benefits.

Career Progression

With appropriate experience as a technical support engineer, you may be promoted to higher roles such as a Senior Systems Engineer, a System Analyst, or a Technical Director.

How To Find and Hire Technical Support Engineer:

Finding the right technical support engineer for your business is the first step to ensuring customer satisfaction in the IT department. Unfortunately, the recruitment process isn't as simple as looking through the top three candidates and hiring the one with the most experience.

In fact, in a mid-career position such as technical support engineering, experience doesn't matter above all other factors. Other than their expertise in technical engineering, you have to gauge whether the candidate is eligible for the specific customer support your company requires.

Dealing with customers is only ideal for those with patience and quick thinking. Not everyone who applies to your company may be the right fit, even if they have other expertise in the field.

Here are a few things to keep in mind while hiring a technical support engineer.

Accurate Job Description

The main thing to consider is honesty and reason in your job description. Since this is a mid-career position, it doesn't require a large amount of field experience. However, a degree in the appropriate field, such as computer engineering, computer science, engineering, or technical discipline, is necessary.

Some companies tend to restrict their candidates by requiring over 10 years of experience for a job that won't pay them appropriately, so you want to be realistic, transparent about what candidates can expect, and ensure you're fairly compensating your talent. You must also detail the responsibilities you expect your technical support engineer to take.

Transparency in the job description simplifies the recruitment process and improves job satisfaction significantly. Make sure to add an option dedicated to the expected day-to-day tasks of a technical engineer at your company.

Questions To Ask Before Hiring a Technical Engineer

A detailed, one-on-one conversation with the candidate is the best way to expedite the recruitment process. Here are a few questions you can ask before hiring a technical support engineer to gauge whether the candidate is right for your business.

How do you diagnose a problem with a client's computer system?

This question will help you determine the candidate's expertise when it comes to troubleshooting methodology and if they're able to comply with company standards.

Why do you think it's important for IT engineers to communicate with clients in person?

This question will help you gauge the candidate's understanding and dedication to customer relations.

Do you prefer to provide tech support in person or via remote desktop?

This will help you understand the candidate's strengths and weaknesses while also displaying the individual's technical skills. Plus, you can determine whether their work module is profitable for your company.

What's your procedure when you're unable to resolve a customer's technical issue?

The answer to this question showcases the candidate's ability to escalate situations whenever necessary and follow the company's best practices. Plus, it will help you understand whether the candidate is able to work under pressure.

What seems to be the most common technical issue experienced by clients?

The answer to this question displays the candidate's understanding of your product and knowledge of the industry. Plus, it indicates the candidate's previous work experience in the field.

How do you handle situations in which a customer is angry and blaming you for someone else's mistake?

This indicates the candidate's ability to work under pressure, escalate situations calmly, and reassure a customer with patience.

Hire Technical Support Engineer with Revelo

Regardless of the type of business you have, your team is incomplete without a professional technical support engineer. Plus, hiring an experienced technical support engineer can significantly improve your customer support team's productivity and increase customer satisfaction.

Luckily, as the largest platform to hire remote software developers and technical support engineers in the U.S., Revelo is here to save you the trouble of the recruitment process. Revelo takes care of the sourcing and categorizing while you look through the eligible candidates. Hiring remote technical support engineers for your team is easier than ever.

Schedule a meeting to talk to one of ur representatives at Revelo now for a turnkey solution for sourcing, hiring, and managing talented technical support engineers.

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