Job Description

Job Description

We are looking for a Principal Escalation Support Engineers to support our enterprise customers that buy our data center storage platforms. In this senior level position, your primary role will be to help solve escalated customer technical issues on our cutting-edge storage platform products. These issues are escalated by either Level 2 Support team or a critical account. You will also be called upon to Support onsite activities like Customer trainings, POC deployments and provide Onsite Field Support for certain critical customers. Your day to day will also involve mentoring and training level 2 teams, creating knowledge articles, actively participating in process improvement projects, working with engineering to create supportable products – all towards one end goal of excellent customer satisfaction.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

Providing exceptional customer support to Western Digital customers and partners via telephone calls, emails, and shared screen communications to drive the highest level of customer satisfaction and minimize system down-time; 

Resolving customer issues and problems by diagnosing and troubleshooting issue and working with customers to implement resolution provided.

Creating, managing, responding to, and driving to resolution escalated support cases submitted by customers, partners, and resellers experiencing challenges using Western Digital servers, storage hardware, and software products within the specified service level agreements (SLAs); 

Adhering to and maintaining specified SLAs to drive resolutions to reported issues.

Escalating to and working closely with software and hardware engineering teams to determine root causes and appropriate resolution for customers; 

Using data collection and analysis tools to comprehend the nature of the issue and analyzing the root cause to drive corrective actions.
Performing deep technical troubleshooting, research, filings bugs, determining root case, establishing problem solutions, and confirming resolutions. 

Provide onsite support to Account Teams/Customers on on-going operations as well as POC activities  – cover POC deployments, customer technical educational, and provide support on technical issues.
Developing training modules and delivering product support training to internal and external support teams, enabling them to capably support Western Digital products as appropriate;
Authoring and submitting knowledge-based articles based on customer issues and interactions; 

These knowledge-based articles act as points of reference for future issues that are reported, helping the support teams and customers to resolve any known issues.

Improving the serviceability of products by working closing with Engineering, QA, Product Management, and other internal teams to preserve and enhance product value; 
Global Subject Matter Expert (SME) in some specific chosen products to  enable customers to maintain and optimize their environments to achieve optimal performance; 

The role of Subject Matter Expert entails possessing deeper knowledge of the product, training the rest of the team on the product and updates, and working closely with engineering teams on future updates.

Completing models and simulations, using Western Digital’s manual or automated tools, to predict system performance under different operating conditions; and, 
Monitoring system operations and designing and conducting hardware or software tests to evaluate current or emerging technologies to consider factors such as cost, portability, compatibility, or usability. 
Actively participate in PoCs to drive technical success, and expand business in different geographies
Be ready to travel at short nortices. Will involve anywhere from 25%-50% (mainly domestic) travel

Qualifications

REQUIRED:

BS degree in computer science or Electronics is preferred. Other Engineering Streams are considered with experience in Implementing and supporting Storage and Server products.
Minimum of 7-10  years of experience in solving customer issue. Preferred 10+ years in direct onsite customer enagagement roles solving technical issues, planning and implementing onsite deployments, including customer trainings.
Hands-on experience various storage technologies like Hard drives, Solid State drive, Storage Servers, Storage Enclosures and PCIe devices.   
Working knowledge of implementation and deployment of storage technologies with various applications and filesystems, and deployment in datacenter environment
Working knowledge of data center activities – experience in server/system builds and teardowns.
Deep working knowledge and experience in Data Center networking and its various components – switches, routers, VLANs, trunking, adpators, cable-types included.
Must be able to demonstrate skills in operating systems including Linux, VMware ESX and Windows Server. Linux skills is a must.
Have excellent customer service and communication skills, both verbal and written and have experience in creating and delivering customer training.
Good understanding of data storage concepts and terminology including storage interfaces, and SAN. Enterprise Virtualization experience, Server storage experience; NAND Flash storage experience.
Working knowledge in in bash/python scripting is a BIG plus.
Excellent analytical and expert troubleshooting skills with end-users/customers, partners, and OEMs. 
Ability to learn new products, technology, and support systems needed to support our customers efficiently.
Ability to work with customer, discuss business requirements and present solution designs to both customers and internal team resources. 
Ability to analyze requirements, document a solution design and provide necessary support to sales and Engineering teams on the proposed solution. 
Knows how to define system architecture for new or existing computer systems using storage products. 
Ability to work with SMEs, other solution Architects, Sales teams and clients to determine the best solutions for our customer requirements. 
Work time is as per business requirements. Currently the role expects general shift hours working and On-call as need arises (Weekday / Weekend).