Technical Support Engineer - Azure SQL Cloud

With over 18,000 employees worldwide, the Microsoft Customer Experience & Success (CE&S) organization is responsible for the strategy, design, and implementation of Microsoft’s end-to-end customer experience. Come join CE&S and help us build a future where customers come to us not only because we provide industry-leading products and services, but also because we provide a differentiated and connected customer experience.

Within CE&S, the Customer Service & Support (CSS) organization builds trust and confidence for every person and organization through delivering a seamless support experience. In CSS, we help customers and partners resolve their issues quickly, prevent future problems from occurring, and demonstrate new ways to achieve more from their Microsoft investment.

Within CSS, our Digital Transformation Platform (DTP) group delivers world-class support for our global customers on their digital transformation journey. We provide valuable support solutions on a wide range of technologies, including Data analytics, Artificial Intelligence and IoT, Business Intelligence and Power BI, SQL, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform, that elevate our customers’ trust in Microsoft and improve their business performance.

We are looking for an individual who is a service delivery focused subject matter expert. You will be responsible for frontline engineer or delivery partner support staff technical readiness and process compliance. You will provide in-depth technical & subject matter expertise for one or more products, services or scenarios all while driving delivery excellence in a collaborative environment to achieve superior customer outcomes. Your primary accountability is to the support staff and managers on the teams you work with. This opportunity enables and promotes career growth as a recognized technical SME.

This role is flexible in that you can work up to 100% from home.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology (IT), or related field AND 3+ years of technical support, technical consulting experience, or information technology experience OR 5+ years of technical support, technical consulting experience, or information technology experience.
• Experience with Microsoft SQL Server either on-premises or Azure DB, or experience with MySQL, PostgreSQL or MariaDB.  
• Knowledge of Microsoft SQL Server 2012 / 2014 /SQL 2016 at dev level (SQL language, Stored Procedures, etc.)  
• Experience with Azure Data Migration Services and/or SQL Server Data Migration Assistant. 

Additional/Preferred Qualifications:

• Linux/Unix Administration is a plus. 
• Competency with Windows, networking, Active Directory, Clustering or virtualization.  
• Experience managing applications and services through PowerShell, Bash or similar scripting languages.   

Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.  We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.

Responsibilities:

Product/Process Improvement

• You own, investigate, and solve complex customer technical issues and act as an advisor to the customer, collaborating within and across teams and leveraging troubleshooting tools and practices.
• Engages with engineering team to investigate product bugs, provides business impact, and collaborates with appropriate stakeholders and senior team members on fixes.

Business Integration

• Implements strategic business decisions with customers, partners, and teams to increase market share; influences peers to implement strategy.

Readiness

• Implements end-to-end readiness programs (e.g., mentoring, leading triages, content creation, brown bag sessions, blogs, quality assurance checks, writes technical articles) and contributes to the content and readiness strategy; mentors Technical Support Engineers or members from other teams outside of Customer Service and Support (CSS); develops expert level competence on support topics.
• Participate in planned team-wide shift rotations to cover business needs, including 24x7 “on-call” responsibilities and weekend work, with the ability to work a flexible schedule, cover weekends, and/or cover a 10-7 shifts.This job may require you to cover an 8-hour weekend shift [regular hours] as part of a team rota.

Response and Resolution

• Acts as an advisor to the customer and handles complex, repeatable, or escalated cases that may become politically charged; creates technical articles or knowledge base (e.g., edits or creates news/ knowledge-base articles) that is internal or customer facing for better customer understand; provides best practices and education to ensure customer understands the problem in order to proactively resolve potential issues in the future.