Technical Support Engineer - SQL

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.

In the Customer Service & Support (CSS) team we are looking for people with a passion for delivering customer success. As a Technical Support Engineer you will own, troubleshoot and solve complex customer technical issues. This opportunity will allow you to accelerate your career growth by honing your problem-solving, collaboration and research skills, and developing your technical proficiency.

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: 

• Hands on working experience in technical support, technical consulting experience, or information technology experience.

• Experience in a customer facing or customer support role with strong troubleshooting and problem-solving of complex technical issues involving multiple technologies in a team environment.
• Experience with SQL Server or an equivalent database product.
• Solid knowledge on performance tuning and database design, T-SQL language.
• Experience in capacity planning, sizing SQL Server environments and high availability configurations.

Experience in one or more of these areas desirable:
• Industry experience with Microsoft Server products, network connectivity, UNIX or other operating systems, migrating databases to the cloud or upgrading from one version of Microsoft SQL Server to a higher version.
• Experience in creating technical documentation and sharing knowledge with others through training delivery and mentoring
• Other experience such as:
o Containers: docker, k8, open shift, cloud storage, flannel
o Big Data: spark, yarn, livy, zookeeper, ranger, knox, polybase
o Machine Learning: sparkSQL, java, scala, python, jupyter
o Data Sources: mongodb, cloudera, teradata, Oracle, DB2
o Monitoring: collectd, graphana, fluentd, influxdb, elastic search
o Experience with Linux script-based development environments and tools (PERL, Python, Ruby, PhP, etc.)

Language Qualification:
English Language: fluent in reading, writing and speaking.

• 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.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Strong knowledge of Microsoft SQL Server 2012 / 2014 /2016 /2017 /2019 / 2022 at administrative level (Installation, index and table maintenance, backups etc.)
• Strong knowledge of Microsoft SQL Server 2012 / 2014 /2016 /2017 /2019 / 2022 at dev level (SQL language, Stored Procedures, etc.)
• Azure Platform Knowledge, Understanding the Azure ecosystem, its services, and how SQL Server on an Azure VM and Azure SQL Managed Instance fit within it is beneficial. This includes knowledge of Azure Resource Manager, Azure Portal, Azure CLI, and PowerShell.
• Good Windows Operating System background on Threads, Processes and Memory Management (Heap, Stack, Virtual Memory)
• Performance Tuning & optimizing.
• High Availability & DR solutions (AlwaysOn Availability Groups, FCI, Windows Server Clustering Service, Replication, LogShipping, Failover Group – MI, Zone Redundancy - MI)
• Security (Encryption at rest(TDE), Encryption in transit(SSL))
• Table Partitioning

Additional skills on one of the following technologies will be considered a big plus:
• Windows Clustering.
• Debugging / Creating and Reading memory Dumps.
• Cloud knowledge (preferably Azure).

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.

Response and Resolution
• You own, investigate and solve complex customer technical issues and act as a advisor to the customer, collaborating within and across teams and leveraging troubleshooting tools and practices

Readiness
• You lead in building communities with peer delivery roles and share your knowledge through readiness programs, technical coaching and mentoring of others.
• You deepen your technical and professional proficiency to enable you to resolve complex customer issues, through training and readiness.

Product/Process Improvement
• You engage with Microsoft Engineering/ Supportability teams to investigate potential product defects and help develop automation techniques and diagnostic tools driving Microsoft product improvements