What do you do as an IT engineer?

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HandBrake

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#285933 26-May-2021 19:36

Looking to move on from my current role in service desk; currently do SAAS support, bug troubleshooting, testing and feature request monitoring/task management officially but find we are always helping our hardware partners with how to do their job (printer, network setup and PC or network troubleshooting). Found I much prefer that practical style of job so want to find a similar role.

We just call them hardware people but officially would I be looking for IT engineer jobs? What are some other tasks you may do as an IT engineer? Would like to study up before I start looking for jobs in that field. What is the expected salary range for that role?

timmmay

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#2713392 26-May-2021 19:43

IT engineer is really a class of jobs. You get network engineers, cloud engineers, hardware engineers, programmers, and dozens of others. Salary depends on role and experience.

Linux

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#2713397 26-May-2021 19:51

How long is a bit of string question it is so varied

gzt

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#2713398 26-May-2021 19:56

always helping our hardware partners with how to do their job (printer, network setup and PC or network troubleshooting). Found I much prefer that practical style of job so want to find a similar role.

Can you explain a bit more how involved this gets?

HandBrake

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#2713416 26-May-2021 20:49

gzt:
always helping our hardware partners with how to do their job (printer, network setup and PC or network troubleshooting). Found I much prefer that practical style of job so want to find a similar role.

Can you explain a bit more how involved this gets?

Not very involved. Would say it's pretty basic.

I end up assisting the the customers local IT person with their job, every day. They call us and ask how to set up static IPs to computers, mobile units, local printers, tray and sharing properties. Some don't seem to know what an IP address is so God forbid when they supply customers with a network printer.

Have been asked many times how to rename a computer, change password, watched them go round in circles trying to make a user an administrator. Have had to walk them through the basics of setting up a site to site VPN despite them having told the customer it's their specialty. When customer computers have general issues, they call their IT guy who in turn calls us for assistance because they've looked at it and "confirmed it's slow" or whatever is the issue at the time but doesn't know where to go from there (i.e. lacks any troubleshooting skills). End up trawling through the logs, event viewer, do basic HDD checks, walking them through memory check, determining what is causing high resource usage, network troubles/disconnections and giving them a bunch of things to look at physically based on my findings. Have been given access to customer domains to help IT guy connect up domain to Office 365 or Google Suite, then setting up in Outlook program, setting up NAS storage....just random bits and bobs that are completely not related to our software at all...we end up helping so these IT people stop clogging up our helpline.

I do have other skills built up from my current role as well as self learning (sql, website management/hosting/management, limited html/css) but really I prefer more hands on stuff. I did hold a Cisco cert after graduation but has since expired.

Lias

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#2713611 27-May-2021 09:02

As others have said there is a pretty wide variety here, but a fairly common progression is something like Helldesk -> Desktop/Endpoint/SOE Engineer -> System Administrator/Engineer.

If that's something that interests you, these are the skills I'd be looking at.

To go from Helldesk -> Desktop/Endpoint/SOE Engineer
- Solid understanding of configuring and troubleshooting Windows 10 (preferably with at least 1 certification)
- Solid understanding of desktop hardware break-fix
- Understanding of desktop related parts of AD, GPO's etc.
- Entry level skills with PowerShell
- Entry level understanding of endpoint management (e.g. SCCM/MECM, Intune, etc)
To go from Desktop/Endpoint/SOE Engineer -> System Administrator/Engineer.
- Solid understanding of configuring and troubleshooting Windows Server /Active Directory and related things (MCSA or equivalent knowledge)
- Solid understanding of common on prem and cloud virtualization platforms (e.g. Hyper-V, vSphere, Azure/AWS IaaS)
- Entry level understanding of enterprise hardware (e.g. rack servers, chassis/blade servers, sans, L3 switches)
- Entry level networking qualification or equivalent experience (e.g. CCNA/Network+)
- Entry level skills with PowerShell minimum, but more is good.

Every environment is going to be different but I've done something like 15 technical interviews for systems engineers so far this year, and these are the sorts of technologies I've been asking about:

AAD, AD, AD Certificate Services, Azure IaaS, Azure PaaS, Azure SaaS, DFS, DHCP, DNS, Dynamic Routing, Enterprise Storage, Git, Infrastructure as Code, MS-SQL, Port Aggregation, Powershell, SCCM/MECM, Security, TCP/IP, VMWare,

I'm a geek, a gamer, a dad, a Quic user, and an IT Professional. I have a full rack home lab, size 15 feet, an epic beard and Asperger's. I'm a bit of a Cypherpunk, who believes information wants to be free and the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. If you use my Quic signup you can also use the code R570394EKGIZ8 for free setup. Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

1101

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#2713664 27-May-2021 11:03

~Desktop Engineer~ (even with basic Server support skills ) is a job type thats dying out (just my experience)
Aim higher :-)

You cant be an expert in everything
You cant have real word experience in systems that you never use
Ive known ~System Administrators~ who obviously didnt have current real world desktop fix/fault trace experience

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xpd

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#2713669 27-May-2021 11:10

IT Engineer = Jack of all trades

I've been in the industry for too long (yeah I'm getting old) and I don't specialize in any particular area. So I don't consider myself a systems admin or anything, although I do have the same knowledge and access as our sysadmins.

My official role at the moment is IT Technology Support Specialist, which means if it has a button I'm expected to be able to use/fix it :)

XPD / Gavin

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Lias

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#2713670 27-May-2021 11:11

1101:

~Desktop Engineer~ (even with basic Server support skills ) is a job type thats dying out (just my experience)

I don't think I'd say dying, morphing for sure, but so does everything. When dinosaurs roamed the earth and I did that sort of thing, it was initially all about fixing hardware and OS troubleshooting. Over time it morphed more into hardware diagnosis to get a warranty repair logged and reimaging replaced OS troubleshooting. Now (at least in the environments I've been exposed to in the last 5 years) it's more and more about 365 admin, intune management, application deployment etc.

HandBrake

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#2714068 27-May-2021 19:07

Lias:

snip

Cheers this is very helpful and the sort of path Im looking to go towards along with O365 stuff which I find quite fun. Most things are moving to the cloud so seems the way to go for upskilling.

Lias

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#2714083 27-May-2021 19:56

HandBrake:

Cheers this is very helpful and the sort of path Im looking to go towards along with O365 stuff which I find quite fun. Most things are moving to the cloud so seems the way to go for upskilling.

For sure.. one issue with self learning in this area is that with the cloud being subscription based, it's a lot harder to lab things (e.g. Intune, 365, etc) because you have to actually pay for it :-)

Lias

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#2714085 27-May-2021 19:58

Job I saw advertised the other day that might be relevant:

https://www.bnzcareers.co.nz/jobdetails;jsessionid=9534B47DAB4F7E9649B3B0995507AC8C?ajid=kLoak