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Job Description Summary:
A Vertica Senior Technical Support Engineer at Rocket Software provides advanced Tier 3 support for complex customer environments. This role involves independently troubleshooting escalated issues, performing detailed root-cause analysis, and mentoring junior engineers to drive overall team effectiveness.
As a Senior Technical Support Specialist, you will serve as the backbone of our enterprise support operation, providing deep technical expertise to our global customer base utilizing Vertica. This role is designed for a seasoned professional who thrives on solving complex, large-scale data challenges and possesses a relentless drive to ensure customer success in mission-critical environments.
You will not only troubleshoot highly intricate technical issues but also mentor junior engineers and act as a vital bridge between our enterprise customers, product management, and engineering teams.
Key Responsibilities
- Advanced Troubleshooting: Diagnose, isolate, and resolve complex architectural, performance, and data integrity issues within Vertica database environments (Eon and Enterprise modes).
- Performance Optimization: Analyze and optimize complex SQL queries, database projections, resource pools, and system configurations to ensure peak performance for enterprise workloads.
- Incident Management: Own critical, high-severity customer escalations from inception to resolution, ensuring clear, timely, and empathetic communication with enterprise stakeholders.
- Root Cause Analysis: Perform deep-dive post-mortem analyses on catastrophic failures (e.g., node evictions, data corruption, catalog issues) and document permanent fixes.
- Knowledge Leadership: Champion the creation of technical documentation, best-practice guides, and internal runbooks. Mentor and coach Tier 1 and Tier 2 support engineers.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner directly with R&D and Product Management to reproduce edge-case bugs, track product defects, and advocate for feature enhancements based on enterprise customer needs.
Required Technical Skills & Qualifications
- Experience: Minimum of 5–10 years of experience in a dedicated Enterprise Technical Support or Database Administration (DBA) role, with a heavy emphasis on distributed systems.
- Vertica Expertise: Strong hands-on experience managing, maintaining, and troubleshooting Vertica clusters at scale. Deep understanding of Vertica architecture (ROS, WOS, Catalog, Projection design, and Epoch management).
- Linux Mastery: Expert-level knowledge of Linux/Unix operating systems, including performance tuning, kernel configuration, and advanced command-line troubleshooting.
- SQL & Scripting: Exceptional proficiency in advanced SQL. Strong scripting skills (Bash, Python, or Perl) for automation and log analysis.
- Infrastructure & Cloud: Experience troubleshooting Vertica in cloud-native environments (AWS, GCP, Azure) and a solid grasp of containerized deployments (Kubernetes) and shared storage architectures (S3, GCS).
- Networking & Security: Solid understanding of enterprise networking concepts (TCP/IP, firewalls, load balancers) and database security protocols (TLS/SSL, Kerberos, LDAP).
Soft Skills & Core Competencies
- Customer-Centric Mindset: Exceptional empathy and communication skills, with a proven track record of handling high-pressure enterprise escalations gracefully.
- Analytical Thinking: A methodical approach to problem-solving, with the ability to connect disparate data points from massive log files to identify a root cause.
- Leadership & Mentorship: A natural inclination to share knowledge and uplift the technical capabilities of the broader team.
What Will Make You Stand Out
- Official Vertica Certifications (e.g., Vertica Certified Professional).
- Prior experience supporting big data technologies, ETL pipelines, and BI tools (e.g., Tableau, Looker) interfacing with Vertica.
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Rocket Software Inc. is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. Rocket Software Inc. is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.
As part of our commitment to a safe and trustworthy workplace, we include background and reference checks in our hiring process.
Rocket is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodation to individuals with physical and mental disabilities. If you need special assistance or an accommodation while seeking employment, please call: 781-577-4321 or send an email to people@rocketsoftware.com. We will make a determination on your request for reasonable accommodation on a case-by-case basis.
If you like wild growth and working with happy, enthusiastic over-achievers, you'll enjoy your career with us!
