ROLE OVERVIEW
The Software Asset & License Analyst III is the deepest technical and commercial expert on duty in a single shift. One of these roles sits on each of the three IST-anchored windows, and the seat exists so that every hour of the 24x5 clock has someone who can resolve a floating-licence server failure, construct a defensible licence position, and judge a high-risk agreement without waiting for the next window to open. Level I is measured on throughput, Level II on transactional judgment; Level III is measured on depth — the problems that reach this seat are the ones nobody below it can close.
The seat is expert-track with no supervisory remit: rota, work allocation, performance management and shift command all sit with the Software Asset & CLH Analyst IV who leads the same shift. What the Level III owns instead is technical authority: Corporate License Hosting server operations and daemon recovery, Initial and Final Licence Position construction, EULA and clickwrap gating on high-risk requests, publisher and reseller escalation, and the design of the automation that takes repeat work off the queue. The analyst is the technical escalation point the shift lead calls on, and the standard-setter whose method the Level II and Level I analysts are trained against.
CORE COMPETENCIES & EXPERTISE
- Corporate License Hosting — hands-on operation of floating and concurrent licence servers: FlexNet and comparable daemons, licence file structure and safe editing, daemon and service recovery, and concurrent checkout and peak-usage analysis through the Altair Floating License Monitor.
- Licensing models — working command of perpetual, subscription, SaaS, concurrent/floating and consumable-credit models, and of what each one does to compliance exposure, true-up mechanics and renewal leverage.
- Licence position & audit evidence — building Initial and Final Licence Positions by reconciling entitlement against deployment and consumption evidence, and defending the result to a publisher or an internal auditor.
- Commercial & legal gating — reading EULAs and clickwrap terms for the risk they carry, recognising the use cases that must be stopped rather than processed, and holding the signature-authority boundary without exception.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
1. Corporate License Hosting — Server & Daemon Operations
- Monitor the health of the global licence servers hosting concurrent and floating licences on the shift, working daemon drops and service failures to resolution inside the 4-hour critical SLA.
- Raise and validate 'Licence File Change' requests on contract renewal, quantity change or expiry, editing the flat text configuration files on the hosting servers correctly and reversibly.
- Read concurrent checkout and peak-usage metrics from the Altair Floating License Monitor — logging in strictly as a guest, and never entering corporate credentials without explicit system-administrator approval.
- Assess new hosting requests against the CLH eligibility criteria — native floating or concurrent licence support, Windows or Linux server compatibility, a supported daemon (FlexNet preferred), no geolocation or policy usage restrictions, and an active catalogue item carrying user instructions.
- Apply the CLH request-routing matrix on unlisted floating-licence requests: check the hosted-titles list, broker spare capacity with the product champion on shared pools, bypass pool sharing on private pools, and capture destination MAC addresses where a requester declines hosting.
- Manage decommissioning: raise the support request to retire the daemon and remove licence files from the server when a hosted product is withdrawn.
2. Licence Position, Renewals & Consumption Analysis
- Act as the technical owner of licence position on the shift — compiling the Initial Licence Position at the 180-day milestone and the Final Licence Position at 60 days, from usage scans, deployment data and SaaS consumption snapshots.
- Ensure harvested and reclaimed licences are pruned from the baseline before the Final Licence Position is set, so no shelfware is carried into a renewal.
- Resolve the entitlement and edition questions Level II cannot close — overlapping entitlements, downgrade and second-use rights, bundling and suite coverage, and consumable-credit burn-down.
- Model true-up exposure against contracted baselines and identify which commercial route applies — an amendment where a signature alters contracted quantities, a purchase-order addition where no signature is required.
- Validate the accuracy of Deal Radar contract and event records for the renewals in flight on the shift, correcting event typing, recurrence numbering and metadata errors at source rather than downstream.
- Quantify and evidence savings and cost avoidance in the licence-reclaim audit table, to a standard that survives finance review.
3. High-Risk Gating — EULA, Clickwrap, Legal & Authority Controls
- Own high-risk EULA and clickwrap review on the shift: copy non-signed agreements to secure storage and check the master reviews register to confirm whether an approved review already exists within the last three years before triggering a new one.
- Enforce the signed-agreement prohibition — signed agreements are never accepted through the standard unlisted queue and must be routed via the contract intake path to be managed as formal legal cases.
- Identify and reject out-of-scope use cases on sight — code to be incorporated into customer-facing products, personal-device use, and reverse engineering — using the standard responses and correct onward routing.
- Coordinate vendor security assessments and legal-review pipelines, and track cases needing director-level signature through to execution by the client's own signatory. No member of the team signs or e-signs anything.
- Hold the sensitive-data controls: licence keys, audit notifications and accessibility information move to the private queue on identification, without exception.
4. Publisher Escalation, Audit Defence, Automation & Technical Standards
- Own the technical escalation path into publishers and resellers for entitlement, key and activation failures the shift cannot resolve, and drive them to closure rather than handing them on.
- Assemble entitlement, deployment and proof-of-purchase evidence for publisher audits and Semi-Annual Business Reviews, and reconcile discrepancies before they escalate into findings.
- Identify automation candidates and author Business Requirements Documents where a publisher crosses 1,000 transactions a year, moving work onto robotic process automation or vendor APIs.
- Configure and audit automated reclamation campaigns in gHive / UiPath, and investigate the failures and false positives the automation produces.
- Set and maintain the technical standard on the shift: author and refresh SOPs for CLH and licence-position procedures, and coach Level II and Level I analysts on method and casework quality — technical guidance only, with no line authority.
PERFORMANCE & SERVICE LEVELS
Indicative performance targets for the role; final service levels are confirmed on engagement and measured per shift.
- CLH Critical Response: resolve or contain critical Corporate License Hosting issues — daemon drops, server unavailability, checkout failures — within the 4-hour SLA.
- Technical Escalation Closure: close escalations routed to the expert seat within the shift window, or hand them over with a documented diagnosis and next action.
- Licence Position Accuracy: Initial and Final Licence Positions delivered on the milestone dates and fully reconcilable to usage evidence.
- Legal & Authority Compliance: zero signed agreements processed through the unlisted queue; zero agreements signed by the team; 100% register check before a new legal review is raised.
- Savings Integrity: reclamation and cost-avoidance entries complete, evidenced and accurate enough to stand as the savings record.
- Automation Contribution: at least one automation or SOP improvement delivered per quarter against the shift's highest-volume repeat work.
TOOLS & SYSTEMS
- CLH & Licence Servers: global floating-licence servers, FlexNet and other supported daemons, flat text licence configuration files, and the Altair Floating License Monitor.
- Entitlement & Usage: Flexera / ServiceNow SAM for entitlement and consumption tracking, plus usage scans and SaaS consumption snapshots for licence-position work.
- Contract & Legal: Deal Radar for contract and event records, and Pactfinder / Accord for legal review pipelines, NDA requests and signature validation.
- Queue & Automation: Ticketing and issue tracking systems for ticket and bug management with strict category coding, and gHive / UiPath for automated reclamation.
- Financial: SAP Materials Management for purchase orders, amendments and three-way matching.
REQUIRED SKILLS & EXPERIENCE
Mandatory
- 6–10+ years in software asset management or software licensing operations, with a track record as a senior technical escalation point rather than a queue processor.
- Hands-on Corporate License Hosting or floating-licence server experience: FlexNet or comparable daemons, editing licence configuration files, troubleshooting daemon and service drops, and reading concurrent-usage metrics.
- Proven licence-position work — reconciling entitlement against deployed and consumed usage, and defending the result to a publisher or auditor.
- Strong command of EULA and clickwrap review, licence terms and the commercial and legal risk they carry, with the judgment to stop a request rather than pass it through.
- Comfortable working a fixed or rotating non-standard shift, including the NAMER window (22:00–06:00 IST).
- Clear English communication and the confidence to hold a technical or compliance line with client stakeholders, publishers and resellers.
Preferred
- Software asset management certification (IAITAM CSAM, ITIL, Flexera or ServiceNow SAM credential).
- Linux and Windows server administration exposure sufficient to work licence-server issues alongside infrastructure teams.
- Scripting or automation literacy (Python, Apps Script, UiPath) for reclamation, reporting and BRD authoring.
- Experience supporting publisher business reviews, audit responses or negotiation preparation.
