Senior Citrix Engineer, Team Lead

About Ferroque Systems Inc.

Ferroque Systems Inc. (FSI) is a Canadian leader in digital workspaces, application delivery controllers, virtualization, and cloud technology platforms. Specialized and certified in solutions from Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware, Ferroque Systems has positively impacted the bottom lines of dozens of organizations and nearly 3MM end-users globally. Ferroque Systems firmly believes that modern businesses thrive or tank based upon their ability to harness the right technology solutions. To meet the business and technical objectives of today’s enterprise customers, Ferroque Systems provides the following capabilities:

• Technology Consulting and Solutions: Providing professional services throughout the entire IT lifecycle from assessment, design, deployment and integration, and support across a variety of business-enabling technologies including unsurpassed expertise in Citrix solutions.
• IT Advisory Services: Guiding organizations toward transformational business objectives. Subscription-based advisory services to support businesses develop their IT vision and roadmaps, assess teams and workflows, and provide SME presence in meetings.
• Managed Services and Staff Augmentation: Peace of mind from industry experts. Tailored managed services for midrange and enterprise organizations for VMware, Microsoft, and Citrix (Virtualization and Networking) platforms.
• Procurement: Procurement and renewals of Microsoft, Citrix, and VMware product licensing and Citrix hardware.

Position Summary

Ferroque is looking for a Team Lead and Sr. Citrix Escalation Engineer for our Citrix managed services practice. This hands-on role is anticipated to be 80% technical and 20% management, and provide technical and operational guidance to team members and customers.

Ferroque Managed Services (MSP) supports, manages, reports, and monitors our customers’ Citrix production environment(s), leveraging our experience, technical knowledge, and ITIL expertise. Our team is responsible for providing reactive, proactive, and preventative services, serving as trusted advisors who understand our customers’ environments and work as an extension of their IT Operations team. In practice, MSP is primarily responsible for delivering the following operational services in our customers’ Citrix production environment(s):

• Incident management – resolve incidents received from the customer (in alignment with SLA’s) and/or that were created to address alerts from the MSP monitoring system.
• Change management – attend weekly customer change review board meetings, write/submit change tickets, perform changes during customer change windows (typically after-hours).
• Problem management – analyze customer’s incident history to determine if any trends/patterns represent an underlying problem, and if so work with customer to initiate an effort to address.
• Event management – investigate alerts received from the MSP monitoring system and determine proper actions to address these alerts.
• Request fulfillment – fulfill Citrix-related service requests received from the customer.
• Environment management – functions include managing/administering Citrix technologies and components within the production environment, updating Citrix environment documentation, applying approved firmware and patch updates to Citrix components, assessing the health of and making recommendations to optimize the Citrix platform, and providing Citrix thought leadership.
• Reports – deliver weekly, monthly, and quarterly reports containing key ticketing system metrics and other information relevant to decision-making.

Within MSP, the Team Lead Citrix Escalation Engineer is responsible for performing the following tasks to support MSP clients:

• Lead the manage services team, provide guidance to team members (both technical and soft skills) and be the initial escalation point of for the Citrix Engineers
• Troubleshooting, resolving, and closing all critical and high-severity (P1/P2) incidents.
• Troubleshooting, resolving, and closing all incidents that are escalated from the Service Desk.
• Performing normal and emergency changes as defined by the client.
• Fulfilling service requests that can be implemented via a normal change.
• Maintaining accurate and timely ticketing system data (e.g. detailed ticket notes, accurate ticket status, following up on tickets to avoid excessive ticket aging, etc.).
• Configuring and managing the monitoring solution for Citrix and related ancillary technologies, including helping to establish baselines and adjusting threshold values as needed.
• Analyzing monitoring metrics and alerts to identify patterns/trends, make correlations, and provide actionable information.

The success of the Escalation Engineer will be measured by this person’s ability to perform the abovementioned tasks efficiently, act in a professional manner that elicits high customer NPS, and act as a Citrix technical authority.

Primary Duties / Responsibilities

·      Assist in management of the MSP team including team development, process gap analysis, process creation, and mentorship.

·      Troubleshoot complex technical issues in a Citrix environment.

·      Act as the Citrix technical authority/subject matter expert (SME).

·      Possess strong written and verbal communication skills.

·      Obtain ITIL and Citrix technical certifications within first 6-12 months in this role.

·      Possess an excellent technical understanding of Citrix technologies and how to support and manage in a variety of settings, ranging from basic to complex.

·      Assist junior teammates with learning key technical concepts around desktop and server virtualization, cloud computing, and network/systems architectures.

·      Demonstrate excellent problem-solving skills, and assist teammates with solving complex technical issues.

·      Maintain a calm, poised, and professional demeanor while working in potentially stressful situations with customer IT staff and/or users.

·      Possess the soft skills to be able to defuse a tense/sensitive situation, while still being able to act firmly if/when necessary.

·      Possess time management skills and the ability to multi-task across in support of multiple clients.

·      Demonstrate the desire and ability to continue learning new concepts and remain up-to-date on the most recent technologies, particularly Citrix technologies.

·      Install, configure, and maintain the Citrix monitoring solution for customer environments.

·      Provide regular and efficient updates on tasks and activities to direct manager.

Qualifications (knowledge, skills, abilities)

·      Must be willing to work daily on-site in a MSP office in Montreal or Toronto, Canada.

·      Must have demonstrated strong academic achievement and good communication skills.

·      Must be flexible and dependable, and act with accountability/ownership.

·      Demonstrated ability to learn quickly.

·      Excellent problem-solving ability with complex technical challenges.

·      Act with a positive customer service attitude.

·      Ability to work effectively in a small- to medium-size team environment.

·      Desire and ability to provide mentoring/coaching to junior teammates.

·      ITIL knowledge and ability to apply ITIL concepts in practice.

·      Demonstrated technical fluency and/or expertise in a range of technical areas, based upon focus area.

o  Escalation Engineers focused on virtualization will need advanced knowledge that will include but is not limited to:

§ Citrix technologies, including virtualization, Citrix Cloud Virtual Apps and Desktops Service (now DaaS) and image management.

§ Hypervisor technologies (VMware, XenServer, Azure, AWS, GCP, Nutanix, etc.).

§ Microsoft directory services (LDAP, Active Directory, etc.).

§ Profile and policies related to end-users.

§ Windows Server OS configuration.

§ Basic level of key networking concepts (TCP/IP, routing, networking).

o  Escalation Engineers focused on networking will need advanced NetScaler knowledge that will include but is not limited to:

§ Load balancing and GSLB.

§ Citrix Gateway.

§ Content Switching.

§ App Firewall.

§ Intermediate level of key networking concepts (e.g. TCP/IP, routing, networking).

• Languages: English fluency; French preferred.

Requirements (Education, Certification, Training, and Experience)

·      Bachelor of Science/Arts or equivalent 4 years of similar job experience.

o  Bachelor of Science from an accredited university in the areas of Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Business or equivalent field of study a plus.

• 5+ years of Citrix and/or IT operational experience, including with relevant Microsoft technologies.
• Citrix, Cisco, Microsoft, and/or ITIL certifications (if not already in possession).

·      Positive customer service- and team-oriented attitude.

Compensation

• Competitive base salary, based on experience
• Profit-sharing program participation after one year of service
• Three weeks vacation
• Benefits including dental and health insurance coverages