Switching Software Customer Engineering Escalations
This role has been designed as ''Onsite'' with an expectation that you will primarily work from an HPE office.
Job Description:The Customer Engineering Escalation Engineer (CEE) is a senior individual contributor who leads the most complex and business-critical customer escalations, with deep expertise in switching and data center networking.
In this role, you serve as the technical lead during customer-impacting incidents, driving mitigation, coordinating cross-functional teams, and communicating clearly with internal and external stakeholders. Success requires strong networking fundamentals, sound judgment under pressure, and a disciplined, layer-by-layer approach to troubleshooting across modern data center environments.
This role will require being on-site in office 2+ days a week. Key Responsibilities1. Escalation Ownership & Triage- Own end-to-end technical execution for assigned customer escalations, from intake through stabilization and resolution.
- Perform rapid severity assessment, impact analysis, and technical triage to determine urgency and scope.
- Identify whether issues represent product defects, environmental interactions, configuration risks, or operational failures, and route appropriately.
- Drive clarity and momentum in ambiguous, fast-moving situations.
- Coordinate internal teams and partners to accelerate investigation and resolution.
- Navigate complex platforms end-to-end and drive targeted technical analysis to accelerate resolution.
2. Deep Technical Investigation- Analyze logs, packet captures, configs, and telemetry to isolate root cause, with emphasis on switching/data-center fabric troubleshooting (physical/link through Layer-2/Layer-3 forwarding and control-plane behavior).
- Reproduce issues where possible and validate hypotheses with targeted tests across interfaces, bridging domains, routing adjacencies, and fabric/overlay paths.
- Separate symptoms from root cause under pressure, including issues involving overlays, multicast traffic patterns, and switch port security/segmentation controls.
- Work effectively in single-vendor and multi-vendor environments.
- Understand product design and quality practices (design docs, test plans, QA signals, and product lifecycle).
3. Customer Stabilization & Risk Mitigation- Define and communicate workarounds, mitigations, or containment strategies to reduce customer impact while root cause analysis proceeds.
- Make risk-based recommendations when no perfect option exists, including rollback or partial remediation strategies.
- Own outcomes and follow through on commitments, including after-hours decision-making when required.
4. Cross-Functional Leadership- Lead coordination across TAC, Engineering (R&D), QA, Product Management, Sales, and Executive stakeholders.
- Maintain neutral, evidence-driven leadership when narratives conflict across vendors or teams.
- Ensure the correct level of urgency, visibility, and accountability is applied to each escalation.
5. Communication & Executive Presence- Communicate complex technical issues clearly to varied audiences, including senior customer leadership and internal executives.
- Provide concise, accurate status updates, escalation summaries, and recommendations without speculation or defensiveness.
- Represent the company with professionalism and confidence during high-pressure discussions.
6. Documentation & Continuous Improvement- Produce high-quality written artifacts including escalation summaries, root cause analyses, and post-mortems.
- Identify recurring themes and feed actionable insights back to engineering and product teams to reduce future escalations.
- Contribute to knowledge bases, templates, and process improvements within the escalation function.
- Improve escalation workflows by adopting and integrating new tools, automation, and technical approaches.
Required QualificationsTechnical Expertise- 6+ years of hands-on experience in production switching and data center networking environments.
- Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot network incidents end-to-end using logs, packet captures, telemetry, and diagnostics, including physical and link validation as well as Layer-2 and Layer-3 fault isolation.
- 3+ years of experience troubleshooting modern data center fabrics and overlays, including EVPN/VXLAN-class designs, with familiarity across control-plane and data-plane interactions and multicast traffic patterns in production environments.
- Working knowledge of engineering tools and environments, including Linux VMs, Visual Studio, Jira/Confluence, Python, and Bash.
Escalation & Operational Skills- 6+ years of experience leading high-severity, customer-impacting incidents or escalations.
- Demonstrated ability to make sound technical and risk-based decisions in ambiguous, time-sensitive situations with incomplete data.
- Demonstrated ownership, accountability, and follow-through in high-pressure situations.
Communication & Judgment- Strong verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Ability to translate complex technical issues into clear, concise, and actionable guidance for senior stakeholders.
- Demonstrated composure, clarity, and professionalism during high-pressure or emotionally charged situations.
Preferred Qualifications- Experience partnering directly with Engineering, QA, and Product teams to investigate product defects and drive technical resolution.
- Ability to read code and perform targeted technical analysis to support troubleshooting and engineering escalation.
- Background in customer-facing escalation, site reliability engineering, support engineering, or Tier-4 technical support roles.
- Experience contributing to post-mortems, root cause reviews, and systemic quality improvements.
Work Environment & Expectations- This role involves sustained computer-based work, high cognitive load, and frequent context switching across complex technical issues.
- May require participation in critical incidents outside standard business hours on an as-needed basis.
- Success in this role requires comfort with ambiguity, strong accountability, and the ability to prioritize effectively under pressure.
What Success Looks Like- Customer impact is stabilized quickly through clear technical leadership, effective triage, and decisive mitigation.
- Escalations are managed with clarity, trust, and technical credibility across customers, partners, and internal stakeholders.
- Engineering effort is focused on the right problems with the right data, enabling faster root cause analysis and resolution.
- Lessons learned are captured and translated into sustained product, process, and quality improvements.
What We Can Offer You:Health & WellbeingWe strive to provide our team members and their loved ones with a comprehensive suite of benefits that supports their physical, financial and emotional wellbeing.
Personal & Professional DevelopmentWe also invest in your career because the better you are, the better we all are. We have specific programs catered to helping you reach any career goals you have - whether you want to become a knowledge expert in your field or apply your skills to another division.
Unconditional InclusionWe are unconditionally inclusive in the way we work and celebrate individual uniqueness. We know varied backgrounds are valued and succeed here. We have the flexibility to manage our work and personal needs. We make bold moves, together, and are a force for good.
Let's Stay Connected:#unitedstates
Job:Engineering
Job Level:TCP_04
"The expected salary/wage range for this position is provided below. Actual offer may vary from this range based upon geographic location, work experience, education/training, and/or skill level.
- United States of America: Annual Salary USD 136,500 - 276,500 in California
The listed salary range reflects base salary. Variable incentives may also be offered."
Information about employee benefits offered in the US can be found at https://myhperewards.com/main/new-hire-enrollment.html
