Principal Support Engineer

Principal Support Engineer
Escalations & Customer Experience Engineering

Role Overview

The Principal Support Engineer is a senior hands-on technical expert responsible for driving rapid resolution of complex customer issues. This role blends deep technical troubleshooting advancedlogand API analysis Datadog monitoringexpertise and leadership of highseverity escalations. The engineer will collaborate tightly with Engineering Product and external vendors toeliminateroot causes improve MTTR and elevate the overall customer experience.

This is a highvisibility individual contributor role requiring strong ownership urgency and the ability to translate complex technical problems into clear actionable paths forward for both customers and internal stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

• Perform handson technical troubleshooting using Datadog (logs traces dashboards) API tools (Postman/cURL) and distributed log tracing.

• Lead high-severity and strategic customer escalations providing authoritative technical direction andtimelycommunication.

• Drive vendor ticket escalations ensuring SLA adherence and proactive followups with Microsoft Adobe AWS Cisco and others.

• Collaborate with Engineering to deliver root-cause fixessubmitdetailed technical findings andvalidatepermanent resolutions.

• Partner with Product toidentifyplatform gaps recurring customer pain points and areas for workflow or UX improvement.

• Analyze MTTR performance SLA trends and operational bottlenecks; publish weekly metrics and insights.

• Develop SOPs escalation workflows and troubleshooting guides that improve global support operations.

• Identifyautomation opportunities and collaborate with internal teams to enhance Zendesk workflows and self-service deflection.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• 10 years in Technical Support Engineering Escalations SRE or related roles.

• Expertisewith Datadog (log search traces monitors dashboards).

• Strong REST API troubleshooting using PostmancURL authentication flows and JSON payload analysis.

• Experience diagnosing distributed systems integrations and SaaS platform behavior.

• Proven ability tointerface withstrategic enterprise customers and communicate complex technical issues clearly.

• Handson experience with vendor escalation processes and SLA governance.

• Strong working knowledge of MTTR incident management and technical support KPIs.

• Familiarity with Zendesk or similar ticketing platforms.

Performance Expectations & KPIs

• Resolve 90% of escalated tickets within SLA.

• Engage vendors within 15 minutes of SLA risk detection.

• Drive MTTR improvements of 4050% for assigned ticket categories.

• Maintain CSAT 90% for escalated interactions.

• Identifyand support permanent fixes for at least 2 recurring root-cause issues per quarter.

• Deliver 35 workflow automation or SOP improvements each quarter.