3rd Line Engineer

We’re working with a growing Manchester MSP looking for an experienced 3rd Line Engineer to join their technical team.

You’ll still be there when the 1st and 2nd line teams need an escalation point, but this isn’t about sitting on a service desk all day picking up tickets. There’s a strong project element to the position, alongside taking more ownership of customer infrastructure and helping improve the environments you’re supporting.

It’s a broad technical position too, so you’re not going to get pushed into one small corner of the Microsoft stack or spend every day purely looking after networks.

Day to day

One day you could be working on a Microsoft 365 or Azure project, looking at Entra ID, Intune, Autopilot or a customer’s cloud infrastructure. The next you might be troubleshooting an Active Directory issue, improving a Windows Server environment or helping resolve something that’s been escalated through the support team.

There’s a decent networking element to the role as well. You’ll get involved with customer firewalls, switches and wireless infrastructure, working through things like VLANs, routing and VPNs rather than simply passing anything network-related onto somebody else.

Their customer environments include the likes of SonicWall, Cisco, Meraki and UniFi, but they’re not looking for somebody who has necessarily worked with every vendor under the sun. Having the networking fundamentals and being comfortable getting stuck into unfamiliar environments is more important.

The project side could see you deploying or improving infrastructure, working on Modern Workplace rollouts, making changes across Azure and Microsoft 365 or helping customers improve the resilience and security of their existing setup.

Because these are customer environments, you’ll also need to be comfortable speaking with people. You’ll be working directly with customers, explaining what you’re doing and documenting changes properly rather than disappearing into the background once the technical work starts.

This will probably suit somebody who’s already spent a good few years working within an MSP and has naturally progressed into being one of the people others turn to when something gets difficult.

You might already have the 3rd Line Engineer title, or you could be a strong 2nd Line Engineer who’s regularly handling escalations and getting involved with project work but hasn’t been given the title or progression yet.

You’ll need a good grounding across the Microsoft infrastructure world. You should be comfortable looking after Microsoft 365 environments and have enough experience with Azure, Entra ID and Modern Workplace technologies to troubleshoot issues and take ownership of changes.

Likewise, you shouldn’t be afraid of the traditional infrastructure underneath it. Windows Server and Active Directory are still important here, and when there’s a firewall, VLAN, VPN or routing problem, you’ll ideally be comfortable getting involved rather than immediately looking for the network team.

If you’ve used PowerShell to make your life easier, even better. Exposure to macOS management, regulated environments or technologies such as Jamf and Addigy would also be useful, but they’re not deal-breakers.

More than anything, we’re looking for someone who enjoys being an all-round infrastructure engineer.

Someone who can take an escalation when needed, but who also wants the opportunity to get away from constant ticket work, deliver projects and have more ownership over how customer environments are built and improved.

The Next Steps

If you’re reading this thinking it sounds like the sort of step you’ve been trying to make, let’s have a conversation.

You don’t need to have every technology mentioned above. If you’ve got a strong MSP infrastructure background, you’re comfortable at 3rd line level and you want more exposure to projects, Azure, Modern Workplace and networking, I’d be interested in speaking with you.