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name: support-engineer description: | Guides technical support engineering—customer ticket investigation, reproduction, log and API analysis, root-cause isolation, workaround communication, engineering escalation with evidence, and knowledge-base fixes for product bugs and integration issues. Use when debugging a customer-reported issue, writing a repro for engineering, analyzing API errors, drafting technical replies, or improving support runbooks—not for CS program design, renewals, or billing ops (customer-ops-specialist), production incident command (incident-management-engineer), building product features (fullstack-software-engineer), or company-wide crisis statements and launch announcements (communication-lead), or exec/VIP and community escalation program design (community-executive-escalations-program-manager). Product how-to, macros, and ticket triage without deep debugging: product-support-specialist.

Support Engineer

When to Use

• Investigate a customer bug or "it doesn't work" report
• Reproduce issues across environments (browser, API, mobile)
• Analyze logs, request IDs, and HTTP/API error payloads
• Draft technical response with steps, workaround, or ETA
• Escalate to engineering with minimal repro and impact
• Author or update KB articles after resolved issues

When NOT to Use

• Support queue SLAs, CS metrics, renewals, dunning → customer-ops-specialist
• Company-wide outage incident commander role → incident-management-engineer
• Implement product code fixes in repo → fullstack-software-engineer
• Public API reference documentation → tech-writer-researcher
• Security incident or SOC alert investigation → defensive-security-analyst

Related skills

Need	Skill
Support ops, health scores, billing tickets	customer-ops-specialist
App code fixes and PRs	fullstack-software-engineer
Browser auth, CORS, session issues	web-application-developer
Production outage process	incident-management-engineer
Customer-facing docs and API guides	tech-writer-researcher
Infra/logs on platform side	devops
Company-wide incident or launch messaging	communication-lead
Exec/VIP and public community escalation program	community-executive-escalations-program-manager
How-to replies, KB gaps, feature-request capture	product-support-specialist

Core Workflows

1. Intake and triage

Capture before deep dive:

• Customer ID, environment (prod/sandbox), region
• Timestamp with timezone
• User role and exact URL or API endpoint
• Error message verbatim; request/correlation ID
• Recent changes (release, config, integration)
• Severity: blocked vs degraded vs question

Route billing/access-only issues to customer-ops-specialist if non-technical.

See references/ticket_triage.md.

2. Reproduce

1. Follow customer steps on comparable environment
2. Reduce to minimal repro (fewest steps, clean account if possible)
3. Note deterministic vs intermittent
4. Capture HAR, server logs, or curl with redacted secrets

See references/reproduction_debugging.md.

3. Isolate root cause

Layer	Checks
Client	Browser, cache, extensions, version
API	Status code, body, rate limits, auth token
Config	Feature flags, tenant settings, quotas
Data	Specific record IDs, permissions
Platform	Status page, known incidents

Document hypothesis and evidence; avoid guessing in customer reply.

4. Resolve or escalate

If known issue: link KB, workaround, linked engineering ticket + ETA.

If new bug: file engineering ticket with:

• Title: [component] short failure description
• Impact: customer count, blocked workflows
• Repro steps, expected vs actual
• Logs/IDs attached

See references/escalation_engineering.md.

5. Customer communication

• Acknowledge impact; no blame
• State what is known, unknown, and next update time
• Provide workaround before permanent fix when possible
• After fix: confirm with customer; close loop

See references/customer_comms.md.

6. Knowledge base

After fix verified:

• Symptom → cause → resolution → prevention
• Searchable title; tags for product area
• Link to public API doc if applicable

See references/kb_article.md.

When to load references

• Priority and intake → references/ticket_triage.md
• Repro and logs → references/reproduction_debugging.md
• Engineering handoff → references/escalation_engineering.md
• Customer updates → references/customer_comms.md
• KB template → references/kb_article.md