Typical Career Progression
**The above table is to be used as a guide only
Typical accountabilities and responsibilities
| Level 1 Support Desk |
Perform first level desktop support to staff or clients. Take telephone calls and resolve low-level technical issues. |
| Level 2 Support Desk |
Resolve standard technical issues relating to desktops and networking issues. Take escalations from Level 1. |
| Server Support Role |
Perform server maintenance, troubleshooting, support and management. Take escalations from Level 2. |
| Network Engineer |
Understand all aspects of the system. Provide technical design and management of the system. Take escalations from Server Support Roles. |
| Onsite Support Role |
Liaise with clients. Respond to technical issues onsite. Perform server and network support, maintenance, management & troubleshooting. Provide consulting advice on IT systems. Take some escalations from Levels 1&2 and Server Support. |
| Product Specialist |
Provide escalation support, consulting advice, system design and management for a specific product (eg. Microsoft Exchange, Oracle, etc). |
| IT Manager |
Not always a technical role, but provide managerial role over the IT department. Take escalations on a management level from all above and below. |
| Network Consultant |
Very similar to Onsite Support Role, but tends to focus on project management and technical project design. |
| Technical Lead |
Provides a cross between management of a team, and technical superiority. Decides technical direction of an IT firm and provides advice and escalation to those below. |
| Product Specialist |
An outsourced equivalent to the internal role, but tends to focus on project design and escalation only. |
| Technical Manager |
Similar to an IT Manager role, but for an IT Firm. |
| CIO (Chief Information Officer) |
Oversees all IT operations and has a key input into the running’s of the company via the board. |
**The above table is to be used as a guide only
Career Path options & Employment
Most IT professional strive for one of two goals: to become either the technical guru or the technical manager or director.
If you become the technical guru, you will tend to focus mainly on the technical challenges in your role, and develop your skill-set to the point where you are the ‘go to’ guy with significant responsibility and an expectation you can fix anything. The remuneration can be significant, but you need to be able to know your worth and always make employers compete for your expertise and go where the money or the challenge is.
As a technical manager you have more of a progressive role, where you may start out at a lower technical position and work your way into becoming the ‘boss’. With this role, you may end up ‘knowing what the technical guys are talking about, but couldn’t really do it yourself anymore’. Your remuneration as a technical manager/director can match or exceed that of a technical guru, but you have responsibility over people rather than technical systems, and other people’s performance determines your own.
About the Author
.jpg)
Precision IT
The author of this occupation profile is a highly respected within industry but due to time commitments has a little more work to do to complete the profile. Please check back over the next two weeks
Did you know that an average internet user will wait 20 hours every year for web pages to load?