How To Become A Customer Support Engineer: What It Is and Career Path

What is a customer support engineer and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Quoted Expert

Dr. Ariful Azad Ph.D.

To be a customer support engineer, you will need to respond to customer inquiries about technical roles through the Internet, telephone calls, and email. You need strong communication skills and be able to work under stressful conditions to solve technical problems. You will diagnose and troubleshoot customer technical problems, resolve those problems, handle customer complaints, and participate in training customers on technical programs.

To be a customer support engineer, you will need to have knowledge about computer science, software programs and have a bachelor's degree in computer science or business practices. You need to learn the software your company uses in order to help employees and customers resolve their software issues. You may want to take courses to learn about different computer systems. The more knowledge you have on the computer systems your company uses, the better customer support engineer you will be.

A customer support engineer is a good career with many future possibilities. With the education and experience you have, the median hourly wage could be $83,000 per year.

What general advice would you give to a Customer Support Engineer?

Dr. Ariful Azad Ph.D.

Director of Graduate Studies for the Dept. of Intelligent Systems Engineering, Assistant Professor of Intelligent Systems Engineering, Indiana University Bloomington

Look for a job that you would enjoy doing, even if it takes some time to find such a position. Internships are great to explore various options.

ScoreCustomer Support EngineerUS Average

Salary

6.5

Avg. Salary $82,674

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability Level

6.7

Growth Rate 10%

Growth Rate 0.3%

Diversity

6.0

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.41%

Asian 14.95%

Black or African American 9.66%

Hispanic or Latino 14.94%

Unknown 5.29%

White 54.75%

Gender

female 14.21%

male 85.79%

Age - 41

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 41

Stress Level

6.7

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity Level

6.5

Complexity Level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work Life Balance

7.4

Work Life balance is good

6.4 - fair

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Key steps to become a customer support engineer

Explore customer support engineer education requirements

Most common customer support engineer degrees

Bachelor's

60.8 %

Associate

18.7 %

Master's

10.4 %

Start to develop specific customer support engineer skills

Skills	Percentages
Customer Support	14.84%
Technical Support	10.25%
Customer Service	9.28%
Customer Satisfaction	7.37%
CSE	5.02%

Complete relevant customer support engineer training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 3-6 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New customer support engineers learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a customer support engineer based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real customer support engineer resumes.

Research customer support engineer duties and responsibilities

Manage a monthly SharePoint user group to help improve the SharePoint customer experience.
Manage live broadcasts that are delivered via the Internet using HTML and JavaScript.
Support the SAN team for storage expansion, with the NEXSAN support systems and managing HDD appliance.
Lead technical operations for an innovative workforce virtualization movement, including initial design and improvement of technical systems and processes.

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