How to hire a production support engineer

How to hire a production support engineer, step by step

Here's a step-by-step production support engineer hiring guide:

• Step 1: Identify your hiring needs
• Step 2: Create an ideal candidate profile
• Step 3: Make a budget
• Step 4: Write a production support engineer job description
• Step 5: Post your job
• Step 6: Interview candidates
• Step 7: Send a job offer and onboard your new production support engineer
• Step 8: Go through the hiring process checklist

What does a production support engineer do?

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1. Identify your hiring needs

   Before you post your production support engineer job, you should take the time to determine what type of worker your business needs. While certain jobs definitely require a full-time employee, it's sometimes better to find a production support engineer for hire on a part-time basis or as a contractor.

   Determine employee vs contractor status

   Is the person you're thinking of hiring a US citizen or green card holder?

   Yes

   No

   A production support engineer's background is also an important factor in determining whether they'll be a good fit for the position. For example, production support engineers from different industries or fields will have radically different experiences and will bring different viewpoints to the role. You also need to consider the candidate's previous level of experience to make sure they'll be comfortable with the job's level of seniority.

   The following list breaks down different types of production support engineers and their corresponding salaries.

   Type of Production Support Engineer	Description	Hourly rate
   Production Support Engineer	Computer networks are critical parts of almost every organization. Network and computer systems administrators are responsible for the day-to-day operation of these networks.	$27-51
   Computer Technician	Computer technicians are skilled information technology professionals who handle concerns related to computers. They are responsible for assisting clients in software installations, troubleshooting needs, and repair needs... Show more	$13-26
   Support	A support employee is responsible for assisting the business operations and responding to customers' inquiries and concerns regarding its goods and services. Support logs all customers' interaction and escalates potential complaints to the appropriate department... Show more	$11-25

   Show more

2. Create an ideal candidate profile

   Common skills:

   • Java
   • Infrastructure
   • Linux
   • Production Environment
   • Production Issues
   • Technical Support
   • Unix
   • Splunk
   • C Net
   • Jira
   • C++
   • SQL Server
   • JavaScript
   • Application Support

   Check all skills

   Responsibilities:

   • Manage several UAT regions, including code updates and monitoring and troubleshooting multiple daily batch cycles.
   • Manage, solve and coordinate daily operational support issues for 600 banks and 2400 workstations worldwide.
   • Manage daily schedule and expedite changes to mainframe production system, supporting several systems and development clients.
   • Modify online driver schedule display using PHP and HTML.
   • Perform Appworx support for project move of batch processing off TRU64 Unix to RedHat Linux ES3.
   • Perform Java and UNIX releases and deploying code with FTP, create new training documentation for training manual for department.

   More production support engineer duties

3. Make a budget

   Including a salary range in the production support engineer job description is a good way to get more applicants. A production support engineer salary can be affected by several factors, such as the location of the job, the level of experience, education, certifications, and the employer's prestige.

   For example, the average salary for a production support engineer in North Dakota may be lower than in Massachusetts, and an entry-level engineer typically earns less than a senior-level production support engineer. Additionally, a production support engineer with lots of experience in the field may command a higher salary as a result.

   Average production support engineer salary

   $78,599yearly

   $37.79 hourly rate

   ---

   Entry-level production support engineer salary

   $57,000 yearly salary

   Updated December 20, 2025

   Average production support engineer salary by state

   Rank	State	Avg. salary	Hourly rate
   1	Massachusetts	$94,570	$45
   2	Delaware	$94,313	$45
   3	District of Columbia	$93,226	$45
   4	Washington	$90,872	$44
   5	California	$89,498	$43
   6	New Jersey	$84,296	$41
   7	Maryland	$83,745	$40
   8	Oregon	$83,144	$40
   9	Virginia	$82,682	$40
   10	Colorado	$82,035	$39
   11	New York	$81,398	$39
   12	Connecticut	$80,065	$38
   13	North Carolina	$74,604	$36
   14	Ohio	$74,492	$36
   15	Indiana	$74,329	$36
   16	Illinois	$74,034	$36
   17	Wisconsin	$73,738	$35
   18	Texas	$72,954	$35
   19	Arizona	$72,659	$35
   20	Georgia	$72,530	$35

   Average production support engineer salary by company

   Company

   Rank	Company	Average salary	Hourly rate	Job openings
   1	Salesforce	$118,748	$57.09	30
   2	Sandia National Labs	$116,643	$56.08	2
   3	Netflix	$115,333	$55.45	28
   4	AQR Capital Management	$113,961	$54.79	1
   5	Lord Abbett	$113,721	$54.67
   6	Macy's	$111,455	$53.58	109
   7	Bank of the West	$110,638	$53.19
   8	Citrix	$106,329	$51.12
   9	Vista Equity Partners	$105,841	$50.89	1
   10	Citi	$105,691	$50.81	16
   11	Barclays	$103,091	$49.56
   12	Oracle	$102,684	$49.37	479
   13	Aetna	$101,738	$48.91
   14	JPMorgan Chase & Co.	$101,255	$48.68	346
   15	Nike	$101,209	$48.66	13
   16	SEI Investments	$99,446	$47.81
   17	Morgan Stanley	$98,384	$47.30	15
   18	OnDeck	$97,025	$46.65
   19	ADT Security Services	$96,372	$46.33
   20	ICONMA	$96,288	$46.29	4

4. Writing a production support engineer job description

   A production support engineer job description should include a summary of the role, required skills, and a list of responsibilities. It's also good to include a salary range and the first name of the hiring manager. To help get you started, here's an example of a production support engineer job description:

   Production support engineer job description example

   Senior role that provides front-line support to end users responding to issues related to Incidents and Problem Management Governance for multiple applications, with the primary focus on triage leadership of all business impacting incidents. Responsibilities include understanding and ensuring compliance with the Incident Management and Problem Management policies and procedures. This role is the key focal point for the customer/client/associate experience and owns restoring complex/major production incidents under tight Service Level Agreements and pursue root cause and problem resolution follow-up.
   
   * Production Services is responsible for running the day-to-day support of the DCRS technology platform, as well as process and system stability improvements.
   
   * Work activities specific to Production Services roles include Problem/Incident Management, Operational Readiness, Capacity/Availability Management, Application Monitoring, Production Governance, and Triage activities.
   
   * The Production Services Specialist identifies possible production failure scenarios, creates incident tickets, enhancements and/or problem tickets in ticket tracking system, and communicates effectively with development and internal business operations teams.
   
   * The Production Services Specialist is expected to exercise judgment within defined procedures and practices to determine appropriate action. Should have increased awareness and exposure to basic technical principles, concepts and techniques. May provide coaching and mentoring for other employees but does not directly manage others.
   
   * Serves as an escalation point between the client/business area and internal management for the resolution of moderately complex unresolved problems, complaints and service requests. Provides the client areas with technology products and service alternatives that improve the production services environment. Employees in this job code manage a function but do not manage people
   Required Skills * 3 - 4 years of experience. * Experience with Enterprise Incident and Problem Management processes. * Strong Technical Troubleshooting skills. * Strong Unix/Linux operating system skills, ability navigate and troubleshoot processes running on Linux based host. * Strong Windows Server operating system skills, ability navigate and troubleshoot processes running on Windows based host. * Experience supporting App server hosted applications (Tomcat, WebSphere, JBoss) * Experience supporting applications using Oracle and/or SQL Server databases. - Experience supporting J2EE applications. * Strong communicator capable of effectively communicating, verbally, via emails and instant messaging, to both technical and business teams. Desired Skills * Content Management Product support experienced desired: Documentum, FileNet P8, Capture solutions. * Experience with basic automation and scripting tools and languages. BladeLogic, Ansible, Shell Scripting, PowerShell. Shift: 1st shift (United States of America) Hours Per Week: 40

   Copy this example

   

5. Post your job

   There are a few common ways to find production support engineers for your business:

   • Promoting internally or recruiting from your existing workforce.
   • Ask for referrals from friends, family members, and current employees.
   • Attend job fairs at local colleges to meet candidates with the right educational background.
   • Use social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to recruit passive job-seekers.

   Post your job online:

   • Post your production support engineer job on Zippia to find and attract quality production support engineer candidates.
   • Use niche websites such as dice, engineering.com, stack overflow, it job pro.
   • Post a job on free websites.

6. Interview candidates

   Your first interview with production support engineer candidates should focus on their interest in the role and background experience. As the hiring process goes on, you can learn more about how they'd fit into the company culture in later rounds of interviews.

   It's also good to ask about candidates' unique skills and talents. You can move on to the technical interview if a candidate is good enough for the next step.

   Sometimes, it's not enough to interview production support engineer candidates, so you can ask them to do a test project. If you are not a technical person and don't know what a test project should be, you can use these websites:

   • TestDome
   • CodeSignal
   • Testlify
   • BarRaiser
   • Coderbyte

   The right interview questions can help you assess a candidate's hard skills, behavioral intelligence, and soft skills.

7. Send a job offer and onboard your new production support engineer

   Once you've found the production support engineer candidate you'd like to hire, it's time to write an offer letter. This should include an explicit job offer that includes the salary and the details of any other perks. Qualified candidates might be looking at multiple positions, so your offer must be competitive if you like the candidate. Also, be prepared for a negotiation stage, as candidates may way want to tweak the details of your initial offer. Once you've settled on these details, you can draft a contract to formalize your agreement.

   You should also follow up with applicants who don't get the job with an email letting them know that you've filled the position.

   To prepare for the new production support engineer first day, you should share an onboarding schedule with them that covers their first period on the job. You should also quickly complete any necessary paperwork, such as employee action forms and onboarding documents like I-9, benefits enrollment, and federal and state tax forms. Finally, Human Resources must ensure a new employee file is created for internal record keeping.

8. Go through the hiring process checklist

   • Determine employee type (full-time, part-time, contractor, etc.)
   • Submit a job requisition form to the HR department
   • Define job responsibilities and requirements
   • Establish budget and timeline
   • Determine hiring decision makers for the role
   • Write job description
   • Post job on job boards, company website, etc.
   • Promote the job internally
   • Process applications through applicant tracking system
   • Review resumes and cover letters
   • Shortlist candidates for screening
   • Hold phone/virtual interview screening with first round of candidates
   • Conduct in-person interviews with top candidates from first round
   • Score candidates based on weighted criteria (e.g., experience, education, background, cultural fit, skill set, etc.)
   • Conduct background checks on top candidates
   • Check references of top candidates
   • Consult with HR and hiring decision makers on job offer specifics
   • Extend offer to top candidate(s)
   • Receive formal job offer acceptance and signed employment contract
   • Inform other candidates that the position has been filled
   • Set and communicate onboarding schedule to new hire(s)
   • Complete new hire paperwork (i9, benefits enrollment, tax forms, etc.)

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How much does it cost to hire a production support engineer?