How to hire a production support specialist

How to hire a production support specialist, step by step

Here's a step-by-step production support specialist 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 specialist job description
• Step 5: Post your job
• Step 6: Interview candidates
• Step 7: Send a job offer and onboard your new production support specialist
• Step 8: Go through the hiring process checklist

What does a production support specialist do?

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1. Identify your hiring needs

   Before you start hiring a production support specialist, identify what type of worker you actually need. Certain positions might call for a full-time employee, while others can be done by a part-time worker or contractor.

   Determine employee vs contractor status

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

   Yes

   No

   Hiring the perfect production support specialist also involves considering the ideal background you'd like them to have. Depending on what industry or field they have experience in, they'll bring different skills to the job. It's also important to consider what levels of seniority and education the job requires and what kind of salary such a candidate would likely demand.

   Here's a comparison of production support specialist salaries for various roles:

   Type of Production Support Specialist	Description	Hourly rate
   Production Support Specialist	Computer support specialists provide help and advice to people and organizations using computer software or equipment. Some, called computer network support specialists, support information technology (IT) employees within their organization... Show more	$25-58
   Systems Support	A systems support agent is responsible for resolving system applications and network issues, performing technical configuration, and upgrading systems infrastructure. A systems support representative conducts regular maintenance and diagnostic tests on the computer applications to ensure its optimal performance and efficiency to support business operations and avoid delays in deliverables... Show more	$21-42
   Support Lead	A support lead is typically in charge of overseeing the performance of a technical support team, ensuring efficiency and customer satisfaction. Their responsibilities revolve around assessing the performance of the workforce, resolving complex issues, identifying customer needs and sales opportunities, and training new team members... Show more	$30-56

   Show more

2. Create an ideal candidate profile

   Common skills:

   • Troubleshoot
   • Java
   • Escalate
   • Unix
   • Windows
   • Production Environment
   • Application Support
   • Incident Management
   • Linux
   • Technical Support
   • Data Entry
   • SharePoint
   • Production Issues
   • Remedy

   Check all skills

   Responsibilities:

   • Manage defects and configurations for code promotions utilizing ETL providing pivot table leadership reports.
   • Facilitate well-received Perl and UNIX programs serving clients' FTP, SFTP and SCP from proxy server.
   • Assist in the development of a production environment and testing application enhancements on a Unix client server platform.
   • Configure network routers and switches for branch deployment.
   • Assist with configuration and deployment of Cisco switches.
   • Utilize Linux and SQL commands to diagnose system issues.

   More production support specialist duties

3. Make a budget

   Including a salary range in your production support specialist job description helps attract top candidates to the position. A production support specialist salary can be affected by several factors, such as geography, experience, seniority, certifications, and the prestige of the hiring company.

   For example, the average salary for a production support specialist in Utah may be lower than in New Jersey, and an entry-level production support specialist usually earns less than a senior-level production support specialist. Additionally, a production support specialist with certifications may command a higher salary, and working for a well-known company or start-up may also impact an employee's pay.

   Average production support specialist salary

   $80,689yearly

   $38.79 hourly rate

   ---

   Entry-level production support specialist salary

   $52,000 yearly salary

   Updated January 14, 2026

   Average production support specialist salary by state

   Rank	State	Avg. salary	Hourly rate
   1	New York	$105,985	$51
   2	New Jersey	$105,883	$51
   3	Connecticut	$95,631	$46
   4	Michigan	$94,457	$45
   5	District of Columbia	$93,273	$45
   6	Virginia	$92,973	$45
   7	Massachusetts	$92,086	$44
   8	Delaware	$90,614	$44
   9	Ohio	$89,628	$43
   10	Maryland	$88,611	$43
   11	California	$82,888	$40
   12	Pennsylvania	$82,420	$40
   13	North Carolina	$80,339	$39
   14	Louisiana	$77,766	$37
   15	Arizona	$74,928	$36
   16	Illinois	$74,699	$36
   17	Texas	$71,927	$35
   18	South Carolina	$69,436	$33
   19	Florida	$69,312	$33
   20	Oregon	$67,298	$32

   Average production support specialist salary by company

   Company

   Rank	Company	Average salary	Hourly rate	Job openings
   1	HSBC Bank	$101,107	$48.61	1
   2	State Street	$100,039	$48.10	10
   3	Warner Bros.	$98,641	$47.42	16
   4	WarnerMedia	$97,394	$46.82
   5	Foundant Technologies	$96,310	$46.30
   6	Medical Science & Computing, LLC	$95,154	$45.75
   7	Jacobs Enterprises	$95,084	$45.71	58
   8	Airspace Technologies	$95,051	$45.70
   9	*n/a*	$95,013	$45.68	2
   10	TissueTech	$94,453	$45.41
   11	Hallmark Services Corporation	$94,167	$45.27	2
   12	JRI America	$92,693	$44.56
   13	Peraton	$90,259	$43.39	45
   14	COMPanion	$88,369	$42.49
   15	XL Global Services Inc	$87,270	$41.96
   16	Landscape Structures	$85,641	$41.17	2
   17	Blue Origin	$84,255	$40.51	17
   18	Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group	$83,971	$40.37
   19	Adobe	$82,640	$39.73	2
   20	DFS Corporate Services LLC	$79,280	$38.12

4. Writing a production support specialist job description

   A good production support specialist job description should include a few things:

   • Summary of the role
   • List of responsibilities
   • Required skills and experience

   Including a salary range and the first name of the hiring manager is also appreciated by candidates. Here's an example of a production support specialist job description:

   Production support specialist job description example

   Job title: Production Support Specialist
   Location: Chicago-IL. Manager will consider fully remote for the right candidate
   Duration: 6 months
   
   Job description
   
   The Production Support Specialist (PSS) is a well-rounded, tech-savvy thinker with a bias towards resolution. The person in the role is responsible for project work associated with product rollout and other similar initiatives. The PSS role entails understanding the intricacies of our fulfillment programs, providing requirements, assisting with documentation of test cases, the setup of forms and variables in the administrative system, and executing tests during UAT (User Acceptance Testing).
   
   The Product Support specialist will work with our internal and external partners, and our fulfillment team to ensure seamless communications and roll-outs for our products and services are performing as designed.
   This includes but is not limited to the management of vendor print reports; the evaluation and troubleshooting of any reported printing errors; review of complex fulfillment requests escalated by Integrated Client Services team; and frequent correspondence with internal business partners such as Account Managers and Implementation Managers.
   
   Responsibilities:
   
   " Understand group insurance regulations related to fulfillment, including situs rules
   " Participate in project lifecycle for new product rollouts and regulatory changes
   " Assist with UAT of projects as assigned by Manager
   
   " Manage vendor print report log and troubleshoot policy errors
   " Draft cover letters for special mailings using Microsoft Word
   " Handle duplicate policy requests for complex cases
   " Create sample policies for the field
   " Audit benefit setup completed by Contract Specialist team when needed
   " Handle complex benefit setup for groups with non-standard fulfillment rules when needed
   Executing tests during UAT (User Acceptance Testing).
   " Organize multiple production issues, customer requests and inquiries from other sources.
   " Maintain ownership until resolution of issue.
   " Other projects and duties as assigned
   
   The role requires a high degree of systems thinking, organization, and time management as there are often multiple, competing priorities.
   
   Skills
   Strong written and verbal communication skills
   " Strong knowledge of Adobe Acrobat Pro (moderate to advanced skill level to edit, add security, watermarks, comments, create form fields, run comparisons)
   " MS Suite of products specifically Word (ability to track changes, watermark, run comparisons, format), Excel (basic to moderate skills to create or update existing spreadsheets without formulas, adding new sheets, columns, rows, filtering, freezing panes, saving to pdf)
   Proven ability to learn processes, infrastructure, systems and applications
   " Daily use of SharePoint, MS Teams, OneDrive and JIRA
   
   Experience/Education
   Manager will consider college grad if they have technical-level knowledge of Adobe Pro and MS Suite of products.
   
   They must have strong and proven communication skills

   Copy this example

   

5. Post your job

   To find the right production support specialist for your business, consider trying out a few different recruiting strategies:

   • Consider internal talent. One of the most important sources of talent for any company is its existing workforce.
   • Ask for referrals. Reach out to friends, family members, and current employees and ask if they know or have worked with production support specialists they would recommend.
   • Recruit at local colleges. Attend job fairs at local colleges to recruit production support specialists who meet your education requirements.
   • Social media platforms. LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter now have more than 3.5 billion users, and you can use social media to reach potential job candidates.

   Post your job online:

   • Post your production support specialist job on Zippia to find and recruit production support specialist candidates who meet your exact specifications.
   • Use field-specific websites such as dice, engineering.com, stack overflow, it job pro.
   • Post a job on free websites.

6. Interview candidates

   During your first interview to recruit production support specialists, engage with candidates to learn about their interest in the role and experience in the field. During the following interview, you'll be able to go into more detail about the company, the position, and the responsibilities.

   Remember to include a few questions that allow candidates to expand on their strengths in their own words. Asking about their unique skills might reveal things you'd miss otherwise. At this point, good candidates can move on to the technical interview.

   If your interviews with production support specialist applicants aren't enough to make a decision, you should also consider including a test project. These are often the best, most straightforward, and least bias-prone ways of determining who will likely succeed in the role. If you don't know how to design an appropriate test, you can ask someone else on the team to create it or take a look at these websites to get a few ideas:

   • 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 specialist

   Once you've found the production support specialist 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 specialist 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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