Contracting the Right IT Business Professionals: Exploring the Contrasts Between an IT Support Engineer and a Technician

We often speak with companies and organisations looking for the best outsourced IT support, consultancy assistance or helpdesk service who need clarity about the various specialisms and skills we offer – or the types of IT support services that will be ideally suited to their needs.

Likewise, there is often confusion among those considering a career in IT about the types of roles, jobs and positions available to them and how they might progress from the Jera IT Academy or an alternative tuition and apprenticeship programme into a high-demand profession.

Here we’ll examine the roles of an IT Support Engineer and IT Support Technician to shed light on the contrasts between these two positions and explain why having an outsourced IT support provider with an experienced, multi-talented team is often the perfect solution.

IT Support vs Technical Assistance: The Key Differences

Let’s start by talking about generalised help and technical assistance, two terms that are often considered interchangeable but actually indicate two distinct areas of expertise. While each is essential to ensure a business has a smooth, dependable IT infrastructure and operations, they have very different scopes.

As a quick summary:

• IT support covers a broad array of services necessary to ensure an organisation’s technology, computer systems, hardware, software, networks, and applications are well managed, maintained, and working efficiently.
• Technical support is designed to align with specific components or aspects of the IT infrastructure within an organisation. It covers things like troubleshooting and integrations, managing issues with products, applications, or services, and ensuring the technology is operating as expected.

An IT support team can offer services that ensure the smooth running of most aspects of a business’s IT, including maintenance for networks and databases, configuring software solutions, dealing with technical challenges, and ensuring data security is effective and compliant.

Technical support teams and support desks manage areas that cross over but primarily focus on product expertise, direct client communications, and problem resolution.

Hiring or Outsourcing to IT Support Engineers or IT Technicians

Engineers and technicians with formal IT qualifications and accreditations are often of equal standing. However, they can specialise in certain areas, technologies, or processes – or concentrate their work on industries and sectors.

For instance, a technician could work in the medical and healthcare field, managing the functionality and interconnectivity of hospital and testing equipment.

In contrast, an IT support engineer might provide strategic IT planning to assist with upscaling or resolving ongoing challenges to help a business operate more cost-efficiently.

The Role of an IT Support Engineer

Talented engineers have comparable capabilities as IT Support Technicians. They typically work on IT problems, challenges or objectives to find the right solutions, workarounds or upgrades to ensure issues or bottlenecks are rectified to their client’s satisfaction.

Engineers aren’t solely focused on ‘fixing’ computer hardware. They analyse the scenarios they are presented with and consult with clients to understand the underlying goals, expectations, or specifications they need to deliver that suit the business’s needs and will remain relevant.

One core benefit of consulting an IT Support Engineer is that they can advise on options that will provide immediate improvements and those that might offer long-term advantages in terms of longevity and stability.

Working With an IT Support Technician

Technicians often work within help desk teams or for managed IT support providers. They commonly handle a ticketing system where they manage queries or problems in order of priority, working on one issue at a time until it is resolved.

General IT Technicians have excellent knowledge about a broad number of potential issues, whereas specialists will have an in-depth comprehension of the complexities of specific products, components, hardware or software, providing a greater depth of knowledge to handle more difficult challenges.

The major contrast is that a technician works methodically, often managing urgent and business-critical issues in the fastest possible time to aid in continuity and productivity. Engineers can tackle more involved decision-making and assist with ongoing projects rather than downtime, outages, or faults.

Selecting the Right IT Professional Support

If you’re keen to implement IT support services for your business, the nuance between IT professions and skills may be less relevant – as long as you have the assurance that your IT provider has ample expertise within their team to handle any issues, questions or projects you require assistance with.

Every business may have varied concerns or priorities, but the following are among the highest-demand areas of IT support we receive enquiries about.

Each may require input from IT Support Technicians and Engineers depending on whether you’re configuring or installing a new system or managing the ongoing maintenance of your existing infrastructure.

System and Network Monitoring

Monitoring services are essential for most types of software, hardware, and computer systems. IT professionals can scan for potential issues before they occur or handle emerging lags or snags in real-time.

Security monitoring is just as important. IT support teams automatically install updates and patches or identify possible breaches or vulnerabilities to keep your defences in good shape.

Troubleshooting and Disaster Management

Issues and outages are sometimes unavoidable, and when problems occur due to user errors, power surges, malfunctions, or when problems arise when installing or integrating a new system component, an IT support team can step in.

Whether dealing with a minor issue that needs to be resolved without disturbing workflows or a major problem that must be dealt with as quickly as possible to restore online connectivity, IT professionals work swiftly and decisively to diagnose the root cause of the issue and recommend immediate workarounds or complete fixes.

IT Consultancy Services

Finally, both technicians and engineers may be involved in consultancy work, where decision-makers require independent input to help them make informed judgements about the right tools, software, applications, or upgrades to achieve their business objectives or want help to create a tactical expansion plan with sufficient IT capacity in place to support it.

IT specialists analyse complex issues, clarify the options available, and work with clients to ensure they select the best solutions that fit their budgets, specifications, and requirements while being compatible with all other elements of their IT setup.