Pricefx People & Culture
You’re a third-level support engineer. What do the support levels actually mean?
In Pricefx, we’re third-level support, which means we’re the final line for any issue a customer is having. We make sure it gets taken care of, whether that means sending it to engineering to fix the software itself, or telling the customer the issue is on their end. Sometimes it’s not an issue at all, and I can say: “No, that’s working correctly.” So we’re making the decisions about how things get solved.
You mentioned you sometimes hand issues off to others, like Site Reliability Engineers (SREs). How does that work?
SREs, or TechOps as we call them, work closely with us. In support, we’re a bit of a jack of all trades. We do a little of everything, including some of the things SREs do, like restarts or configuration changes. When something is really broken and beyond that, I take it to TechOps.
What does a typical day look like? Is there even such a thing for you?
Day to day, it tends to follow the same rhythm. I wake up, make a cup of coffee, and go through the ticket queue while I drink it. Most mornings I start by replying to tickets from the day before and making sure they’re all handled. We work to Service Level Agreements (SLAs), so I pick up each ticket before it expires within our agreed service time.
Does the work ever feel repetitive?
Not really, and that’s one thing I like about Pricefx. You rarely see the same issue twice, and when you do, it’s usually a different customer hitting it for the first time. The base of the job is the same though: verify that it’s a real issue, then see if there’s a corrective action I can take myself.
What might that corrective action look like?
For example, if it’s a coding error and I can look into the logic, sometimes the fix is simple and I just need to switch one thing for another. Most of the time, though, you’re verifying the customer’s issue and working out whether you can solve it yourself or whether someone closer on your team can. Other times you go to a Configuration Engineer (CE) to get the logic changed.
What kinds of issues do you run into most often?
It changes over time. Before we ran on bare-metal servers, we saw some repeated issues. Now that most of our customers have moved to cloud-based platforms, every day feels like a new learning experience. Each case has its own twist, so there’s always a fresh challenge, a new problem to solve, and another chance to expand what we know. It keeps the work interesting and never repetitive. For example, we make sure the customer’s database is set up correctly, in both the QA and production environments.
How does on-call work on the support team?
In the US we have an on-call week, or the hot seat, as we call it. When you’re on the hot seat, you monitor and respond to alerts. If a critical ticket comes in, you get a text on your phone and it has to be handled within hours, because it can really affect a customer’s business. The upside is that during your on-call week you don’t take many tickets from the queue. You focus on the critical ones and on monitoring alerts.
It sounds like you juggle a lot. How important is prioritization?
Very. Tickets range in severity from low to normal to high to critical. The goal is to work down from critical and leave the low-priority ones for last. You use your own judgment too, focusing on issues you can actually work on right now versus ones where you’re waiting on other people for information. Knowing how many tickets to pick up is a balancing act.
Support is a helping role. What’s the most rewarding part for you?
I like digging deep into an issue, and I don’t mind spending a lot of time on it. The rewarding part is handing the client everything you found along with the solution you’ve come up with. It’s nice to hear them say: “You were right on all accounts, thanks for helping us out.” That’s the big one for me. Knowing what I worked on personally and having ownership of it. It’s very direct.
When you’re deep in a problem, is it hard to stay focused?
I really like working from home, and it’s a big help for work-life balance. For me, focusing involves a lot of pacing. When I’m stuck on a problem, I don’t have to stay at my desk. I can walk around the house, play with my dog for a bit, and think the issue through. That would be harder in an office.
What are the biggest challenges of the job, and the parts you enjoy most?
The biggest challenge is that the software has many interconnected tools, and a problem can appear at any point. Sometimes we don’t know where the issue is happening and we have to dig through logs. On the plus side, a lot of our clients are household names I actually use, so I know I’m helping a brand I recognize with its pricing.
How much of the work happens as a team?
When you’re a new hire, you’re always working with someone on issues and asking questions on calls. We have a mentorship system, and I was assigned a mentor, but I also reached out to anyone available on my team. Now that I’m senior, I handle most things on my own, but only because the team already taught me what I needed. It’s a team-based job, especially when we open a “war room” for a critical issue and work it together on a call. Someone can drop in, mention they saw the same thing last week, and an issue that might have taken all day is solved in minutes.
How would you describe the company culture?
I think it’s great. Pricefx emphasizes balance, supporting each other, and creating an environment you actually want to work in. Being remote helps. You can take a moment to think about what you want to say rather than blurting out the first thing that comes to mind. Everyone’s been polite, and reaching out to other teams has never been a problem. People don’t hide from messages.
What advice would you give someone starting in your role?
The biggest thing is not to be afraid to ask questions. With any technology, you’ll be working with tools you’ve never used before, and you’re going to have to ask. But also don’t be afraid to dig into things on your own. Spend time investigating, even when you’re not sure what you’re looking at. That’s part of the learning process.
The Pricefx People and Culture team shares what life at Pricefx is really like, from hiring and career growth to wellbeing, perks, and the values we work by. When you read a Life at Pricefx story, this is who is behind it.
