Senior Technical Specialist

SeniorTechnical Specialist

New Meridian Corporation,located in Austin, TX seeks outstanding candidates for theSenior Technical Specialist role. This position, reporting to the Director of Technology Customer Operations, will support the New Meridian team in leading the technology team for major customer implementations and production events.

WHO WE ARE:

New Meridian is a non-profit, assessment design and development organization. We believe assessments should focus on skills that matter: critical thinking, deep understanding, and the ability to communicate ideas effectively, helping prepare students to adapt and thrive in a complex world. At New Meridian, we create high-quality assessments that measure these skills to ensure all students have access to valuable educational experiences.

Our mission is to advance the quality of public education for all students by designing assessments that focus on the skills that matter.

Our team is defined by a strong commitment to improving student learning, empowering teachers, and advancing the role of high-quality assessment in expanding opportunity for all students. We are recognized leaders in assessment innovation, driven by our willingness to tackle complex challenges and our dedication to delivering exceptional support to our partners.

WHO WE’RE LOOKING FOR:

SUMMARY: TheSenior Technical Specialist serves as a key contributor within the Technology Customer Operations team, providing a blend of customer-facing technical support, production operations support, and operational process improvement. This role works closely with customers, technology teams, data teams, implementation teams, and product stakeholders to resolve issues, support assessment program operations, maintain production data processes, and improve overall service delivery.

The ideal candidate combines technical troubleshooting skills, strong analytical abilities, attention to detail, and a customer-focused mindset. This individual will help ensure reliable system operations while contributing to knowledge management, issue prevention efforts, and continuous improvement initiatives.

Our ideal candidate has the following traits:

• An ability to get things done: You are results-driven, action oriented, and persistent. You are a master organizer and project planner who consistently looks ahead and anticipates needs before they arise. You take initiative and are action oriented.
• Analytical:You have strong analytical skills and are comfortable reviewing quantitative data to inform your understanding of the market and customer needs and issues.
• Creative mindset:You have the ability to quickly adapt and develop creative solutions to communication and logistics challenges. You are not easily discouraged.
• Emotionalintelligence: You are highly self-aware and perceptive to the dynamics of key relationships. You are positive, empathetic, flexible, and curious. You naturally gain the respect of your colleagues through your authenticity, warmth, and competence.
• Trustworthy: You are highly ethical, principled, and mission driven, garnering the trust of colleagues and vendors. You exercise discretion and confidentiality.

SUCCESS MEASURES:

A successfulSenior Technical Specialist:

• Demonstrates strong ownership of production support activities and data integrity.

• Consistently delivers a positive customer and stakeholder experience.

• Resolves customer and operational issues accurately and efficiently.
• Maintains high-quality operational documentation and support content.
• Contributes meaningfully to incident investigations and root cause analyses.
• Reduces recurring issues through proactive identification of trends and preventive actions.

EXPECTED DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

Production Data Support

• Establish support standards, operational procedures, and troubleshooting methodologies.
• Execute and monitor production data processes, scripts, and operational procedures.

• Ability to track data movement and transformations between workflows.

• Research and troubleshoot production data issues using logs, queries, reports, and monitoring tools.
• Support inbound and outbound data integrations, including file processing and results delivery workflows.
• Document production support procedures, operational runbooks, and recovery processes.

Incident Management & Problem Resolution

• Participate in incident triage, investigation, and resolution efforts.
• Analyze production issues to identify root causes and recommend corrective actions.
• Gather evidence, document findings, and contribute to Root Cause Analysis (RCA) reports.
• Track recurring issues and identify opportunities for process, product, or operational improvements.
• Partner with engineering, product, quality assurance, and program management teams to resolve complex problems.
• Support major incident communications and status reporting as needed.

Documentation & Process Improvement

• Develop and maintain support documentation, knowledge base articles, troubleshooting guides, and operational runbooks.
• Document best practices, standard operating procedures, and lessons learned.
• Contribute to continuous improvement initiatives focused on reducing incident volume, improving support efficiency, and enhancing customer experience.
• Identify opportunities to automate recurring operational tasks and support workflows.
• Assist in training team members and promoting consistent support processes.

Customer Support & Operations

• Lead technical discussions with customers regarding integrations, data exchanges, authentication, and reporting solutions.
• Support pre-implementation planning, risk assessments, and operational readiness reviews.
• Provide Level 2 technical support for customer-reported issues, escalating appropriately when additional expertise is required.
• Investigate and resolve customer issues related to platform access, data integration, reporting, rostering, authentication, and assessment delivery.
• Serve as a technical resource during testing windows, implementations, and production events.
• Communicate technical findings and status updates to internal stakeholders and customers in clear, business-friendly language.
• Support issue triage processes to identify severity, customer impact, and appropriate resolution paths.
• Participate in customer onboarding, operational readiness reviews, and launch support activities.

• Configure and support customer-specific front-end, scoring, and reporting requirements to meet program implementation needs.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Experience supporting SaaS applications or educational technology platforms.
• Familiarity withassessment content packages and scoring requirements/test maps.
• Experience with administration configuration options and eliciting customer requirements as inputs to minimize rework.
• Familiarity with SQL and relational database concepts.
• Experience working with APIs, file-based integrations, or data exchange processes.
• Knowledge of incident management, change management, and root cause analysis methodologies.
• Experience using ticketing systems such as Zendesk and Jira.
• Familiarity with Microsoft Azure, monitoring platforms, and data validation techniques.
• Experience creating technical documentation and knowledge articles.

REQUIREMENT AND EXPERIENCE:

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Information Systems, Business, or related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• 10+ years of experience in technical support, production support, technology operations, data operations, or a related field.
• Experience troubleshooting software applications, integrations, and production issues.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Experience executing queries, scripts, or automated processes in production or non-production environments.

• Ability to configure customer-specific front-end, scoring, and reporting requirements in alignment with program needs and implementation specifications.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.
• 3-5 years in assessment industry, preferred

SALARY AND BENEFITS:

We offer a competitive annual salary. Our benefits package includes:

• Medical, prescription, and behavioral health coverages.
• Dental coverage.
• Vision coverage.
• Life and AD&D coverage.
• Short-and long-term disability.
• Employee assistance program.
• 401(k) with company match.
• Up to 20 days of PTO per year.
• 17 paid holidays.
• Accrued Sick Leave
• Paid parental leave.
• Remote work and flexible schedules.

New Meridian Corporation is an equal opportunity employer and encourages individuals of all backgrounds and identities to apply. We are excited to receive applications from people in occupations or positions where they are under-represented, particularly from individuals connected to underserved communities. We feel we are strengthened by diverse perspectives.

Originally posted on Himalayas