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Nstein Technologies (TSX-V: EIN) develops and markets leading-edge content management software solutions, digital assets management, picture management and text mining solutions for the media and publishing industry. The head office is based in Montreal, Canada, with offices in the United States, London, Toulouse and Paris. For additional information, visit: www.nstein.com.

Picdar, an Nstein company, develops and implements its publishing workflow and content management solutions for an exciting range of customers including most national newspapers, leading magazines, travel companies and other large and small businesses. Some of these systems are enterprise-scale, handling huge numbers of assets, users and asset formats with sophisticated security and classification requirements.

Our software is developed at our St Albans base by the development team, using a variety of technologies and languages including Java/J2E and C++. Integration with third party software is important in most solutions, including Adobe Creative Suite and Quark on the desktop, and search engines (Autonomy, Lucene) and RDBMS (Oracle, Sequel Server) on the server. The Solutions Engineer, Customer Care and Development teams work closely together within the Engineering group.

This is a hugely varied, demanding and interesting role within our Technical Services Team, which has a reputation for personal and responsive customer service across a spectrum of dynamic industries. We are looking for a bright, dynamic people to join the team of engineers.

The SEs are responsible for:

• Implementing software installations and upgrades as part of customer projects or as a result of serious support issues, typically targeted at major accounts. Installation of new systems involving the configuration and testing of servers (including OS, databases, communications etc) as well as commissioning our own software. Most installation work is carried out at Nstein UK offices or by remote connection to customer sites, but there is the opportunity to visit customer sites. . The work is very varied as all systems environments and configurations vary. The Solutions Engineer team work closely with Project Managers to schedule installations and resolve issues with the customer.
• Implementing customer projects that are operationally focussed (eg software migrations and data migrations). Most systems have a lifecycle of only a few years due to the rapid growth in data, and usage. Some customers have completed several hardware and storage upgrades since the commissioning of their original systems.
• Maintaining documentation and site information during and on completion of projects
• Delivering high quality customer support for serious support issues in partnership with the Customer Care team. Support is provided by remote access to customer sites. Most problems we deal with are software or systems related. Third parties deliver hardware support but we often need to diagnose the faults and provide co-ordination during resolution.

The role is very hands-on and varied, with a good mix of projects and urgent responsive work.

 

TECHNICAL SKILLS:

Solutions Engineers will develop their skills in the following areas, and therefore familiarity and experience with most of these areas is required, the extent depending on seniority:

• At least 2 years experience in a technical services environment handling installations with a focus on applications software, preferably in the publishing industry.
• Good communication, documentation and reporting skills.
• Expertise in Unix - primarily Linux and Solaris.
• Expertise in server, network and storage architectures.
• Expertise in PC (Win2k, XP, Windows Server 2003, Vista) and Apple Macintosh configuration.
• Expertise in process debugging and monitoring tools.
• Expertise in system configuration, administration and scripting.
• Expertise in HTTP, Apache.
• Expertise in RDBMS Databases (Oracle, Sequel Server, Postgres) (desirable).
• Expertise in J2E, XML, XSLT (desirable).

Training is provided where necessary, both “on the job” and through formal training courses.

We provide 24 by 7 on-call support. The successful candidate will be expected to join this rota in due course (probably after 1 to 2 years) once they have sufficient experience to operate on their own.

 

PERSONAL SKILLS:

• Team player
• Enjoy a stimulating, pressurised environment
• Good communication and interpersonal skills, on the phone and face to face
• Disciplined and well organised
• Lateral thinker and good problem solving skills
• Driving: while the job is office based, some travel (eg for installs) is required so the successful candidate will probably hold a full driving licence.
• In order to operate on the on-call rota, the candidate will need to live within a maximum of an hour’s drive from St Albans, and ideally less.

 

This role offers considerable opportunities for career development within the Solutions Team and elsewhere in the organization.