Customer engineer

A Customer Engineer^[1] (CE) is an engineer whose primary job is to proactively solve complex technical problems on behalf of customers. In the software industry customer engineers are often the layer between the customers and the software engineers helping to unblock the customers while at the same time providing deep insights and feedback to the product team, enabling them to improve the product. To unblock the customer, community engineers understand the customer scenario, reproduce and troubleshoot issues, provide solutions and document learnings. Originally, the term was used by IBM, but now Customer Engineer is an industry wide term.

About

Customer engineering is a deeply technical role, where the engineer understands the inner workings of the technology that they are a part of. The engineers utilize this knowledge to provide effective support to the customers such that the customer understands the platform and can utilize it to unblock their business needs. The role of customer engineer has spread to other companies in different industries such as technology, aviation, and telecommunications.

IBM Customer Engineer (IBM CE)

Originally simply engineer, those who specialized in servicing IBM equipment in use by its customers were designated customer engineers by Tom Watson circa 1942.

Based on the requirements, an IBM CE could be a Field CE and service many customers around a defined territory, e.g.: Kuala Lumpur, or they could be based at the place of business of a particularly large customer and service only that one customer e.g.: Tenaga Nasional.

NCR Customer Engineer (NCR CE)

The title of CE or customer engineer is used by National Cash Register (NCR) to designate specially trained personnel who are charged with the installation, maintenance and repair of equipment and systems according to contracts with end users. They can be charged with service of either Point of Sales (POS) systems or with ATM machines.

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