Technical Support Specialist - L1 New Abu Dhabi, UAE

AI71 is an industry leader in artificial intelligence, delivering innovative solutions that empower developers, businesses and governments to solve complex challenges. AI71 builds secure, enterprise-ready applications powered by cutting-edge technology—tailored for knowledge workers and sector-specific needs. AI71 bridges the gap between advanced AI and real-world impact. Guided by a strong commitment to research and responsibility, we create transformative solutions that drive progress and empower communities.

The Role:

The Senior L1 Technical Support Specialist is an experienced frontline expert who owns the highest-volume and most nuanced first-tier issues, acts as a technical and procedural authority for the L1 team, and serves as a bridge between clients, L1 peers, and L2/engineering. This role goes beyond ticket resolution — it requires sound judgment on triage/escalation calls, ownership of process quality, and the ability to mentor others and shape how the support function operates, across both managed SaaS and on-premises client environments.

What You'll Do:

Technical Troubleshooting & Remediation (Advanced L1 Scope)

• Exercise judgment on ambiguous or novel issues that don't map cleanly to existing KB articles; determine root cause before escalating rather than passing along symptoms.
• Perform deeper diagnostics: reading application/system logs, using admin tooling to inspect account/config state, replicating issues across environments, and identifying whether an issue is client-specific, platform-wide, or a known bug.
• Own escalations end-to-end: write precise, engineer-ready handoff notes (reproduction steps, logs, impact scope, attempted fixes) that minimize back-and-forth with L2/engineering.
• Act as the point of judgment on severity classification and incident triggers — knowing when a "simple" ticket is actually the first signal of a broader outage.
• Identify patterns across tickets and proactively surface systemic issues to engineering/product before they become widespread.
• Correlate incoming tickets with recent deployments or releases using release notes, change calendars, and status pages; expedite suspected release-related issues to L2/DevOps with timestamps, affected environments, and app versions.
• Perform basic environment health checks per runbook: confirm service status, verify application versions across environments, and carry out approved routine actions such as clearing caches or restarting services.
• Serve as a subject-matter expert (SME) for one or more platform modules, product lines, or client segments.

Client Relationship Management (Senior-Level)

• Manage relationships with key/enterprise accounts or high-visibility clients, including sensitive or escalated situations.
• Handle client-facing calls for complex or multi-session issues, setting expectations and owning communication through to resolution.
• Exercise discretion in de-escalation, including knowing when to involve a manager versus resolving independently.
• Provide input to account/client success teams on recurring pain points, churn risk signals, or opportunities for proactive outreach.
• Represent the support function's voice in cross-functional conversations (product, engineering, CS) on client-impacting issues.

Knowledge Transfer, Mentorship & Process Ownership

• Own and continuously improve the KB: audit for gaps/outdated content, write new articles, and establish documentation standards for the team.
• Design or refine triage workflows, escalation criteria, and runbooks based on recurring failure patterns.
• Lead onboarding/training for new hires, including building training materials.
• Represent L1 in retros, post-incident reviews, and cross-team process discussions.
• Act as a point of escalation for other L1 agents when they're unsure how to proceed (informal tier "1.5").

What You'll Bring:

• 3–5 years in technical support/helpdesk, with demonstrated growth in scope and ownership.
• Track record of handling escalated or high-visibility client issues.
• Experience mentoring or informally leading peers.
• Comfortable reading logs and using admin/config tooling to diagnose issues without engineering support.
• Working knowledge of networking fundamentals (DNS, VPN, API basics, HTTP status codes).
• Basic SQL for querying account/data state.
• Familiarity with ticketing and monitoring/status tools (e.g., Zendesk, Jira Service Management, Statuspage, Datadog).
• Knowledge of end-to-end SDLC and application support lifecycle.
• Experience owning the creation and maintenance of SOPs and KB content related to applications.
• Understanding of the product’s architecture at a level sufficient to reason about where in the stack an issue originates.
• Proactive monitoring using monitoring tools and log reviews.
• Foundational DevOps awareness: understanding of CI/CD pipelines, deployments, and environments (dev/test/staging/prod); Git basics; and the ability to view build and deployment status in tools like Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or Azure DevOps.
• Sound independent judgment — knows what to solve, what to elevate, and when to loop in a manager.
• Strong coaching and feedback skills; comfortable mentoring peers without formal authority.
• Executive-ready communication for high-stakes client situations.
• Process-oriented mindset with a bias toward fixing root causes, not just symptoms.
• Calm, credible presence in escalated or high-pressure situations.
• Collaborative across functions (engineering, product, CS/account management).
• Comfort supporting clients running both managed SaaS and on-premises / air-gapped installs.

Great Pluses / Preferred Experience

• Exposure to DevOps or release processes (e.g., post-release checks, following deployment runbooks, or working with DevOps teams on release-related tickets).
• Experience with the specific product/stack.

Why AI71:

• Mission-Driven Work: Work on cutting-edge AI applications with a talented and passionate team, solving real-world challenges in critical sectors.
• Unparalleled Opportunity: This is a chance to innovate and solve real-world challenges using AI at a company with unique access to world-leading models and resources.
• Career Growth: We offer competitive compensation, benefits, and significant career growth opportunities as a foundational member of the team.
• World-Class Environment: Enjoy a flexible working environment and the latest tools & technologies needed to do your best work.

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