NOC Engineer (Monitoring & Critical Systems)

The NOC Engineer is responsible for the day-to-day monitoring and initial response for critical customer systems. This role owns the operational rhythm of detection, triage, and escalation - ensuring that actionable alerts are handled quickly, criticality is assessed correctly, and customer impact is minimized. 

The NOC Engineer is a hands-on technical operator who uses the organization’s monitoring and remote management platforms (and associated workflows) to validate alerts, perform first-response troubleshooting, and coordinate escalations. This role is also accountable for improving monitoring quality over time by reducing noise, validating coverage on critical assets, and keeping documentation and runbooks current. 

Monitoring & Triage (Primary Responsibility)

• Monitor customer environments for availability, performance, and security-impacting events using established monitoring platforms and alerting workflows. 
• Assess alert criticality and customer impact (what is down, who is impacted, and how urgent it is) and act accordingly. 
• Perform first-response validation to distinguish true positives from noise (for example: confirm reachability, service status, interface state, and power/ISP indicators). 
• Open, update, and manage tickets for monitoring events, ensuring accurate categorization, priority, and timestamps. 
• Maintain situational awareness during active incidents (multiple concurrent alerts, cascading failures, ISP/power events). 

Contract and Financial Management

• Participate in the review and execution of software contracts and renewals. Ensure favorable commercial and legal terms are achieved. 
• Analyze total cost of ownership (TCO) for software investments and drive tangible cost reduction initiatives through planning and execution. 
• Develop expertise in software volume licensing models and commercial structures. 

 Monitoring Quality, Coverage, and Noise Reduction

• Own the accuracy of monitoring for critical assets: ensure the right devices and services are monitored with appropriate thresholds and dependencies. 
• Identify recurring false positives and work with the team to tune alert rules, maintenance windows, and notification routing. 
• Verify monitoring visibility for newly onboarded or replaced systems and ensure decommissioned assets are removed from monitoring. 
• Contribute to proactive improvements such as standardized monitoring templates and reducing repeat alert patterns. 

 Documentation & Process Adherence

• Document all actions and findings in the ticketing system using established standards (clear notes, evidence, timestamps, and outcomes). 
• Maintain and improve NOC runbooks and quick-reference procedures for common alert types and incident patterns. 
• Follow change management and customer communication procedures during remediation and incident response. 

 Tool Operations & Operational Hygiene

• Maintain operational hygiene in monitoring systems: correct naming conventions, site mappings, device grouping, and alert routing. 
• Verify that alerts are producing tickets/notifications as designed; report and document delivery failures for engineering remediation. 
• Support periodic “cycle counts” or health checks to ensure monitoring is aligned with current customer environments. 

Minimum Qualifications

• 2+ years in an MSP, NOC, or technical operations environment. 
• Experience triaging monitoring alerts and identifying customer impact using structured validation. 
• Working knowledge of monitoring and remote management tooling and standard incident workflows. 
• Strong troubleshooting skills and ability to distinguish symptoms from root cause through structured validation. 
• Strong written communication skills in a ticketing system. 

 Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with alert tuning and threshold design to reduce noise. 
• Familiarity with MSP tool stacks (ticketing, documentation platforms, EDR/MDR, backup monitoring). 
• Basic scripting/automation skills (PowerShell and/or Python) to support operational efficiencies. 
• Certifications such as Network+, Security+, CCNA, or equivalent experience.

Success Looks Like

Monitoring is calm, accurate, and actionable. Critical incidents are identified quickly, validated correctly, and escalated with high-quality context. Customers experience fewer surprises because issues are detected early, noise is steadily reduced, and monitoring coverage remains aligned with what is truly critical in each environment.