A software application engineer is a person responsible for managing the day-to-day maintenance of a computer system.
A software application engineer is a person responsible for managing the day-to-day maintenance of a computer system. Typically, he is responsible for installing, configuring, and maintaining multiple servers. This includes planning for server upgrades and outages due to infrastructure issues.
When a computer application is installed, it must be monitored to ensure that it works correctly. The software application engineer uses advanced monitoring tools to track the computers in the system for which he is responsible. This monitoring software alerts the engineer when a problem is identified. These issues include hardware failure, network issues, and possible cyber attacks.
Software applications are a complex grouping of hardware, software, and network telecommunications devices. This complex grouping requires proper configuration and business planning. The software application engineer is responsible for managing the configuration of the entire computer system. This detailed configuration management is essential to ensure systems are maintainable.
The software application engineer typically works in a data center. A data center is a building designed to manage multiple computer systems. This is a feature designed to support large computers with special provisions for redundancy, advanced cooling, and power backup. The data center provides a secure environment that is locked against physical and electronic intrusion. The system administrator is the only person with access to the computers in a data center.
Each software application has a service level agreement (SLA) that defines the required stability of the application. The software application engineer is responsible for ensuring that each SLA is met. This SLA is the agreement between the software vendor and the administrator of the production environment.
SLAs are an extremely important topic for most large organizations. These large companies demand that the availability of the IT infrastructure matches the business objectives of the organization. When a system is unavailable, revenue is potentially lost, so system availability must be constantly monitored. The systems engineer uses advanced tools and software to track the health of the computers for which he is responsible.
An online reservation system over the Internet is a good example of a software application with a critical SLA. The software application engineer is responsible for ensuring that the reservation system is available 24 hours a day, as failure would result in loss of revenue. With the shift to cloud computing, this requirement will become more relevant as all future applications will be Internet-enabled through the software-as-a-service (SAAS) strategy.