IT Support Specialist

Overview

The IT Support Specialist provides information technology support to students, faculty, staff, alumni and others affiliated with Princeton University through multiple support channels including phone, chat, email, and walk-in/deskside appointments. As a member of the Service Management Office (SMO) within the Office of Information Technology (OIT), this position delivers exceptional customer service and technical troubleshooting to resolve incidents, fulfill requests, and quickly respond to escalations.

Working both independently and in collaboration with other IT teams, the specialist provides general customer support for IT services and participates in security response activities, technical emergencies, and continuous service improvement activities. The specialist must demonstrate technical aptitude, strong communication and customer service skills, flexibility, and sound judgment.

As a full-time staff member working on-site, the IT Support Specialist is primarily assigned to work as part of the IT Service Desk. Work schedules include being part of an on-call rotation outside normal business hours and may include working a later shift or supporting weekend hours. The specialist may also be scheduled for remote IT support sessions or dispatched for in-person support to nearby offices.

Technology & Security Support

• Serve as the initial point of contact to answer technology and IT service-related questions, triage incidents, and fulfill requests.
• Maintain a working understanding of core IT services and be able to proficiently direct customers to the applicable published information for IT services and applications provided by OIT and other University departments.
• Efficiently diagnose and resolve hardware, software, accounts, and access-related issues, leveraging documented procedures and prescribed troubleshooting methodologies and tools.
• Monitor IT support requests and assigned tasks in the University’s service management system (Service Now) and respond to customers with timely and detailed communication and updates.
• Document all customer interactions and troubleshooting notes in the service management system following defined standards for inquiries, incidents, and requests. Route work to other support and technical teams as needed.
• Collaborate with technical teams on customer issues, ensuring timely resolution and escalating when necessary to maintain service levels.
• Monitor the status of university systems and proactively
  ** escalate
  * * reported outages and emerging trends in customer incidents.
• Promote secure computing practices and educate customers on cybersecurity awareness.
• Participate in emergency response and service restoration activities during technology outages and security incidents.
• Assist with the review, escalation, and remediation of security-related alerts and customer concerns including phishing attempts, compromised accounts, and suspicious account activity. Follow established incident response procedures and coordinate with the Information Security Office as required.
• Sustain a continuous improvement mindset, actively identifying opportunities to improve customer experience, reduce risk, and increase service efficiency. Contribute to problem management and service enhancement efforts.
• Participate in critical activities outside of standard business hours when required including scheduled on-call time for after-hours escalations and support for major incident response.
• Assist customers as scheduled across support channels including assigned time fielding calls and chats as well as in person support by appointment/dispatch and at walk-up locations (on campus and within the University’s Carnegie Center/Alexander Road offices).
• Maintain personal/proprietary information and confidential/restricted data in the strictest of confidence and follow procedures to ensure privacy, security, and data management according to policy.

Community Engagement and Knowledge Management

• Contribute to the maintenance of IT support documentation and knowledge articles for the campus community. Identify gaps and errors in content and draft proposed changes.
• Make recommendations that aim…