A software application engineer is an individual responsible for managing the daily maintenance of a computer system. He is typically responsible for installing, configuring, and maintaining multiple servers. This includes planning for upgrades and server outages due to problems within the infrastructure.
When a computer application is installed it must be monitored to ensure it operates 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 an issue is identified. These issues include hardware failures, network problems, and potential cyber-attacks.
Software applications are a complex grouping of hardware, software, and network telecommunication devices. This complex grouping requires proper configuration and enterprise planning. The software application engineer is responsible for managing the configuration of the entire computer system. This detailed configuration management is critical to ensure the 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 facility designed to support large computers with special provisions for redundancy, advanced cooling, and power backup. The data center provides a safe environment that is locked down from physical and electronic intrusion. The system administrator is the only person with access to 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 each SLA is met. This SLA is the contract between the software provider and manager of the production environment.
SLAs are an extremely important topic for most large organizations. These large companies require the IT infrastructure availability match the business objectives of the organization. When a system is unavailable, revenue is potentially lost, therefore the system availability must be constantly monitored. The systems engineer uses advanced software and tools to track the health of the computers for which he is responsible.
An online Internet reservation system is a good example of a software application with a critical SLA. The software application engineer is responsible for ensuring the reservation system is available 24 hours a day because failure would result in lost revenue. With the move to cloud-computing, this requirement will become more relevant because all future applications will be supported on the Internet through the software as a service (SAAS) strategy.