IT Support Specialist

Formed in 2016, Silicon Valley Clean Energy (SVCE) is a public Community Choice Energy service provider serving approximately 270,000 residential and commercial customer accounts in thirteen Santa Clara County communities. SVCE’s mission is to provide customers with renewable and carbon-free electricity at competitive rates, and further accelerate decarbonization through deployment of innovative local programs. Key program areas include: building electrification, electric vehicles and charging infrastructure, battery storage and demand management programs. Since the organization’s service launch in 2017, SVCE has provided carbon-free electricity to all residential and commercial energy customers in SVCE’s member communities. SVCE has saved its customers more than $90M and dedicated $84M to customer offers, programs, and services. SVCE is a joint-powers agency governed by a Board of Directors comprised of an elected official from each of SVCE’s thirteen member communities.

By providing reliable and responsive carbon-free electricity service at competitive rates, SVCE maintains a 96+% customer participation rate and a strong financial foundation. Access to carbon-free electricity has helped our communities take a major step in fighting climate change, reducing local emissions by more than 30% from a 2015 baseline. Yet supplying clean electricity is just the start. It is essential that SVCE continues to proactively engage with our customers and community stakeholders in the electrification journey - helping to inspire, educate, and enable action in transitioning from fossil fuels to clean electricity – in homes, buildings, and transportation.

The SVCE Culture

Achieving SVCE’s ambitious and urgent mission requires a team capable of meeting the tremendous challenges embedded in these goals. SVCE develops and fosters a diverse and talented team that thrives in a dynamic and fast-changing environment. As such, at SVCE we recruit and retain smart, passionate, innovative, and collaborative employees. Company employees contribute, as a team and as individuals, to continuously building and supporting a culture of collaboration and trust. SVCE employees encourage creativity and the free flow of ideas to spur innovation. The workplace environment is adaptable and technology-enabled to drive innovative solutions. SVCE emphasizes focus and prioritization across departments to achieve quality, rather than simply quantity of output. SVCE provides a rewarding workplace experience where productivity can be maintained across a variety of work environments. SVCE provides opportunities for growth, engagement, and support professional and personal development. SVCE offers opportunities that position their people, as well as SVCE, for success.

The Information Technology (IT) Specialist will work on functions related to general support of hardware, software, and account administration. The position provides high level customer service within a white glove support model and works collaboratively with all SVCE teams, while assisting with IT projects and system vulnerability remediation.

SUPERVISION RECEIVED AND EXERCISED

The IT Specialist reports to the Sr. Manager of Technology and Administrative Services and the position does not include supervisory or team leader responsibilities.

Essential Functions

• Provide white glove, high level customer service
• Provide comprehensive IT support, resolving Tier 1, 2, and 3 issues and following through on issue resolution to completion.
• Respond to help desk inquiries in a timely manner and take corrective actions to solve problems quickly and efficiently to achieve recovery with minimum impact to the customer
• Address the IT portion of employee onboarding and offboarding transitions.
• Troubleshoot hardware and software errors by running diagnostics, documenting problems and resolutions, prioritizing problems, and assessing impact of issues both in person or remotely.
• Image, deploy, troubleshoot, and manage Windows devices.
• Day-to-day administration of accounts, cloud-based services, security tools, and Office 365.
• Provide IT or application training to employees to ensure they have the technological resources and knowledge of how to use those resources to accomplish their responsibilities
• Document support tasks and create processes when needed, and ensure that processes can be performed consistently by all personnel
• Identify technological issue trends to proactively prevent problems and develop processes to resolve
• Analyze vulnerability scan results to identify potential security risks, evaluate vulnerabilities based on prioritization criteria and perform remediations in a timely manner.
• Keep up to date with the latest security threats and vulnerabilities and provide recommendations on how to mitigate them.
• Identify opportunities to automate repeatable tasks.
• Support and maintain video conferencing equipment on-site.
• Perform routine maintenance and reviews on IT equipment and services.
• Participate in IT audits and security assessments.
• Work on IT projects as assigned

• Be available to work in the office on a regular basis to troubleshoot any user computer issues, network equipment or peripheral issues.
• Support monthly evening Board Meetings and other similar meetings to facilitate hybrid meeting applications and ensure the AV equipment and other connected hardware function properly during the meetings.
• As needed for staff meetings, committee meetings, vendor appointments, and any other IT-related staff support

Qualifications

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ABILITIES

Knowledge of:

• Administration of Box.com, Microsoft Office 365, Zoom, Windows
• Network Infrastructure (switches, firewalls, AP’s cloud-based tools)
• Audio/visual systems that support hybrid conference meeting environments for both in-person and virtual attendees
• IT security best practices
• Windows and software vulnerability remediation best practices
• Familiarity with networking concepts and hardware
• Familiarity with scripting concepts

• Work independently and apply analytical skills
• Manage a variety of simultaneous work projects to meet established timetables and commitments while addressing day to day break fix issues.
• Establish and maintain effective working relationships with those contacted in the course of the work, including officials and managers, representatives of other governmental agencies, community, business and other groups, employees, and the public.
• Develop and implement communications strategies and plans for keeping employees and managers informed.
• Effectively communicate, both orally and in writing, including making presentations of findings, recommendations, and policies orally or in writing to Board members, department directors, and employees.

Experience and Training Guidelines: Any combination of experience and training that would likely provide the required knowledge and abilities is qualifying. A typical way to obtain the knowledge and abilities would be:

EDUCATION / EXPERIENCE

An Associates or two years coursework in Computer Science, Information Technology, System Administration, or a closely related field, or equivalent work experience (on a year for year basis) required. Proven work experience in IT with 1 year working in a helpdesk environment.

Physical and Working Conditions

The physical and mental demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential job functions.

Environment: Work is performed in a typical office setting with exposure to computer screens and at public events (fairs, meeting rooms, farmers’ markets, etc.) with moderate noise and will require some evening and weekend work. The noise level in the work environment is usually typical of an office environment and public events.

Physical: While performing the duties of this class, employees are regularly required to sit, walk, and stand; talk or hear, in person and by telephone; reach with hands and arms. Employees are occasionally required to walk, and stand for prolonged periods; stoop, bend, kneel and twist; and may lift up to twenty pounds. Employees must be able to communicate in person, in writing, and by telephone with Board members, management, co-workers, vendors, consultants, and with the public in face-to-face, one-on-one, and group settings.

Vision: See in the normal visual range with or without correction; vision sufficient to read computer screens and printed documents; and operate assigned equipment.

Hearing: Hear in the normal audio range with or without correction.

-----SVCE IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER-----

The pay range for this role is:

91,655 - 39,242 USD per year (Sunnyvale)