Software Escalation Engineer

Overview

DigiCert is seeking a Software Escalation Engineer to join our team in Cape Town. This role focuses on diagnosing and resolving highly technical customer issues escalated from the Support organization, with emphasis on DigiCert's TLS, PKI, and certificate services. You will collaborate with Engineering, Product, and Support teams to drive root cause analysis, reproduce issues, validate fixes, and deliver clear guidance to customers. The ideal candidate combines strong troubleshooting, deep knowledge of certificates and cryptography, and excellent communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Own and manage escalations from initial triage through resolution, ensuring timely communication to customers and internal stakeholders.
• Investigate high severity incidents related to DigiCert's TLS/PKI platforms, certificate issuance, revocation, and signing processes.
• Reproduce and debug customer problems in lab/test environments, instrument tools, review logs, and network traces.
• Collaborate with Engineering to craft fixes, verify patches, and implement workarounds.
• Create and maintain knowledge base articles, runbooks, and post-incident reports.
• Provide guidance to Support and Solutions Engineers on complex configuration issues and best practices.
• Participate in on-call rotation as needed.
• Contribute to product improvements by analyzing common customer pain points.
• Maintain high standard of customer communication and empathy; manage customer expectations.

Qualifications

• Strong understanding of TLS, PKI, certificates, cryptography, and public-key infrastructure.
• Experience with certificate tooling such as OpenSSL.
• Proficiency in Linux/Windows environments and scripting (Python, Bash) for tooling.
• Familiarity with certificate management processes (issuance, enrollment, revocation, renewal).
• Excellent troubleshooting and debugging skills; ability to read logs and analyze network traces (TLS handshake, SNI, OCSP).
• Excellent communication skills and ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical audiences.
• 3+ years in customer support engineering, escalation engineering, or equivalent; Bachelor's degree or equivalent.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.