So You Want to Be a Support Analyst at Esri
Hello! My name is Leo and I was recently hired at Esri as a support analyst. I work on the ArcGIS Online team at the headquarters in Redlands but am originally from London. I defended my PhD earlier this year, a hearty document dovetailing human geography, advanced spatial methods, philosophy, social theory, and public health. Before that I was a secondary school geography teacher and have worked hard to keep up on teaching since moving to California in 2019. This blog looks at the role of support analysts in the Esri ecosystem, what they do and how they do it, and ends with a few closing reflections on my own place in that system.
Users Have Technical Issues
Esri has many thousands of users. Government departments, research institutions, disaster response organizations… Chick-fil-A… Each one has their own use cases, applications, workflows, and ideas for how to implement spatial solutions in what they do. There are essentially no limits on the permutations of geospatial decision making. This is exciting for the geographers and GIS-enthusiasts looking to work at Esri, motivated to embed themselves in these networks, and to apply their skills and knowledge to a mission that impacts the world in positive ways.
In the long lens of the theoretically limitless, practical restraints can, and frequently do, emerge in the form of technical issues.
Imagine the following. A wildfire is breaking out in New South Wales, Australia, and the wind is pushing it toward a nearby town. The fire and rescue crews have a well-established procedure for what do to next. It involves satellite- and drone-captured imagery, roving and stationary monitoring technologies, traffic systems management apps ensuring that evacuation routes are maintained, and live-feed maps for broadcast and public safety announcements. It touches many parts of the Esri ecosystem and can spring into action with an automated prompt. Perfect. In theory. The field agents who fly the drones and collect data on the ground can’t get their data running in ArcGIS FieldMaps. Suddenly the neat chain of events is disrupted, meanwhile the fire is racing towards people’s homes.
Fortunately, there is recourse. The fire department picks up the phone and rings Esri. Within seconds, they’re talking to the right person. They get to the bottom of the issue, are provided with a clear set of instructions, and a documented walkthrough on what to do if this happens again, and wished the best of luck. Disaster averted. Literally.
The Support Analyst
The “right person” who they spoke to is a support analyst. This was a routine call for them. On the same day, they also dealt with a faulty command-line job scheduler on a Linux server for a real estate company in Denver, discussed credit usage for storing geotagged images of endangered species with National Geographic, fixed an ArcGIS Story Map for a professor at Harvard who needed it for an earth sciences lecture, and helped the Department of Public Health for Los Angeles County reconfigure their ArcGIS Dashboard to refresh with new data every 30 minutes. The support analyst also attended an in-person training course on Python scripts for GIS, wrote an Esri Community blog post on a new workflow for performing kernel density analysis, and tested a new release weeks before users were able to access it. When they returned the next morning, there was a thank-you email from the commissioner of the New South Wales fire brigade. All in a day’s work.
Whilst not every case will be as immediately life-threatening as that example, support analysts regularly encounter users whose work with Esri products has huge bearing. It may affect hundreds of thousands of people, or just one. Either way, the guarantee of high-level support services is a critical factor in GIS users’ decisions to become Esri customers. They rely on analysts at Esri to deliver innovative, yet reliable, solutions. When the phone rings, no analyst is quite sure what the issue is going to be. But they can be certain of the response: with the background, training, and resources which are available, they know they can troubleshoot the problem, identify a solution, and articulate it to the customer quickly and dependably.
First Week on the Job
Support services is the biggest hiring department at Esri, particularly of GIS graduates and others who have experience with GIS or IT. This is great, as it means that analysts will start the job in a cohort, sometimes as big as 15 at a time. The groups are mixed, with some straight out of academia like myself), others internal transfers from other departments, others still from related fields or other tech firms.
My ArcGIS Online intake cohort (from left to right): Darla, Olivia, me, and Jacob. The globe represents the size of our ambitions!
The first few weeks as a support analyst comprise an intensive training course, preparing new hires for the role. This starts with a full rundown of the structure and inner workings of the company. For new analysts who may have worked with Esri products in the past, this is elucidatory, bringing everything into a new focus.
Then there is a customer service bootcamp, because at its core, the role is a user-facing one wherein analysts will be interacting with GIS practitioners every single day. This includes mock cases, hackathons, and phone and email training.
Following customer service bootcamp, there are several weeks of technical training, beginning with fundamental principles of human computer interaction and information technology, before splitting off into different areas. Analysts may find themselves, depending on their background, in one of several units including: ArcGIS Online; ArcGIS Desktop; ArcGIS Enterprise; SDK; and regulated industries. Each one has its own training plan, consisting of moderated discussions, practice case work, labs, web-courses, and one-on-one tutelage.
By these weeks’ end, analysts have a robust base from which to provide support, capable of navigating the vast array of information available, and narrowing in on the key which will solve the problem.
A Day in the Life of an Analyst
Day-to-day, an analyst can expect to receive new cases – like the examples outlined prior – daily. These arrive either by email or by phone. Standard support analysts are “on call” for three hours a day, during which they can expect incoming calls. Being on call is exciting, and suits people who can think on their feet, multitask, work quickly, and communicate effectively.
Straight after the call, they get to work. Having gotten to the core of the issue with the customer, analysts start researching and testing. Sometimes this takes a few minutes, using a proven workflow, in other cases it might take weeks. Critical evaluation is key here: how can you apply knowledge and resources most effectively to the problem and produce a viable solution. Sometimes the answer is there, it’s just hiding somewhere deep, tucked away somewhere unexpected. Other times, it’s completely new. Where there is no precedent, analysts must set one. This is thrilling; working at the frontier of technology and GI-science to create something which will set the course of the application or workflow, maybe having a global impact. Analysts who enjoy writing and sharing new knowledge should excel here.
When a solution is identified – one way or another – it’s time to get back to the user. Explaining the solution takes careful consideration, tailoring the register to match the person on the other end of the line. For this, it’s important to understand who the user is. Support analysts have to be “people people,” in more ways than one. The user might be very well-versed in IT but have no idea what GIS stands for. Or vice-versa: a complete GIS whiz with no computer science chops. Analysts must figure out who they’re talking to and how to talk to them, otherwise neither will understand. If the user is happy, all that’s left is to close the case and see what the next one might hold.
Why Support Services?
There are a few reasons why the support analyst job is so popular. Firstly, it’s one of the few graduate-level jobs at Esri where you are interacting with users. And not just one or two. Analysts should expect to have direct contact with hundreds of users in their first year, from a huge array of industries and applied instances. That in itself is unique – to be confronted with the full smorgasbord of Esri customers so early on.
Secondly, the role is almost like a choose-your-own-adventure. An analyst might choose to stay broad, adopting an overview of a technology or group, or dive really deep into something specific, becoming a subject matter expert on an ArcGIS Enterprise extension, or something really niche in ArcGIS Location Platforms. Following that, the options for progression beyond the analyst role are extensive, and something to think about when or even before starting. Or, they might choose to stay technically oriented, to focus on management and leadership, to channel your energy for a specific feature into working on a product team. Or something else completely. At Esri, the scope for analysts is wide and aspirational, thanks to the skills and experience with they start building on day one.
The actual job is also different every day. You find yourself working on new things, or on the same things in new ways, at the behest of the user’s experience. It’s akin to lightweight consulting. Analysts use the same toolkit, the same set of skills, to approach problems in countless contexts and with a grand diversity of stakeholders.
Next, there is a strong culture of collaboration in support services. This surfaces naturally as you work alongside different analysts in your team or unit to resolve different issues and is aided by the structure of meetings and scheduled collaborations set up to foster group efforts. There is a dense network of expertise and subject matter specialism, which you are encouraged to both contribute to and benefit from. At the very least, analysts are part of an organization of (literally thousands of) like-minded individuals, almost all of whom will be more than happy to pitch in to get your case over the line.
Lastly is the potential to expand your knowledge on the job. Just by solving problems, you are strengthening associations in your knowledge base, which is a great start. More formally though, you have access to, and are even expected to make use of(!), the Esri Academy. This is a massive repository of training courses, synchronous, asynchronous, online, and in-person. I would encourage potential applicants to browse https://www.esri.com/training.com, see for yourself the range of courses and get excited about new things you can learn, practice, and deploy as a working GIS professional. Every course that you finish will directly result in your ability to provide the highest quality support and shape your reputation as an expert in whatever you want to be.
My Route to Being a Support Analyst
Finally, a little word about myself, to provide some context for my reflections on the support analyst role. I started working with Esri products a decade ago, when I volunteered with the Royal Geographical Society as an Esri UK Ambassador during my Geography undergraduate degree. I went into schools to demo Esri software, showcase new developments in the field, and generally enthuse my passion for geography. It was a fantastic opportunity, which I came to naturally as someone who loves getting enthusiastic for teaching, mapping, and geography-ing.
I continued this into my postgraduate study, getting really into social theory, participatory science, and the renewed disciplinary emphasis on space and place during my master’s degree. After graduating, I spent a year teaching geography at an amazing school in North London. I found real zeal amongst my digital-native students when it came to GIS and loved working with them to solve classroom problems and distil their GCSE and A-Level fieldwork into different units of analysis.
After teaching for a year, I entered my PhD program in the US. It worked out to be good timing for me, interested in continuing to experiment with public participatory GIS (PPGIS) using a whole host of (academically licensed) Esri products to redistribute expertise across new networks of knowledge production. The whole time I was communicating. Students I was teaching; researchers I was collaborating with; participants in my own studies; city, county, state, and national officials; and leading figures in geography and the spatial sciences. I loved working at the cutting edge of a field that I was helping to define, expanding the disciplines of geography, public health, and the spatial sciences through my work on the twin frameworks of wicked problems and clumsy solutions.
Presenting some PhD research at the LA Geospatial Summit in February 2024. A great place to meet those like-minded individuals.
I’m really looking forward to continuing to expand and reformulate spatial knowledge in my role as a support analyst. It’s been tremendously inspiring to see first-hand what Esri users are working on, as well as how their workflows are impacted by the materiality of technical and processual challenges.
I would welcome any questions in the comments about any and all of the above. Interview tips. GIS for doctoral research. Teaching geography.
Fine me on LinkedIn, catch me on the YPN community pages, making lunchbreak maps for #MapPromptMonday, or having a cup of tea in the Esri Café!