A Day In The Life: What does a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer do?


Summary: Because inquiring minds want to know, Milad Aslaner , a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer based in Germany, provides us some insight into what it’s like to be a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer. Enjoy!


Milad AslanerThose who follow my blog posts know that I’m truly in love in what I do. But what is it actually that I do?  Typically, when I’m talking with customers sooner or later they ask “Mr. Aslaner what is a Premier Field Engineer? ” or “What does your day-to-day job look like? ”  This is why I decided to give you some insights about my role in this blog post.

Let’s start with the basics: we, as Premier Field Engineers (PFE for short), are part of Microsoft’s Global Business Support group. Each of us are specialized in a specific technology or even a subsegment of it.  For example, my primary technology is Windows Client, and  I mainly focus on Windows Reliability and Performance. That means I’m a technical expert when it comes to identifying in nanoseconds what’s going on with Windows; how it works under the hood and Windows security features like Mandatory Integrity Control, etc..

We are typically divided into transactional and dedicated PFE’s. Dedicated PFE’s are colleagues who have 1-3 dedicated accounts they’re responsible for and visit frequently. Transactional PFE’s travel around from one customer to the next one, typically changing customers each week.  Recently, we also introduced Hybrid PFE’s which is what I’m doing. Hybrid PFE’s are PFE’s who have typically 1-2 dedicated accounts and travel doing transactional-oriented work the rest of the time.

But what is it that we do when we are onsite? We do mainly proactive work which means that we help customers identify ways to improve their IT landscape by delivering several different types of offerings such as workshops, chalk talks, health checks and risk assessments. A smaller portion of our work reactive in nature. This means that once the customer has a critical issue in their infrastructure or when they need a subject-matter-expert on a particular case that we jump in and support them.Milad Aslaner speaking at TechReady

Besides working with our valuable customers we are also a lot involved in a bunch of projects like developing new training opportunities, working on “v.Next” projects, blogging on TechNet/MSDN, tweeting about the latest update to our technologies, and, under the umbrella of our “Heroes to Mentors” strategy, we participate in internal and external conferences like TechEd, Premier Nights etc.

In my particular case, I’m a regular speaker at events such as TechEd, TechReady (a Microsoft internal version of TechEd) and Premier Events. I also deliver workshops like Windows 8 New Features and Upgrade as an open delivery which means that usually we invite up to 12 customers to our offices and deliver it there.  Besides that, I’m a regular blogger on MSPFE and the German Microsoft Services Blog. Lastly, I’m one of the world-wide Community subject matter experts for Windows Client Deployment, Program Lead for German community readiness in Client Deployment Field, and in a team of world-wide leads for specific Chalk Talks and other Services.

I hope I was able to give you some insights about our every day job and what it’s like to be a PFE ( and btw, PFE is recruiting! If you’re interested check out our careers website ).  PFE Rocks!


Written by Milad Aslaner; Posted by Frank Battiston, MSPFE Editor