English Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
What is an "IT" person called who isn't a manager? An information technologist?
I'm writing short biographical articles and beginning each with a summary of their work history. E.g. Sam Jones: serviceman, educator, author. Emily Smith: seamstress, fashion designer.
One person works in "IT" (information technology). She's not an IT manager. She's a "regular" IT worker. So...what word or phrase describes her occupation?
"IT" (Information Technology) Department is often used as a name for departments that were once called Data Processing. This departmemt typically includes a wide variety of computer-related technicians and other professionals. Here are a few examples:
Help Desk personnel (sometimes called "agents"). These are the ones who take "trouble" calls and do "troubleshooting".
Software Developers (including Web Developers)
These used to be called computer programmers.
Hardware installation specialists ( not sure of a typical title; at our company their group is called Client Services). These people install, upgrade and troubleshoot the company's (individual) "desktop" computers and (shared) printers.
Network Analysts and Network Administrators These people manage the "network", incuding deployment of servers, space allocation, performance monitoing, planning network expansion, etc.
Telecommunications Specialists These people plan, order, and sometimes install telephone equipment, software and services, such as Voip, integrated fax/voicemail/email services, teleconferencing, etc. They may also train users to make use of acvanced teleommunication features.
Operations support personnel. These people handle questions from internal clients that have to do with daily operations, for example, "processing exceptions". They may run ad-hoc queries or reports to research such problems. They often have development experience and know the inner workings and relationships of the many programs that do daily processing.
Software Testers These may be people dedicated to testing only; or, developers may test for each other. Technical writers also serve as testers, by finding program glitches while documenting new or updated software.
Database Analysts, Developers and Administrators These people design, implement and support databases. They may be involvef in designing amd running queries.
Management Information (sometimes called "business intelligence") Specialists These people design and maintain methods and tools that extract daily operations data from the business's core systems and "slice and dice" it in various ways to give upper management up-to-date, digestible views of business performance.
Data Security Analysts These people make sure that systems are protected against malicious intruders ("hackers") and that security standards are complied with.
Technical Writers These people write documentation of hardware and software, both for developers (e.g., "specifications", layouts", "procedures", "policies") and for end users (instructional manuals).
The most general answer I can give you is Information systems technician, or just technician/information technician, for short. However, I usually hear them go by IT Technician over in Silicon Valley.
