Virtual Fencing Support Specialist

HalterMorrinsvilleFullTime3w ago

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Job description

About the role

You operate at the critical intersection of agricultural operations and advanced technology within Halter's Guidance Operations team. This position serves as the Tier 3 escalation point for virtual fencing inquiries, standing between frontline Tier 2 support and the core Guidance Operations engineering group. The role demands deep diagnostic capability, requiring interpretation of animal behavior data and collar telemetry to distinguish training gaps from configuration errors and genuine system faults. You will split your time between the R&D farm near Morrinsville and the Auckland headquarters, with periodic visits to customer properties to resolve complex issues firsthand. Success is measured by your ability to resolve the hardest cases directly, elevate Tier 2 capability through knowledge transfer, and ensure only truly novel, complex problems reach the engineering team. You will own the quality and accuracy of escalations passed from Tier 2 support to the engineering team, acting as the designated subject matter expert for virtual fencing. Your work will independently investigate and resolve the most complex virtual fencing cases by analyzing animal behavior datasets, collar sensor telemetry, and farm management configurations to determine root cause. You will conduct on-farm diagnostics at customer properties and the internal R&D farm when remote data analysis proves insufficient, physically observing cattle interactions with virtual boundaries and collar cue delivery.

Key facts

Location: Morrinsville

Engagement: Full-time, OnSite

What you'll do

Act as the designated Tier 3 subject matter expert for virtual fencing, owning the quality and accuracy of escalations passed from Tier 2 support to the Guidance Operations engineering team.
Independently investigate and resolve the most complex virtual fencing cases by analyzing animal behavior datasets, collar sensor telemetry, and farm management configurations to determine root cause.
Conduct on-farm diagnostics at customer properties and the internal R&D farm when remote data analysis is insufficient, physically observing cattle interactions with virtual boundaries and collar cue delivery.
Differentiate between animal training deficiencies, paddock setup or configuration errors, and genuine hardware or firmware anomalies, routing only the latter to Guidance Operations with comprehensive evidence packages.
Develop and maintain internal playbooks, diagnostic decision trees, and training modules that empower Tier 2 agents to resolve a higher volume of virtual fencing tickets without escalation.
Collaborate daily with the Customer Experience and Customer Success teams to align on account health, ensuring virtual fencing support strategies integrate with broader customer relationship management.
Partner with the Escalations Specialist team when virtual fencing issues intersect with broader platform bugs, billing disputes, or critical customer retention risks.
Establish a continuous feedback loop with Guidance Operations, surfacing recurring field patterns, systemic root causes, and feature gap requests derived from Tier 3 case trends.
Master the Halter collar hardware architecture, firmware behavior, sound and pulse cue logic, and the grazing algorithms that drive virtual boundary enforcement.
Spend the majority of working hours at the Morrinsville R&D facility (converted calf barn office) to maintain proximity to test herds and hardware, commuting to Auckland HQ approximately twice per month for cross-functional alignment.
Own end-to-end resolution of assigned high-complexity tickets rather than functioning as a simple routing layer, working shoulder-to-shoulder with Guidance Operations engineers on joint fixes.
Translate technical diagnostic findings into clear, actionable communication for farmers and Tier 2 agents, ensuring advice is grounded in practical farm system realities rather than abstract data interpretation.

Requirements

Demonstrated obsession with customer outcomes, prioritizing the farmer's operational success and animal welfare over simple ticket closure metrics.
Proven ability to communicate complex technical concepts simply and respectfully to audiences ranging from farmers to software engineers.
Strong analytical problem-solving instincts: a track record of asking probing questions, interrogating datasets, and persisting past initial hypotheses to find root cause.
Comfort working independently with monitoring, logging, and data visualization tools to diagnose system behavior without step-by-step guidance.
Genuine curiosity spanning animal ethology, pasture-based farm systems, IoT hardware, and the human factors of technology adoption in agriculture.
Rapid learning ability and comfort operating in ambiguous, fast-moving environments where documentation may not yet exist.
Emotional resilience and the capacity to bring structured, calm decision-making to high-pressure, messy situations involving livestock and livelihoods.
Self-directed work ethic with high ownership bias; ability to back independent judgment when acting as the final checkpoint before engineering escalation.
Collaborative mindset suited to a tight-knit team that relies heavily on cross-functional partnership across Support, Onboarding, Guidance Ops, and Product.
Background in customer-facing roles where delivery under pressure was core to the job (agriculture, veterinary, hospitality, retail, or equivalent); specific industry background is secondary to the competencies above.

Nice to have

Direct experience in dairy, beef, or sheep farming systems, particularly rotational grazing management and animal handling.
Veterinary technology, animal science, or agricultural engineering qualifications.
Prior exposure to precision livestock technology, wearable sensors, or farm management software platforms (e.g., Halter, CowManager, Allflex, or similar).
Familiarity with SQL, Python, or business intelligence tools (Looker, Metabase, Tableau) for self-service data exploration.
Experience creating technical documentation, standard operating procedures, or training curricula for support organizations.
Understanding of firmware update pipelines, IoT device provisioning, or embedded systems debugging workflows.

Practical notes

Primary workspace is the Halter R&D farm near Morrinsville, Waikato; the office is a converted calf barn overlooking the test farm.
Required travel to Auckland HQ (Mt Wellington / Penrose area) approximately once or twice per fortnight for team syncs and onboarding collaboration.
Occasional travel to commercial customer farms across New Zealand for on-site diagnostics and farmer support.
Role is fully on-site; no remote or hybrid arrangement is described.
Visa sponsorship eligibility is not mentioned in the source material; candidates should confirm work rights independently.
The team culture emphasizes "out-think, out-work, out-care" with a focus on high performance and meaningful impact in agriculture.
Halter is backed by Tier 1 investors including Founders Fund, Bessemer Venture Partners, BOND, DCVC, Blackbird, Promus Ventures, Peter Beck (Rocket Lab), and Icehouse Ventures.
Application requires a cover letter explaining motivation for the role and company, plus a CV.
The company explicitly encourages applications from candidates who may not meet every listed requirement, citing research on application confidence gaps.