Employee Spotlight: Meet Nilton Arruda, GraVoc’s IT Support Engineer

My name is Nilton Arruda, and I’m an IT Support Engineer, Level 2, at GraVoc. I grew up in Somerville, MA, and currently reside in Methuen, MA, with my wife and two kids. I’ve been at GraVoc for two years now, and it’s been fun, exciting, and different every single day. As an IT Support Engineer, I look at tickets every day and help our customers. We could be doing simple things like resetting a password or complicated deployments. Every day is different, every day is a challenge, which makes it a lot of fun.

I started Information Technology (IT) in high school. It was one of the vocational trades that we could pick at Somerville High. I did IT my junior and senior year and fell in love with it. I went to a tech school out of high school. Part of graduation requirements was an internship, so I interned at a computer repair shop in Medford, MA, and that’s where it all began.

I was with the shop for five years, then I got into IT sales, servicing ATMs for a big company based out of Atlanta, Georgia. Next, I got into the financial/IT banking industry, which was a lot of fun because I learned a lot about regulatory rules. I did IT with the bank for five years, and now here I am, at GraVoc, through a great course of luck – just a LinkedIn search brought me here!

Everything! Currently, we do a lot of work with Microsoft 365 and the Office suite of apps, as well as all versions of Windows. I also work with a variety of IT Infrastructure including PCs, servers, phones, tablets, iPads, firewalls, and switches.

The family-oriented environment! I come from a big family – immigrant parents, the whole nine yards. Since I’ve come here, I’ve felt like I’ve been at GraVoc for years. Instantly, it felt like this is where I belong! Everyone is open, welcoming, and friendly. It’s fun when everyone knows you by your first name. You feel you’re wanted and important – that’s the best part about working here.

Plus, my team is awesome! We all get along really well. We work hard together and have each other’s backs. We’re cracking jokes and being funny, but when it’s time get serious and get things done, everyone can count on the IT team to get it done!

My favorite customer project – and this is going to sound crazy – is when Forest Hills Cemetery’s server died overnight while I was on-call. We drove to the site, and we were there till 2AM to replace the server to get them up and running for the next morning because the client had a massive audit to complete. I worked hand-in-hand with my team, and I learned so much that night. And, it was great to see how happy and grateful the client was to be able to log on to a computer at 3AM to finish an audit!

Stop, and listen. Let the person that’s calling and reaching out to you for help explain what’s going on. You might know the answer within thirty seconds, but sometimes they [the client] want to vent. Maybe they’re having a bad day too, and this issue is keeping them from being productive. So, just listen and let them say what they need to say. Keep it simple, listen, and then fix the issue.