Common Job Titles and Their Functions in a 10-Person MSP: The Juggling Act

Running a 10-person MSP feels like a high-stakes circus sometimes—everyone’s got their role, but most people are walking that tightrope between one or two other jobs. So, if you’re wondering, “Who does what around here?”—you’re not alone. Here’s a breakdown of the key roles in a small MSP, along with their top three daily duties. Spoiler alert: Most of these people do more than one job, and sometimes the “CEO” is just a fancy title for “The person who does everything no one else wants to do.”

CEO / Owner

This is you, the wearer of many hats. Depending on how small your MSP is, you might be in charge of Sales, Marketing, HR, and general company sanity. Here’s what your day might look like:

• Top 3 Duties:

1. Putting out fires (both figurative and sometimes literal).
2. Answering the question, “Can you just approve this real quick?” multiple times a day.
3. Trying to grow the business while everyone else asks, “But what about today?”

Service Manager

This person is the glue holding your techs together (and also possibly the company). Their main job? Making sure tickets are handled and customers are happy.

• Top 3 Duties:

1. Figuring out why the high-priority ticket is still open after three days.
2. Taking customer calls that start with, “I don’t understand why this is still broken.”
3. Attempting to create a schedule that makes everyone happy. Spoiler: It never works.

Level 1 Technician

These are your frontline techs. They handle the “easy” stuff, which always seems to turn into something not-so-easy by 10 AM.

• Top 3 Duties:

1. Resetting passwords for the 10th time.
2. Explaining to customers why turning the computer off and on again does actually fix things.
3. Escalating tickets to Level 2 while sighing deeply.

Level 2 Technician

This person is like a Level 1 tech but with more battle scars and a slightly higher tolerance for nonsense.

• Top 3 Duties:

1. Cleaning up whatever mess Level 1 couldn’t fix.
2. Trying to decipher the mysterious error message no one’s ever seen before.
3. Being told, “It’s urgent!” for the 12th time today.

Level 3 Technician / Engineer

Your resident genius. This is the person you throw at big problems and pray they fix it before anyone notices.

• Top 3 Duties:

1. Solving the ‘unsolvable’ issues that everyone else gave up on.
2. Designing projects and infrastructure, preferably while not being asked 12 questions mid-sentence.
3. Explaining to the CEO why you need to spend that much money on new hardware.

Sales & Marketing (a.k.a. the CEO, Again)

In a 10-person MSP, this might still be the CEO. When not putting out fires, you’re probably trying to land more clients and handle marketing campaigns.

• Top 3 Duties:

1. Crafting emails that sound helpful but also make the recipient feel like they’re missing out on a golden opportunity.
2. Staring at your marketing automation tool, pretending you know how it works.
3. Wishing you had enough budget to hire someone to do this for you.

Account Manager

Once you’ve landed clients, someone has to keep them happy (and hopefully upsell them on a few new services while you’re at it). In a small MSP, this role often overlaps with Sales or the Service Manager.

• Top 3 Duties:

1. Smiling and nodding through customer complaints while mentally prepping the “here’s what we can do” speech.
2. Tracking when contracts are up for renewal (and hoping clients don’t ask for discounts).
3. Organizing Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) that sound more exciting than they are.

Office Manager / Admin Assistant

If you’re lucky enough to have one, this person keeps things running. If not, it’s probably—you guessed it—you again.

• Top 3 Duties:

1. Ensuring that invoices go out and are paid (eventually).
2. Ordering supplies, from coffee to that one cable that mysteriously disappeared.
3. Politely telling vendors, “We’re not interested in switching right now.”

Human Resources (aka, “Oh wait, that’s me too”)

Let’s face it, in a smaller MSP, HR duties get spread around. This might fall under the CEO or the Office Manager.

• Top 3 Duties:

1. Making sure everyone signed their employee agreements.
2. Handling time-off requests (and trying not to sigh too loudly when they all fall on the same week).
3. Googling “How to fire someone without getting sued.”

Bookkeeper / Accountant

Money in, money out—it’s a critical job. Even if it’s outsourced, someone’s got to watch the numbers.

• Top 3 Duties:

1. Keeping an eye on cash flow and pretending QuickBooks makes sense.
2. Explaining to the CEO why that expense shouldn’t have been categorized as ‘miscellaneous.’
3. Making sure vendors get paid on time (or just late enough that no one yells).