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My job as a Network Engineer

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  • 30-01-2010 4:57pm
    #1
    rmacm
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,039 ✭✭✭


    Occupation: Network Engineer.

    Qualifications held: BSc in Computer Systems and CCNA.

    Previous Jobs: Localisation Engineer (college work placement), Production Tech in a contact lens factory (summer job).

    Daily/weekly/yearly routine: My routine varies quite a bit depending on what I'm working on. The work is heavily project based so my routine would change depending on my role in what ever project I'm working on. There are two types of projects, customer projects which would be for an operator like O2 or France Telecom and then R&D projects which are internal to the company. This means I could be away from Ireland quite a bit (almost 8 months in 2009).

    Age bracket: Mid twenties.

    General comments: As some backround I work for a company called Ericsson who most people would probably know as one half of Sony Ericsson. Ericsson designs and installs telephone networks for operators around the planet, both mobile and fixed line networks. I work with in the fixed line area of the company and I've been involved in both customer and R&D projects. The customer projects involve installing, upgrading and configuring Ericsson equipment on customer sites. The R&D projects involve testing the software that eventually ends up running this equipment.

    Day In The Life: For an R&D project the days tend to be pretty set affairs, I'd usually work in a team that is testing a particular software feature. There is usually a list of test cases to be executed so this would be divided up between the team members and run over a few weeks. If a test case fails we write bug reports which are sent to design units and they fix the faults. Other than running test cases the days can involve meetings with software designers to discuss faults and proposed solutions and progress meetings with project managers. Most of the above sounds pretty mundane although if you're like me the technical side of the work more than makes up for the mundane end of it. The technology is interesting and the work can be pretty challenging at times too (in a good way).

    Customer projects are a bit more interesting than R&D projects in that no two days tend to be the same. Each day there's something new to be done from getting the equipment running in the first place by installing software on to it, to configuring the equipment so it carries telephone traffic and end users can make phone calls through it. Before we leave the site we also do acceptance tests with the customer before we hand over the new switch to them. This usually involves everything from restarting the switch and making sure it recovers correctly to making different types of phone calls to prove to the customer that what Ericsson has sold them actually does what we said it would do.

    That's about all I've got for the moment, if anyone has any questions feel free to ask on the thread and I'll do my best to reply over the next few days.


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