NSP Network Orchestration Solution Architect / Network Service Designer

‘The cloud’ is very rapidly having an impact on most of the activities of the Network Infrastructure (NI) business group, and the IP Networking (IPN) business division has expanded its portfolio in datacenter networking and switching. In parallel, the datacenter IT industry continues to introduce new technologies for the management and orchestration of datacenter software and hardware infrastructure, with Kubernetes, containers, and other technologies setting de facto standards. 5G and fiber access, combined with new public or private cloud-based applications, together drive a strong need to combine networking and IT skills to tap into these new opportunities.

The Virtual Networks Orchestration (VNO) activity has been created within the NI IPN Network Automation business unit to address the need for massive automation of the entire life cycle of datacenter networks and the associated network functions deployed using modern containerized infrastructure. The team brings the best of container orchestration, domain controllers, and network operating systems together, delivering upon a set of products and productized solutions through state-of-the-art cloud native technologies and tools available in the cloud-native ecosystem.

The VNO team is hiring a Solution Architect / Network ServiceDesigner, with a passion for building enterprise-grade, cloud-native software applications using best practices both in terms of technology choice as well as software architecture principles. Starting from deployment strategies on Kubernetes, adherence to 3GPP, IETF, and other formal standards and up to implementation of customer specific use cases and integration with 3rd party systems (OSS, BSS), you will be in the driver seat of building Orchestration products and solutions, and datacenter network automation stacks.

As software and network architect you will be an integral part of the VNO R&D team (belonging to Nokia’s NI IPN Network Automation BU), based in Antwerp, working on Orchestration products and solutions for management of the networking services and infrastructure. The wider VNO team of the NI IPN NA BU you will belong to, is based in Ottawa, India, Turkey, and Antwerp. You will lead the design of VNO’s orchestration solutions as they apply to automation of network designs, and at the same time actively contribute to the VNO product architectures, taking the lead wherever possible and keeping a continuous alignment to the overall product strategy. Beyond the BU borders, you will have the opportunity to collaborate with solution and systems architects in other IP BUs like NSP, FSS, Nuage and IP Routing as well as datacenter software specialists in the Core Network Services business group.

Responsibilities & Competencies

• Contributeto an optimal combination of software and functional architecture at the confluence of 3GPPand IETF standards, cloud-native microservice architectures, containerization, and datacenter networking.
• Fully own and lead the development of the components of VNO’s orchestration product portfolio, and related solutions.
• Focus on target product and solution development and delivery, while retaining sufficient flexibility to own and execute customer proof of concepts and technology demonstrators.
• Lead, steer, and coach software development teams during implementation, making the bridge between the proposed architecture and its implementation across a variety of programming and modeling languages.
• Work with product management on ideation, roadmap definition, impact analysis, effort analysis and prioritization of strategic directions. Own the product planning, architecture, and deliverables with the right level of quality.
• Leveraging the architecture, capabilities, and the positioning of the product, actively contribute to the different phases of the customer engagements for the VNO solution. Deeply engage with customers where relevant, to understand and steer their architecture (Network, OSS, BSS) and use cases in which the VNO solution fits, with proper phasing and reflection upon our own roadmap where applicable.
• Evangelize the VNO’s vision and approach, through standardization (TOSCA, TMF, 3GPP, IETF,etc.) and by dissemination at industry fora and events.

Skills and Qualifications

• Proven insight into IT and telecom infrastructure, market, and technology. You are familiar with and can quickly build upon the concepts and architectures of private and public clouds (including compute, storage, networking, security, authentication and authorization, resiliency etc.), especially from an application or platform development and delivery perspective.
• 5-10 years of experience as a software developer
• Hands-on experience in introducing and tailoring Agile and DevOps methodologies to the needs of software development teams.
• Experience translating standards like ETSI, 3GPP, IETF, ITU etc. into functioning, compliant software.
• Experience with Software Defined Networking (e.g. Nuage, VMWare, Neutron) and virtualization infrastructures (OpenStack, Kubernetes etc.), their APIs, scripting, modeling, and tools.
• Hands-on experience building software applications using SOLID design principles using a variety of object oriented or functional programming languages (e.g. C#, Java, NodeJS, Python etc).
• Practical experience with Containers (Docker) – creating/building/running
• Detailed understanding of Kubernetes internals
• Experience in microservice architectures and cloud-native application development.
• Experience with (RESTful) APIs (API design and implementation of producers/services and consumers/clients). Good knowledge of API Specification languages and tooling (e.g. OpenAPI)
• In-depth knowledge of IP networking and protocols, and its evolutions into Netconf/YANG, Restconf, Openflow, etc
• Existing experience in Python
• Optional, but highly desirable will be considered the following:
  • Existing experience in Go programing language
  • Experience in JavaScript (Node.js) and .NET
  • Experience with templating languages/engines for general purpose (E.g. Jinja2 Templating, Liquid, …)
  • Experience in DSLs such as YAML, Tosca
  • Experience in developing Helm charts
• Knowledge of JSON and JSONschema
• Capability to quickly apply this knowledge to new languages or modeling paradigms is a plus, next to knowledge about business process modeling and tools.
• Knowledge on how to achieve an optimal combination of strategy and execution
• Display emotional intelligence based on strong interpersonal and communication skills, towards team members and other teams belonging to Nokia or the customer. Capability to clearly present and defend proposed approaches as well as the capability to convince stakeholders and adopt their feedback into the project are regarded as essential.
• Be a core team player, coaching where relevant, driving where needed, complementing, and compensating when required.
• Capable of working in a structured way
• Results oriented
• Analytical problem solver
• Self-learning attitude and professional curiosity
• Have a master’s degree or equivalent in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field. A complementing advanced business degree is an asset.