Packet Core Network Engineer

First, here is a brief summary, Packet Core Network (or PS Core Network) is a part of Mobile Network Architecture responsible for providing data services to mobile users/devices. The most popular data service is “Access to Internet”.

Packet Core Network Engineer is responsible for design, planning, deployment, maintenance, troubleshooting, and optimization of Packet Core Network (sometimes a Packet Core Engineer can focus only on some of the aforementioned roles, and then it can be named accordingly such as Packet Core Planning Engineer, Packet Core Operation Engineer or Packet Core Optimization Engineer).

Second, here are some pointers of what technical knowledge you need to have from my experience:

1) Packet Core Network Architecture and Protocols:
Knowledge about Mobile Network architecture in general (2G/3G/4G/5G), and especially Packet Core Network architecture (GPRS/EPC/5GC), its network elements’ functions, procedures and protocols in details (this is the most important knowledge to have and it might take some time to gain as there are a lot of stuff to learn but it’s also a lot of fun).

2) Routing and Switching:
As a Packet Core Engineer, you will spend a lot of time working with IP/datacom engineers to establish/troubleshoot IP connectivity of Packet core nodes. So good Routing and Switching knowledge (TCP/IP, VLAN, subnetting, static routing and dynamic routing protocols) will make communication and collaboration more effective and efficient.

3) Network Function Virtualization (NFV):
NFV is nothing but the implementation of “Cloud Computing” technologies in the Telecom field. Nowadays, the use of dedicated Packet Core appliances is fading in favour of deploying Packet Core nodes over cloud infrastructure as it brings superior flexibility/reliability advantages. Such knowledge is necessary in scenarios where Packet Core Engineers are responsible for the management and deployment of NFV infrastructure, or they are heavily involved in collaborating with other engineers who do. (more about NFV in a follow-up post).

4) Some Extra knowledge is a plus:
As a Packet Core Engineer, you will spend a lot of time preparing change/configuration scripts and solutions or troubleshoot network issues, so knowledge about basic Linux commands, searching/editing using Regular Expressions (RegExp), tracing tools (such as tcpdump and Wireshark) will make your life much easier.