How Service Providers Can Speed up Time to Market

Okay, let’s say you’re one of the major telco operators in your geographic area, and in order to increase your competitiveness you’re hoping to be the first one to roll out a 5G network for mobile voice and data.

You’ve spent months laying the groundwork and taking pains to get your equipment and protocols in line with the new standards, and you’ve done your market research to determine the level of demand among local users (including adoption of 5G-enabled devices, etc.).

It’s “all steam ahead,” and the only question is how quickly you’ll be able to get your product to market.

This is an exciting position to be in, but it’s also a tenuous one. Why? Because there are a number of factors that can negatively impact your time to market, from unexpected bugs in your system to organizational disconnect and silos.

If your business isn’t optimized for an efficient time to market, it’s possible that delays will mire your new service rollout and cut into your bottom line. Obviously, no one wants that to happen, but what steps can you take to avoid this fate?

The Network Quality Balancing Act

Of course, when we talk about time to market, it should be pretty obvious that we’re interested in more than just speed. After all, if your goal were simply to be the first telco operator offering this particular service, you could roll it out warts-and-all with little in the way of service verification.

Real 5G enthusiasts would flock to your network—and some of them might even stay there! But the vast majority would abandon your network after dealing with the frustration of buggy service for a little while, and they would be disinclined to come back into the fold even after you had sorted out most of the issues.

It would, in short, be costly; any advantage you gained from being the first mover in 5G would be erased by the damage to your reputation and your subscriber base.

What you want in this instance is not to work on speeding up all of your processes without regard to network quality, but to remove bottlenecks and refine processes in a smart, measured way, all with an eye towards quality control.

This means that, rather than scrambling to hasten every aspect of your product rollout, you need to seek out the processes that are the most time consuming and most often associated with delays. Sometimes (perhaps especially for our 5G example), this will be making hardware upgrades in the field, or it might be higher level processes like product design. Often, however, one of the biggest culprits for slowing down time-to-market is network testing.

Again, this might be especially true in our 5G example because the complexities of new protocols, device configurations, and legacy system compatibility will only slow testers down. As it happens, testing is also one of the most straightforward bottlenecks to eliminate.

The Power of Testing Automation

Modern service verification basically encompasses the time to market balancing act in a nutshell: speed and quality are inversely proportioned, and you need to decide what an acceptable tradeoff is. Because effective service verification is laborious and time-consuming for testers, it’s unlikely that even a well-staffed test lab will run through every possible use case before it’s time to go to market—assuming the testing is all done manually.

With automated tests, on the other hand, the calculus is completely different. Rather than running through 6-10 use cases per engineer per day, a given telco operator could easily go through hundreds of test cases without using up the valuable time of engineers who could be working on other issues.

Thus, instead of waiting with bated breath for your new product to undergo service verification, you’re able to ensure high network quality quickly and efficiently without the impossible time crunch.

The effect this can have on time to market is hard to overstate. Sure, testing processes sometimes uncover bugs that result in huge delays, but the quicker those bugs are uncovered the quicker you can resume your rollout as planned.

By contrast, in cases where there are no service shortfalls that should stop you from putting your product out into the world, you gain that certainty more quickly and easily than you otherwise would.

Because, again, the time of engineers who would otherwise be stuck running tests is suddenly freed up for more crucial tasks, you actually increase the resources you have at your disposal for making sure you put out the right product at the right time.

Sustainable Service Verification

Now, it might seem like automated testing is a slightly simplistic answer to the question we posed in the title. Why not automate project management, or streamline code review? It’s a fair question, but it underestimates the cascade effect that automating this critical bottleneck can be.

It’s not just that automated testing saves time for individual product releases by speeding up service verification; it’s not even that it frees up engineer hours that could be put to more efficient use. Rather, it’s that it empowers a new level of agility throughout a given company, all while helping to keep network quality high regardless of where you are in the product lifecycle.

This last effect is a direct result of the fact that automation makes daily regression testing much simpler, more scalable, and more cost effective. How does daily network verification affect speed t market? By creating a solid, ongoing foundation for future work.

Often, new service offerings will get bogged down because they reveal underlying issues with the services that you’re already providing—but if you’re testing those services in a regular, consistent way, this is much less likely to occur. –

When problems do arise, any automation process worth its salt will offer sufficient documentation to make future analysis easy. In this way—with information made available across functions and your network structure constantly being reaffirmed—your company is able to root out silos and build agile, scalable processes.

Product rollouts that were once chaotic and hard to manage are now supported by a strong operational framework that makes every step of the product lifecycle smoother. By reducing potential roadblocks in this way, you accelerate time to market without increasing risk.

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Senior SaaS System Administrator

Technical Skills :
  • Oversee the sysadmin related tasks in our SaaS infrastructure (partially cloud based, partially bare metal)
  • Daily operation and maintenance of the system
  • Analysing and resolving incidents
  • Follow and help improving the incident and change management procedures
  • Design procedures for system troubleshooting and maintenance
  • Incorporating base OS updates and security patches
  • Ensure that systems are safe and secure against cybersecurity threats by raising change requests where potential threat is possible
  • Performing SW updates for the Segron SaaS SW stack (distributed architecture with clusters)
  • Configuring solutions like reverse proxy, firewalls, etc.
  • Building tools to automate procedures & reduce occurrences of errors and improve customer experience
  • Tutoring & coaching newcomers & less senior experts in the team
  • Interworking with the architects and IT admins of Segron to have the SaaS procedures inline with the Segron processes
Non-technical skills:
  • We are looking for a self-motivated, self-improving individual with a highly independent mindset and open and straightforward technical communication to help us to improve and maintain our cloud infrastructure of our powerful end-to-end testing solution ATF (Automated Testing Framework)
  • 3+ years hands-on experience with operation and monitoring of cloud / linux systems
  • 3+ years of hands-on experience with network devops elements: configuring routers, switches, networks
  • Hands-on experience with running live systems with infrastructure as a code mode of operation
  • Specific knowledge which brings direct advantage: Docker, Docker Compose, Grafana, Prometheus, Ansible, Debian Linux OS administration, Security
  • Experience in building and maintaining distributed systems (incl. redundancy, resiliency, load-balancing) is welcome
  • Excellent knowledge of English
Location :
  • Place of work: Bratislava (partially home office possible)
  • Rate: from 30 EUR/hour (possible higher rate, depends on experience)
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CI/CD Senior Developer

Technical Skills :
  • A senior role with a proven expertise in software development, cloud computing, DevOps, and CI/CD
  • Experience in planning, designing, and overseeing the CI/CD strategy and architecture on the level of organization
  • Ability to tailor testing strategies which define and follow the best practices, standards, and policies for the software delivery process
  • Hands-on experience in creating and managing CI/CD pipelines and workflows (PaaC)
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  • Prior hands-on experience working with different CI/CD toolsets (Jenkins, Bitbucket, GitLab, artifactory, Ansible ..)
  • Proficient with DevOps tools API automation capabilities
  • Proficient with Atlassian Tools (BitBucket, Jira, Confluence) and agile SW development methodologies
  • Familiar with cloud patterns and best practices
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  • Comfortable working in cloud DevOps ecosystem
  • Comfortable working with Linux platforms
  • Initial working experience in SW development is an advantage.
Non-technical skills:
  • Effective communication with technical as well and business stakeholders
  • Self-motivating, self-improving mindset
  • Ownership of relevant industry certificates is a plus
Location :
  • Location: Bratislava, Slovakia (with hybrid flexibility)
  • Rate: from 30 EUR/hour (possible higher rate, depends on experience)
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Test Automation Engineer

Job description, responsibilities:

Hardware Testing: Conduct verification and testing of hardware during the HW/SW products
assembly process.
Technical Support: Provide technical assistance during testing activities and troubleshoot any
hardware issues that arise. Support to internal teams and customers by managing priorities and
meeting deadlines.
Equipment Maintenance: Configure and maintain SEGRON laboratory and customer equipment.
Logistics Support: Handle hardware ordering and logistics.
Troubleshooting: Analyze and resolve SEGRON product issues through effective problem-solving.
Ability to troubleshoot and resolve issues that arise during the integration process.
Collaboration: Work with the SEGRON Development Team on product or software issues and assist
the Project Team with planned activities.
Root Cause Analysis: Investigate production errors to identify underlying causes.
Software Deployment: Implement software updates and fixes.
Team Collaboration: Ability to work collaboratively in a team environment, especially in serving global
customers.

Requirements/ Skills:

Networking knowledge: Understanding TCP/IP networks and LAN/WAN configurations. Routing and
switching and related protocols strongly desired.
Hardware Proficiency: Understanding of hardware components, including servers, routers, and
peripherals, to ensure proper assembly and integration. Experience in data centers is a plus.
Travel Abilities: Willing to travel for customer on-site support for hardware installations, migrations,
upgrades, troubleshooting, etc. (few times a year, 3-5 days)
Hand Tools: Proficiency in using hand tools like screwdrivers, pliers, crimpers, and punches for
assembling and disassembling components.
Operating Systems: Knowledge of Linux and Windows. VM experience (Hyper-V, VMWare, Oracle
Virtual Box, Proxmox etc.)
Tools Proficiency: Basic understanding of Ansible.
Telecommunications Experience: Previous experience in the telecom sector is a plus.
Education: Degree in Computer Science/Engineering or equivalent work experience.
Experience: At least 2 years of relevant work experience preferred. A strong desire to continuously
improve skills and knowledge in hardware and software integration, with an openness to feedback and
new ideas. Key is openminded person willing to learn fast in great team.
Communication Skills: Effective oral and written Eng

Others:

• Full time job (employment)
• Onsite work during onboarding period, then it can be 3 days onsite, 2 days home office
Offered salary: from 2000 Euro (depends on seniority and skills level)
Variety of financial benefits
Place of work: Bratislava

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Senior Python Developer

Technical Skills :

  • A solid, experienced SW developer with at least 10 years of experience in active SW development in different programming paradigms
  • Minimum 5 years of professional Python development experience
  • Master or college degree from Computer Science, Mathematics or STEM domain
  • Well educated in design and programming patterns that increase software’s efficiency and readability.
  • Very good analytical and problem solving skills.
  • At least three skills out of the following 4 skills are requested:
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    • Linux
    • Ansible
    • Robot  Framework
  • Comfortable with sysadmin and DevOps skills (Ansible, YML files, Network Programming, IP protocols, designing and developing proxy servers for different protocols – example: streaming, integrating and compiling third party libraries on Linux (Debian))
  • Proficient with Atlassian Tools (BitBucket, Jira, Confluence) thorough understanding of Git and version control best practices
  • Familiar with cloud patterns and best practices
  • Familiar with web performance best practices

Non-technical skills:

  • Ability to work under pressure
  • Ability to abstract and explain your work
  • Strong understanding of Agile development process and experience working in an agile team
  • Strong communication skills with both technical and non-technical stakeholders
Location :
  • Bratislava, Slovakia (with hybrid flexibility)
  • Rate: from 35 EUR/hour (possible higher rate, but depends on experience)
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