Job Titles
This week, a focus on job titles, licenses, and professional accreditation in telecom.
From Mark van der Hoek, Senior RF Engineer.:
"RF Engineer is a very broad term. It simply means an engineer who works with RF: Radio Frequency stuff. Kind of like saying 'mechanic'. Well, what KIND of mechanic? Passenger cars? Diesel engines? Does he only work on transmissions? Big truck transmissions? Or does he specialize in fuel systems? These are all mechanics.
RF engineers may work on designing RF circuits -- the actual hardware. They may design cellular networks. They may design and optimize cellular networks (most will do both -- and I wouldn't hire anyone who hadn't done both unless he were very fresh out of school.) They may work on transport described below, designing microwave networks. They may work on radar systems. They may do all of this at some time in their career. As to kinds of engineers, well, we could go on forever. Let's look at just one today, a transport engineer"
"Transport has to do with getting the phone calls from the cell site back to the switching center (the MTSO, in cellular terms) and from one switching center to another. These may be between different MTSOs in the cellular network (Verizon Los Angeles has perhaps a half dozen or so) or between the MTSO and the landline phone companies. It will involve either microwave or leased lines of some kind. So a transport engineer is focused on this area. He's often an RF engineer, but focused on transport."