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UW-IT is the central IT organization for the University of Washington, providing critical technology support to all three campuses, UW medical centers and global research operations. UW-IT collaborates with University partners to advance teaching, learning, innovation and discovery at the UW.  IT Infrastructure Services within UW-IT is responsible for major infrastructure services, including Data Centers, Data Networks (wired and wireless), Identity and Access Management, Infrastructure Tools, Servers and Storage, and Phones and Voice.

The Telecommunications Engineer position in the Information Technology Infrastructure/Information Technology Operations (ITI/ITO) division of UW-Information Technology (UW-IT) focuses on the operations, management, and evaluation of an enterprise telecommunication system for the University consisting of over 30,000 endpoints.

Unified communications (UC) comprise the integration of real-time voice and/or data communication services such as instant messaging (chat), presence information, telephony services (including TDM, analog and IP telephony), call control and speech recognition with non-real-time communication services such as unified messaging (integrated voicemail, e-mail, text messaging, and fax). UC is not a single product, but a set of products that provide a consistent user experience across multiple devices and media types. UC also refers to the trend of offering process integration, i.e. to simplify and integrate all forms of communication services to optimize UW business processes and reduce the response time, manage flows, and eliminate redundant device and media dependencies.

Telecommunications Engineers are responsible for the development, operations, maintenance, and support of an advanced communications network environment for the University. Successful engineers must identify and qualify needs, either as requested by UW-IT management on behalf of UW units, or as ongoing monitoring of existing systems that may require the design and development of solutions for the requested services.

As subject matter experts, Telecommunications Engineers provide consultation to users and system managers by adapting leading edge technologies to fulfill the needs and requirements of each project, providing careful evaluation while simultaneously drawing upon lessons learned from subsequent efforts. In some instances, this may involve the development and revision of software and hardware specific and unique to the voice communications infrastructure at the university.

The incumbent must provide priority-zero (highest priority) day-to-day operations, maintenance, troubleshooting, and support for a highly advanced unified communications platform that integrates multivendor systems using an Avaya Aura communications core within a distributed, highly-resilient, clustered, hyperconverged Nutanix infrastructure. In some cases, this will require the creation and/or modification of UW-specific configurations, which may include software development including the use of APIs, distributed server backends and web-based client portals. In all cases, it requires thorough evaluation, adaptation, and integration of previously existing software and hardware components and systems that support research, teaching, and administrative staff.

The nature of advanced telecommunications systems is that they are rarely (never) “plug and play” without significant investments in analysis and experimental system integration. In some cases, this position will participate in joint study projects with data and telecommunications vendors aimed at developing improved academic telecommunications solutions.

A Telecommunications Engineer's focus is with voice applications and infrastructure, voice protocols, network protocols, and operational activities.  The goal is to provide the university with a highly available, highly reliable, easy to use telecommunications environment that appears seamlessly integrated for our customers.

Strong understanding of the following:

Telephony concepts:  VoIP, SIP (RFC3261 and other related RFCs), faxing (including T38), ISDN-PRI, call routing, use of tracing tools to analyze SIP messages
Networking concepts: Network switching, routing, conceptual framework of the OSI model, QoS, network analysis tools such as Wireshark
Other concepts:  Databases, hyper-converged infrastructure, scripting and code writing, APIs

Abilities: Strong communications, ability to write detailed documentation

REQUIREMENTS:

Bachelor’s Degree in communications, engineering, computer science or related field or experience.

Four or more years’ experience operating and supporting complex communication systems or equivalent experience

Adept at identifying and solving complex technical issues

Demonstrated experience in SIP, ISDN, TCP-IP, VoIP QOS, SNMP, RTP/RTCP

Demonstrated experience using network tools such as Wireshark packet analyzer and SIP ladder diagram tools to identify call progress issues

Demonstrated excellent written/oral communication skills, technical documentation skills, user liaison skills, and personal interaction abilities.   

Demonstrated ability to develop creative solutions to complex problems

DESIRED:

Experience with enterprise telecommunications systems in general

Experience in unified communications (integrated voice, data, video, wireless)

Experience with cloud telecommunications platforms, RingCentral, 8x8, Google Voice, Zoom Phone, etc.

Experience with data analysis, database programs, spreadsheets, wiki applications

Experience with Microsoft Suite of tools, SharePoint, Google Suite of tools, and/or AWS services

Experience with Microsoft Server and/or Linux (RHEL or open-source equivalent) Server

Experience with coding and API integration using Python, PHP, Java script, etc.

Experience with Nutanix Hyperconverged virtualization platform

Experience with Orion SolarWinds network monitoring

Experience with IVR, E911, and call center solutions

CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT
A satisfactory outcome from a criminal history verification may be required prior to hire.

Hybrid open office environment

This position is required to report to work remotely when UW suspends operations.