INTERVIEW

Yuya Hirano spent his rookie year as an application engineer at CTC. He was transferred to xGN when he reached his fifth year in the workforce. He is currently engaged in the development of a 5G SA pseudo call monitoring system, while polishing his technical and business skills as an engineer.

Interest in supporting social infrastructure at the center.

At CTC (ITOCHU Techno-Solutions), where I joined as a new graduate, I was in charge of developing base station management systems and message delivery management systems for KDDI as an application engineer. After three years of experience in design development, testing, and release, I was assigned to a 5G SA OSS development project that had been ordered by KDDI, where I performed requirement definition, design testing, and other tasks.

In my fifth year with the company, I was assigned to xGN, where I am currently involved in the development of a pseudo call monitoring system.
The 5G SA pseudo call monitoring system is a system for detecting and understanding failures of various network functions (NFs) in the 5G core network by preparing and running scenarios tailored to each monitoring requirement to simulate the operation of each NF.
I am in charge of defining and operating the monitoring requirements, as well as designing, building, and maintaining the equipment required for monitoring and management.

I used to support our client KDDI as an “order taker,” but now I realize the great responsibility and satisfaction of being directly involved as a member of a company that plays a central role in the social infrastructure.

Both as a client and as an in-house developer.

In my work at CTC, I was involved in a wide variety of system development projects, and I felt that I grew in terms of my technical skills and work style by being exposed to a variety of technologies.

However, since coming to xGN, I have been in charge of work that does not have a fixed way of doing things, and I have to start by planning how to proceed on my own. The level of difficulty has increased greatly.

Currently, I am in charge of KDDI’s system development, and while KDDI is the client for xGN, there is also an aspect of in-house development. Rather than starting development based on specifications provided by the customer’s contact person, we truly understand the requirements and specifications of the NF side to be linked, go out to obtain the necessary information ourselves, and proceed with development while considering the specifications and requirements in light of various points.

When in doubt, we have to think in terms of “from whom” and “what kind of information” should we get? There are many experts in the company, but I was not so knowledgeable about core networking because I was in the application development department. In contrast, those from KDDI have a high level of knowledge about core networks. Having the opportunity to ask questions directly to such an expert in a different field has deepened my own understanding of the technology, and I am inspired on a daily basis.

A broad perspective and deep technical skills are what I want to acquire.

With many experts from both KDDI and CTC, xGN has a wide range of specialties, approaches to work, skill sets, values, and backgrounds. I believe that being in this environment has allowed me to acquire not only technical knowledge, but also business skills such as communication and information gathering skills, as well as access to a wide range of values.

Regarding my future career, I would like to continue to grow as an engineer through my work at xGN and through training opportunities available outside the company.
There are excellent engineers around me who have the respective strengths of either KDDI or CTC, and I see how smoothly everyone carries out their projects, so I would like to become an engineer who can smoothly carry out projects with deep technical skills and a broad perspective.