Meet two leaders in Gdansk empowering their teams to create next-generation connectivity solutions for our new data-centric world.
Did you know that Intel Poland is one of the biggest hubs within Intel focusing on connectivity technologies and solutions worldwide? Meet two of the people overseeing the development of these solutions, Engineering Manager Mariusz Linda and Software Engineering Manager Andrzej Jaszcza.
We recently asked Mariusz and Andrzej about the Connectivity Group (CG), its impact, and opportunities for growth in technical or managerial roles.
What does your group do?
Mariusz: Our group is part of the connectivity organization, but our software team is within the networking division. We are dedicated to supporting internet- and cloud-based products. The internet is now the media of choice—over 90% of traffic travels through internet connection. This is a growing market with a lot of opportunity for the company. CG is a great place to be to support Intel’s new data-centric approach. Also, the idea of SmartNIC came to the market and we are working on this.
Andrzej: This is a flexible network interface card that goes beyond simple connectivity. The smart part means that there are many programming possibilities to flexibly change configuration, to divide or remove some functionality from such a card, enabling better utilization of the server and processors to track traffic.
There is a lot of opportunity with connectivity and networking, but the market is not easy. There are big players in the market. Intel would like to be on top of each market, but in networking, there are some beacon companies which are very strong. To compete, we must create solutions for our customers that uniquely meet their requirements. We need to deliver our products faster. We need to improve results, both to the throughput and the latency, and we also want to provide the best-in-class user experience.
Mariusz: Here in Poland, we have over 200 people working in software, firmware for Ethernet, and supporting our customers. We even own all the products that are on the market now, and we are supporting them from the software perspective. Half of the team is working on current technology and half of the team is working on future products.
What is the purpose and impact of these products, solutions, and technologies?
Andrzej: In this new data era, you need to compute better. If we cannot move data fast in the infrastructure, people will not be able to watch their video streams or access their cloud resources as fast as they would like. Recently, we have made huge advancements in both computing and storage efficiency.From the end user perspective, our cloud services are faster and more reliable.
What do you find particularly special about working in your group and at Intel Poland?
Mariusz: We have, I believe, a very good team with a great atmosphere, which keeps our employees working with us for years. I think environment is a big factor here because we know that we are all trying to achieve the
same goal. It does not matter if you work in one team or another, or if you work in Poland or the United States. We are just one big software family, and this helps us focus on both short-term and long-term strategic goals.Also, we are always thinking about developing our people. Many of the people coming here are not experts in this area. They can learn a lot here in our team. And if we see people have organizational or managerial skills, they can be promoted as the organization is growing.
I think every organization has its own culture, and our culture is very focused not only on the work, but also on having fun together and liking the people we work with.
Andrzej: There is also another important factor that makes our company different from other companies with their own local market—we shape the technology of the future. It is a fact.
What excites me about working for Intel is that the products I am working on will be present everywhere, in every important technological advancement, in years to come. Our products are present in the cloud, storage and enterprise data center platforms. One of our products is a part of a system-on-chip solution for 5G base stations which will be deployed by major telecommunications providers around the world. We're working with the largest telco service providers globally, and we expect to see a big 5G deployment in the next few years. Our Ethernet will likely be used in most of this deployment.
What makes for the ideal CG job candidate?
Andrzej: We are hiring software engineers, both for development and the validation teams. We are also looking for programmers to work in the validation teams. Both college graduates that have basic computer science or related technical education, and more experienced people can be a good fit for our teams. With experienced professionals, we look for skillsets in networking, ethernet drivers, and switch API. A working knowledge of C, C++, and some experience with programing under Linux systems is helpful.
Besides engineers, we also look for people who can play other roles, be they technical roles like software architect and product architect, or project management roles like software project manager and overall product manager.
Interested in opportunities at Intel Poland? Check out available openings here.
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