Career Path

Concrete Learning Path (6-12 months) 

 Month 1-2: Containerization 

 

 Docker deep dive 

 Deploy Kamailio/FreeSWITCH in containers 

 Build your own voice lab in Docker Compose 

 

 Month 3-4: Kubernetes 

 

 CKA study and certification 

 Deploy stateful telecom apps on K8s 

 Learn persistent volumes, StatefulSets, load balancing 

 

 Month 5-6: Observability 

 

 Instrument a voice platform with Prometheus 

 Build Grafana dashboards for SIP metrics 

 Set up distributed tracing for call flows 

 

 Month 7-8: Infrastructure-as-Code 

 

 Terraform for multi-cloud voice infrastructure 

 Ansible/Salt for configuration management 

 GitOps workflows 

 

 Month 9-10: Programming 

 

 Python or Go for building automation tools 

 Build APIs that abstract telecom complexity 

 Write operators or controllers for K8s 

 

 Month 11-12: Portfolio Projects 

 

 Auto-scaling SIP proxy based on CPS metrics 

 Multi-region voice infrastructure with failover 

 Internal developer platform for telephony services 

 

 Resume Positioning 

 Reframe your experience: 

 

 "Maintained Avaya PBX" → "Managed high-availability voice infrastructure serving 10K users with 99.99% uptime" 

 "Configured SIP trunks" → "Designed and scaled SIP routing infrastructure handling 500K daily call sessions" 

 "Troubleshot call quality" → "Performance analysis and optimization of real-time media streams, reduced jitter by 40%" 

 

 Red Flags to Avoid 

 Don't: Just add cloud certs without building things - employers can tell 

 Don't: Try to jump straight to architect roles without hands-on modern infrastructure experience 

 Don't: Ignore programming - even infrastructure roles now expect scripting/automation skills 

 Do: Build public proof of your skills (GitHub repos, blog posts about scaling Kamailio on K8s, etc.)