My life at Nokia: Carlos Castillo

What could mean more adventure? Go more North! That is how I ended up applying to Nokia Oulu. I came from Madrid Spain to Tampere Finland in the summer of 2016. I had my Bachelor in Telecommunications Technologies at University Carlos III of Madrid. When I finished my Bachelor, I had the option to either start my working life or study for a Master’s degree. A friend told me about the amazing education system in the Finnish universities, and he convinced me to start a new adventure at the Tampere University. I felt in love with Finland and wanted to continue the adventure.

I started at Nokia as a prototyping engineer, learning about hardware and software integration and post-silicon validation. After one year, I was offered to experience the role of LPO (Local Product Owner) during the absence of the previous LPO. When the time came to decide if to continue or go back to the previous position - I chose to continue as an LPO, as this role brings a top-level view of the product, and you deal on daily basis with multiple teams worldwide. Since at System-On-Chip (SoC) prototyping work we are verifying the outcome of the chip, we are at the last part before chip gets integrated into the product. The result of our job can be seen when the phone operators start to deploy their new 5G base stations by Nokia.

To lead a team does not mean that you abstract yourself from engineering and technical work. As LPO I need to have knowledge about every aspect, but not necessary to be an expert. Rather more important is to know who the experts are, and how to use their strengths to help the project and the team. The cooperation in Nokia Oulu is functioning well, and everyone is eager to help even though you do not belong to the same project or team. My team plays a big role in making my job much easier.

Continuous self-development is an integral part of Nokia’s culture. I also enjoy the flexible working hours and the empowerment I receive from my management. 

My future goal is to gain experience and knowledge in every aspect of SoC and to become more technical in order to provide a more efficient and meaningful experience to the SoC process and to my team. I want to be involved in the future development of Nokia and promote our products as reliable end-to-end solutions!