My life at Nokia: Elina Autio

Working at Nokia I learn every day something new. My academic background includes a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering, in which I graduated in November 2019 from the University of Oulu. I was lucky that right after, I started in my current role in Radio Frequency (RF) integration team in the Nokia Oulu site. I applied for this position due to my interest to get more experience of the whole radio unit, not specified parts of it. Also, learning new skills i.e. in programming and combining earlier learned skills in RF measurements made the role interesting for me. As a fresh graduate, I had mostly trainee internships and the majority of them at the Nokia Oulu site. The first two summers I worked as an operator in production and then two more summers in R&D. 

My work in RF integration combines many different areas (Hardware, Software, Layer 1 support, …). I see that my role is an important part of the R&D process now and in the future. In this role, one can see the improvement of our products from the very beginning “connecting different blocks” to fully operative product in the field. In Oulu, we have different teams under the same roof, so collaborating is made very easy. I created different setups and duplicated them in different sites and worked on RF software integration to the radio in an international environment. 

What I value in my team, is that there are people with different career backgrounds which means that everyone has something to bring from their past to the current work. Everyone has been very helpful - in my first days, many of our team members came to present themselves and offered their help whenever needed. What I enjoy the most at Nokia is the strong collaboration with my colleagues, the interesting and meaningful tasks with which improve my skills, the knowledge over different career opportunities and last but not least - the international work environment. I create work-life balance by taking care of physical condition and spending time with beloved ones. Especially doing things related to nature and gardening calms my mind after workdays. In my opinion, taking care of basic things in life helps a lot also at work.

The latest challenge in the working environment has obviously been the COVID-19 period. I have learned that more things can be done remotely than what I expected. My tasks at the heaviest COVID-19 months in Finland couldn’t be handled remotely, but awareness of taking care of hygiene in the labs increased. I felt safe at work, thanks to good instructions which everyone followed cautiously.

I would love to become an expert in my role. I am eager to get a comprehensive understanding of radios. At some point, I’d like to move abroad for a while and to become a project manager - or to lead my own team.