From intern to Network Test Engineer, welcome Laith Shamlawi!
We’re excited to welcome Laith Shamlawi to the Excentis team, first as an intern, and rolled straight into a job! Laith is currently studying at the VUB and hails from Al-ʾUrdunn, better known as Jordan, a country in Western Asia at the crossroads of Asia, Africa and Europe.
Welcome, Laith! Could you introduce yourself to our benevolent reader?
Hi, and thank you very much! Of course. My name is Laith Shamlawi, I hold a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, and I’m currently pursuing my master’s degree in Photonic Engineering at the VUB (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, University of Brussels).
As part of my program, I’m required to do a 2-month internship. During my search on LinkedIn, my passion towards telecommunications along with the desire to combine what I learned during my bachelors and master’s lead me towards Excentis.
We’re happy it did. What lead you to us?
Excentis posted a career opportunity for a Network Test Engineer that looked particularly interesting, so the next logical step was to take a look at the company website. I have to say, I was really impressed! Straight up my alley. Excentis is not only a hub for specialized testing, but they also offer consultancy and training services in the fields of telecommunications and networking, and they boasted some seriously reputable clients including Cisco, Nokia, Samsung, Vodafone or Telenet. Those are sounding references.
A big plus is the main office being in Ghent, which, in my opinion, is one of the most beautiful cities in Belgium. They also have an office in New York, which underlines that Excentis is a global company.
Ghent really is amazing. New York a very close second.
So, you came in as an intern, but also landed a job?
Excentis was actually looking for a full-time colleague to join the company and work on these very interesting, deep projects for big, international clients, but I still needed to complete my internship before I was allowed to graduate. But I thought I’d go for it and apply for the job anyway, since one could easily lead to the other, especially tagging on some intern time to get to know each-other. Win-win.
I was contacted by Excentis to schedule a video call, and during that conversation I explained my position. To my delight, they were more than welcoming for me to start as an intern and then move to full-time employee! I got the papers for my internship in order, signed my contract with Excentis, and was very excited to get started. I’m Jordanian, so I needed a work permit for Belgium, which Excentis also took care of. Fantastic.
Smart moves, Laith! We love that attitude here at Excentis.
What was the scope of your internship, and what will you be doing here as a fully fledged member of the team?
Well, in short: in Europe, back in the early days, to take advantage of the existing cable infrastructure that is already used for TV, some adjustments were made to the network in order to make it possible to use it for internet as well. The main goals of the internship are to get familiar with Hybrid Fibre-Cable (HFC) networks, and perform analysis of RF signals quality transported over a Dense Wavelength Divison Multiplexing (DWDM) Fiber Link.
My job title as an Excentis employee will be a Network Test Engineer, which means mostly I will be testing cable modems that will be used at home to provide internet access through the cable network.
Great to have you with us, Laith!
Any last words you want to share with the world, or potential future interns or colleagues?
If you’re looking for a place to learn and develop, Excentis is your place!
Also looking for a new challenge?
Take a look at our jobs page!
