DPI Performance Engineer

The DPI Performance Engineer is responsible for monitoring, analyzing, troubleshooting, and optimizing the performance of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) platforms and associated network services.

The role focuses on DPI platform health, application and subscriber traffic behavior, service KPIs/KQIs, capacity and utilization, traffic trends, performance degradation, Root Cause Analysis (RCA), and continuous performance improvement.

The engineer will work closely with Core, IP, Internet Gateway, BNG/UPF, PCRF/PCF, OCS, AAA, Transmission, Planning, Operations, and other relevant technical teams to ensure DPI platforms operate efficiently and support required network capacity, service quality, and customer experience.

Key Responsibilities

1. DPI Performance Monitoring & Analysis

• Monitor and analyze DPI platform performance, traffic behavior, and service KPIs/KQIs.
• Monitor DPI node utilization, CPU, memory, throughput, packets per second (PPS), concurrent sessions, subscriber capacity, and other platform resources.
• Monitor traffic distribution across DPI nodes and identify load imbalance or abnormal utilization.
• Establish and maintain performance baselines for DPI platforms and services.
• Identify performance bottlenecks, capacity constraints, and abnormal platform behavior.
• Monitor KPI thresholds and proactively identify potential performance risks.

2. Traffic & Application Analysis

• Monitor application traffic volumes, traffic classification, and application usage trends.
• Analyze changes in application traffic patterns and identify abnormal or unexpected behavior.
• Monitor unknown, unclassified, or incorrectly classified traffic and support investigation where required.
• Analyze traffic growth, traffic shifts, sudden drops, spikes, and abnormal traffic patterns.
• Analyze service-quality indicators including bandwidth, throughput, connectivity, latency, RTT, packet loss, and other available QoS indicators.
• Correlate DPI traffic behavior with network, service, and subscriber performance where applicable.

3. Performance Reporting & Dashboards

• Prepare and maintain daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual DPI performance reports.
• Develop and maintain DPI performance dashboards, monitoring templates, KPI/KQI views, and management reports.
• Define and maintain performance thresholds, alarms, and alerting mechanisms.
• Provide regular performance summaries highlighting trends, risks, degradation, capacity concerns, and recommended actions.
• Ensure performance reports provide clear technical insights and support management decision-making.

4. Troubleshooting & Root Cause Analysis

• Investigate DPI performance degradation, abnormal utilization, traffic drops, traffic shifts, and service-impacting incidents.
• Perform detailed Root Cause Analysis (RCA) for DPI and service-performance issues.
• Correlate DPI performance with Core, IP, BNG/UPF, Internet Gateway, PCRF/PCF, OCS, AAA, and other network domains.
• Provide technical findings and recommendations for corrective and preventive actions.
• Support incident investigation and troubleshooting during major network or service-impacting events.
• Track recurring performance issues and recommend permanent optimization or corrective solutions.

5. Capacity Management & Planning

• Perform DPI traffic growth, utilization, and capacity trend analysis.
• Monitor available and consumed DPI platform capacity.
• Identify nodes or resources approaching defined capacity thresholds.
• Provide utilization forecasts and capacity recommendations based on historical trends and expected traffic growth.
• Support network planning and expansion activities by providing DPI traffic and capacity forecasts.
• Recommend capacity expansion, traffic redistribution, or optimization actions where required.

6. Performance Optimization

• Identify opportunities to improve DPI platform utilization, traffic distribution, and overall service performance.
• Support DPI configuration optimization and performance-improvement activities.
• Analyze DPI and service performance before and after upgrades, network changes, configuration changes, migrations, or optimization activities.
• Validate the performance impact of implemented changes and identify any degradation or unexpected behavior.
• Recommend optimization actions based on KPI trends, traffic analysis, platform utilization, and service performance.

7. Cross-Functional Coordination

• Coordinate with Core, IP, Internet Gateway, BNG/UPF, PCRF/PCF, OCS, AAA, Transmission, Planning, Operations, and other technical teams during incidents and performance-impacting activities.
• Support change activities, upgrades, migrations, and network expansions from a DPI performance perspective.
• Work with DPI vendors and technical support teams when advanced troubleshooting or platform-level investigation is required.
• Provide technical analysis and performance recommendations to management and relevant stakeholders.

8. Automation & Continuous Improvement

• Automate repetitive performance analysis, reporting, and data-processing activities using Python, SQL, scripting, or other appropriate tools.
• Improve monitoring methodologies, dashboards, reporting templates, and performance-analysis processes.
• Identify opportunities for proactive monitoring and early detection of service or capacity degradation.
• Maintain technical documentation related to KPI definitions, thresholds, performance baselines, and reporting methodologies.

Key Performance Areas

1. DPI Platform Performance

The engineer will monitor and analyze key platform indicators including:

• CPU Utilization
• Memory Utilization
• Throughput (Gbps)
• Packets Per Second (PPS)
• Concurrent Sessions
• Subscriber Capacity
• Node Utilization
• Traffic Distribution
• Resource Utilization
• Platform Availability and Health
• Capacity Thresholds

2. Service & Application Performance

Key service and application indicators include:

• Application Traffic Volume
• Application Classification
• Unknown / Unclassified Traffic
• Application Traffic Distribution
• Traffic Pattern Changes
• Traffic Growth
• Throughput
• Bandwidth Utilization
• Connectivity
• Latency
• Round-Trip Time (RTT)
• Packet Loss
• QoS Indicators
• Service Performance Trends

3. Performance Management

Key performance-management activities include:

• Daily / Weekly / Monthly / Annual Performance Reporting
• Performance Dashboards
• KPI / KQI Monitoring
• Traffic Trend Analysis
• Capacity Planning and Forecasting
• Performance Baseline Management
• Threshold and Alert Management
• Root Cause Analysis
• Performance Optimization
• Post-Change Performance Validation
• Management Performance Summaries
• Corrective and Preventive Action Recommendations

Education Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Telecommunications Engineering, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related technical field.

Experience Requirements

• Typically 3–5+ years of experience in telecom network performance, DPI, packet core, IP networking, service performance management, or a related field.
• Hands-on experience in a telecom operator, ISP, managed services environment, or telecom vendor is preferred.
• Experience working with high-volume subscriber and Internet traffic environments.
• Practical experience in network performance monitoring, KPI analysis, troubleshooting, and Root Cause Analysis.
• Experience in DPI performance and capacity management is highly preferred.

Required Technical Skills

• Strong understanding of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) concepts and DPI platform architecture.
• Strong knowledge of IP networking and TCP/IP protocols.
• Good understanding of Internet traffic behavior, subscriber traffic flows, and application protocols.
• Strong understanding of application identification and traffic-classification mechanisms.
• Experience with network performance monitoring, KPI/KQI analysis, traffic analysis, and troubleshooting.
• Understanding of telecom and ISP network environments, including:
  • BNG
  • PGW / UPF
  • PCRF / PCF
  • OCS
  • AAA
  • Internet Gateway / IGW
  • IP Core
• Understanding of QoS concepts and performance indicators such as throughput, bandwidth, latency, RTT, packet loss, and connectivity.
• Experience with performance dashboards, monitoring systems, and reporting tools.
• Strong troubleshooting and Root Cause Analysis skills.
• Good knowledge of Linux environments and common networking/troubleshooting tools.
• Ability to analyze large datasets and translate performance data into clear technical findings and recommendations.
• Knowledge of SQL and/or Python for data analysis, reporting, and automation is preferred.

Preferred Experience

• Experience within an ISP, telecom operator, mobile operator, or large-scale service-provider environment.
• Experience working with high-volume subscriber and Internet traffic.
• Hands-on experience with DPI platform performance and capacity management.
• Experience analyzing application traffic and traffic-classification performance.
• Experience coordinating with Core, IP, Transmission, Internet Gateway, BNG/UPF, PCRF/PCF, and other network teams.
• Experience in network-performance reporting, capacity forecasting, and optimization.
• Experience supporting DPI upgrades, migrations, configuration changes, or platform expansions.
• Experience working directly with DPI vendors for troubleshooting and performance optimization.
• Experience developing automated performance reports or analytics using Python, SQL, or similar tools.
• Experience with Customer Experience Management (CEM) platforms and Service Quality Management (SQM) solutions.
• Good understanding of CEM concepts, customer/service experience KPIs, KQIs, and use cases.