A former AT&T employee is changing the way engineers find work online

There are a few decisions that truly redefined my life and the way I see things. Starting to work remotely was one of those. More and more people and companies are embracing remote work. Technology has enabled us to manage small to large teams online without having to meet everyone in a physical office. Technology has also enabled us to find more work online and today there are tons of options for where people can find remote or freelance work online.

Recently I got the chance to talk a little bit with the creator of FieldEngineer, a platform that enables engineers to work online and connects big telecommunication companies with qualified workforce.  Today, his website gathers more than 15,000 engineers from 137 countries. Moreover, as of April 2017, 4,500 jobs from 45 different companies have already been completed on the platform, proving that it works and at the same time, it is effective for both, the engineers and the companies.

There may be some of you who don’t know what I am talking about, therefore, let’s shed some light upon this platform and why do I think it makes a great step towards progress in freelancing.

What is Field Engineer?

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The Field Engineer platform helps companies delivering telecommunications services, including communications service providers (CSPs), hardware manufacturers, value-added resellers (VARs), managed service providers (MSPs) and retail chains, to find the right field engineer when they need it and ensure that work is completed within their standards. With Field Engineer, they can better handle job backlogs and business expansion to locations where field resources aren’t available

Since the dawn of civilization, humanity tried to constantly adapt to the environment and create new ways of taming it. Technology helped us thrive and develop as a society but it also helped us become more effective in everything we do. As time passed, we’ve learned to build better tools, better houses, and better communication technologies. Now, a few decades since the Internet was introduced to the masses, things seem to move faster than ever.

One of the things that had been changed by the communication technologies of today was the way we work. More and more professionals are able now to work from home or remote locations and thus, be more effective at what they are doing. Moreover, the companies are not limited to the labor they find locally, as they have access nowadays to an entire world of highly skilled professionals.

„Through my 20 years in telecom, I’ve seen how big of a disconnect there is – between the field engineers trying to find meaningful work and the frustrated service providers who know there is talent out there but don’t have a way to find it quickly or efficiently. This is why we’ve invented a new field workforce model for the telecommunications industry” Malik said in a recent interview.

As a former AT&T employee, a serial entrepreneur, and a computer engineering graduate, he knows what he is saying. He knows how hard is to find remote jobs and how hard it is to come in contact with employers and peers. They are all scattered across the world, they are using different means of communications, different freelancing platforms etc. Field Engineers fills the gap that exists between these parties and lessens the interactions between them.

What Field Engineer is good for?

Basically, Field Engineer connects telecom companies – the employers – with professional engineers – the hired workforce – through its platform. We are talking about a platform that has been built to understand the needs of both these parties, that has a global presence and a real-time tracking feature with rapid AI matching. Let’s summarize the platform’s benefits and how it works:

1. Field Engineer was built in order to help companies and freelance engineers automate the process of jobs offers/searching through smart algorithms. The platform acts as a mediator from when the job was requested and appointed to a specific engineer, up to the moment it is executed.
2. Unlike other freelancing or remote job platforms, Field Engineer manages all legal issues related to these jobs including paperwork, background checks, and liability insurances. Thus, neither the company nor the engineer will have to deal with such issues. They are therefore relieved of administrative and legal burdens.
3. Field Engineer helps the telecom companies in reducing their labor costs by allowing them to hire professional field engineers only when their labor is required. If there is no work to do, the company will not have to pay.
4. You can sign up on Field Engineer for free. However, the website takes a service commission for every completed order. There are premium services available as well, for companies who want to use a more comprehensive and accurate management service for their projects. In such cases, a premium commission will be charged for every new order that has been completed successfully.
5. The platform is new but it develops constantly. According to their own expectations, by the end of the year, they „hope to have 250 channel partners using the platform, along with 100,000 field engineers across 150 countries”.

Conclusion

Why are platforms like these important? Well, these platforms remove the geographical boundaries and enable field engineers and professionals from other fields to work from home.

More and more professionals are searching today for remote jobs. The internet allowed us to change the way we work, giving us instant access to companies and jobs from all over the world and, in many cases, these jobs can be performed remotely, with fewer costs. Hiring a professional for specific tasks and only when their expertise is required, is a great way to reduce costs for a company and maybe, this is the main reason why platforms like Field Engineers are popular in 2017.