EST Leadership Team
Phil Robb
Head of Ericsson Software Technology
Phil is the Head of Ericsson Software Technology (EST) and General Manager of Ericsson Software Technology USA. He leads the EST development efforts in cloud, containers, and other NFVI technologies.
Prior to EST, Phil was the V.P. of Operations for the Networking Projects at the Linux Foundation including ONAP, CNTT, and ORAN among others. In that role, Phil led a team of technical staff who oversaw community software development based on DevOps and open source best practices. Prior to the Linux Foundation, Phil spent 12 years with Hewlett Packard working on Linux and Open Source starting in 2001. There, Phil formed and led HP’s Open Source Program Office responsible for open source strategy, tools, processes, and investments as HP transitioned from Unix to Linux in the Enterprise Server market.
Jan Melen
GM Ericsson Software Tech Finland AB
Jan joined Ericsson Software Technology in 2022 as a member of the leadership team and heading operational unit in Finland. He is also a General Manager of subsidiary in Finland. Jan works together with the cloud-native platform development stakeholders across Ericsson group to address and engage with the Cloud Native Computing Foundation projects in the Open Source.
Jan has more than 25 years’ experience in the telecommunication industry with special focus on Internet routing and protocol technologies and computing platforms. Before hia current role he lead the local research branch on the Cloud technologies. Jan’s journey on the field has been focused on different types of platforms from embedded systems to modern cloud-native platforms. He is well-known on previous EU and Finland scale research programs connected to Edge, Cloud, and Mobile technologies.
Somesh Kumar
Stakeholder Program Manager
Somesh joined Ericsson Software Technology in April 2021 and is doing the role of Stakeholder Program Manager (SPM).
His role involves in working with the Ericsson stakeholders, understanding their requirements and working with the open source teams in EST to fulfill those requirements, simultaneously ensuring that Ericsson’s upstream commitments in the open source communities are also met. In his role as SPM he also has the responsibility of ensuring the competence and professional development of his team.
Prior to joining EST, Somesh had 20+ years of experience within Ericsson doing various roles that included PDU OSS Demand Manager role looking into the allocation of Test Environment as a Service to all the teams, Capex & Opex management for servers used within PDU OSS.
He also Project Managed various projects like Performance Management suite of products (Classic PM, ENIQ Stats & ENIQ Events), Ericsson’s demo environments for customer demos including Mobile World Congress (MWC), and implementing the first Proof of Concept of instantiating Containerized Cloud RAN using the Ericsson Orchestrator suite of products.
Frank Kelly
General Manager Ericsson Software Technology Ireland
Frank joined Ericsson Software Technology in 2018 as a member of the leadership team. He is currently heading one of the operational units within EST and is also General Manager of one of the subcompanies based in Ireland. Day to day Frank works closely with stakeholders across the wider Ericsson Group to address their requirements of contribution to and adoption of open source automation technologies such as ONAP, ORAN and OpenDaylight.
Frank has over 20 years experience in the telecommunications industry starting his career at Motorola in 1999, working as a lead design engineer in core networking before moving to Ericsson in 2007. Frank has served in a variety of technical leadership positions across a number of technology disciplines including hardware and operating systems, analytics and assurance, machine intelligence and self optimising networks. In previous role Frank has also championed the use of innersource across the Ericsson Group.
David Donnelly
Product Development Leader
David is a Product Development Leader in Ericsson Software Technology Ireland (EST) working in the Network Automation area within the company. The role involves line management of staff in the unit and development of these staff and the company’s capability in the open source paradigm.
Prior to that David has extensive management experience in the Network Management space within Ericsson, working as both line and project manager. The role involved technical management of integration and test teams, and more recently looking at the wider software engineering development process’s in Ericsson Network management solutions and how that has adapted over the years as the industry moves to more agile and open systems solutions.
EST Operations Team
Paula Mannion
EST Operations Team
Paula joined Ericsson Software Technology in 2019 and is currently working for the Operations Team helping to ensure efficient day-to-day operations, implementing processes and programs while supporting the requirements of employees and customers.
Before joining Ericsson Software Technology she spent 13 years in Oracle in various roles such as Purchasing, Supply Chain Management, Marketing & Program Management. She tailors her skills from her previous roles to her current role to assist with meeting the operational needs of employees, the company and it's clients.
Sarah Kaivan
Executive Assistant
Sarah Joined Ericsson Software Technology (EST) August 2022 as Executive Assistant. Her role involves supporting Head of Ericsson Software Technology, Phil Robb, employee support and daily administration.
Prior to joining EST Sarah has worked within Ericsson since 2018 on various roles and business areas where she mostly held a position as Assistant, where she supported leadership team and employees within communication and day to day administration.
Janne Latsu
EST Operations Team
Janne joined EST Operations Team in August 2021. His primary role is employee support, assignment administration and daily operations.
Before joining to EST he worked for 21 years in Ericsson in various roles in Finland, Sweden and Denmark. These roles included technical support to operators, education, managing resourcing and finance.
Lisa Folan
EST Operations Team
Lisa joined EST Ops team in June 2022. Her main roles include administration and efficiently and effectively finding solutions to any issues that EST employees may be experiencing. Before joining EST Lisa was studying Global Commerce in the University of Galway and she will continue her studies next year where she hopes to specialize in marketing.