My team is responsible for maintaining the open-source components in Ericsson's 5G/4G LTE wireless routers (Ericsson Enterprise Wireless Solutions). We are responsible for the Linux kernel running on the routers, as well as all the open source packages we use in the router's distribution.
This responsibility starts with choosing components to use for a particular application, potentially making changes to the components in order to better suit Ericsson Enterprise Wireless Solution's use-case, and validating the components meet the need we have on the device.
Additionally, we are responsible for fixing any issues that might appear in a particular package- and we contribute those changes upstream so the wider community can benefit from those changes. Recently, for example, we pushed a fix for netfilter's DNAT functionality:
The bug was found by our router testing infrastructure after upgrading the Linux kernel running on the routers. The bug was root-caused and fixed by ourselves, and then pushed upstream. Once the patch was accepted upstream, we backported the fix to the kernel version running on the Ericsson Enterprise Wireless Solutions routers and the DNAT functionality was restored.
I really enjoy the upstream focus of my job and the chance to learn from and share ideas with some super-smart people from around the world.