NewStats: 3,261,842 , 8,175,336 topics. Date: Friday, 30 May 2025 at 06:32 PM 1d1v6m

airsaylongcome:


Clarify when you say VoIP USA.

It's a small niche field so I don't expect a ton of opportunities like in programming. But saying you saw only 22 job opening is kinda exaggerated.

Let's nor even talk about the several VoIP forums and communities where many people go to hunt for recruits

Oh you missed this in my post above: "on indeed usa and only 22 jobs came up. Here are the requirements for one of them:"

The search I did was for only "VoIP Engineer"

MindHacker9009:


Oh you missed this in my post above: "on indeed usa and only 22 jobs came up. Here are the requirements for one of them:"

The search I did was for only "VoIP Engineer"

All the jobs in my screen grab are from the US. On Indeed.

"VoIP USA" was a typo

airsaylongcome:


All the jobs in my screen grab are from the US. On Indeed.

"VoIP USA" was a typo

If I type only VoIP then it shows thousands of results. But I restricted it to "VoIP Engineer" only

MindHacker9009:


If I type only VoIP then it shows thousands of results. But I restricted it to "VoIP Engineer" only

900+ jobs with "VoIP Engineer" as search term

airsaylongcome:

900+ jobs with "VoIP Engineer" as search term

You are right. I used quotes before. But VoIP involve direct interaction with physical network hardware infrastructure like: CISCO routers, switches,, session border controllers (SBCs), IP phones, and even analog gateways.
Unlike high level software development where you just need a pc, laptop or phone and connection to the internet.

airsaylongcome:


So the gentle route would be to start by learning FreePBX. Crosstalk Solutions on YT has a 30-part tutorial that I got started with. Ultimately you will need to get your hands dirty by learning Asterisk (the underlying tech used in FreePBX) or Freeswitch (an alternate open source VoIP platform like Asterisk). These two dominate the space. But start easy, play around with FreePBX. Get comfortable with it. Then I can point you to more places to look

Wow! I sincerely appreciate this. I will check out the tutorial and keep you updated on my progress.

MindHacker9009:


You are right. I used quotes before. But VoIP involve direct interaction with physical network hardware infrastructure like: CISCO routers, switches,, session border controllers (SBCs), IP phones, and even analog gateways.
Unlike high level software development where you just need a pc, laptop or phone and connection to the internet.

All of those can be virtualized. The only real hardware there is the analog gateways which many many people no longer use. SBC is software. IP Phones are now replaced with Softphone like Microsip, Baresip or Linphone.

Packet5618:

Wow! I sincerely appreciate this. I will check out the tutorial and keep you updated on my progress.

It needs patience and some "tough skin" cos initially it will be flying over your head. Stay the course. FreePBX recently updated to v17. It's mostly the same but a bit "not-so-straight-forward" to install like v16. Start of with v17 iso. Sometimes figuring out how to install it is part of the learning process. Holla if you hook

I just gave it a bit of thought. You be Networking guy. You should be able to try the "deep" end. Look up The VoIP Guys Asterisk Tutorial on YT. I will say try these guys first. If you feel it's too "over your head" then FreePBX. But if you have handled Network stuff before, go with this second one. German sounding guy in Red shirt

airsaylongcome:

All of those can be vurtialized. The only real hardware there is the analog gateways which many many people no longer use. SBC is software. IP Phones are now replaced with Softphone like Microsip, Baresip or Linphone.

Seems you have gone far in this field of VoIP. Why don't you japa?

MindHacker9009:


Seems you have gone far in this field of VoIP. Why don't you japa?

Lol! You know the cost differential between living here and "there"? I go in and out "once once" to link up with colleagues there for a couple of weeks.

airsaylongcome:


Lol! You know the cost differential between living here and "there"? I go in and out "once once" to link up with colleagues there for a couple of weeks.

But with a salary of $80,000 plus a year, you'll live very comfortably.

MindHacker9009:


But with a salary of $80,000 plus a year, you'll live very comfortably.

Lol...in the US? Thats hand to mouth. Rent alone is 50% of that

airsaylongcome:

Lol...in the US? Thats hand to mouth. Rent alone is 50% of that

True, working remotely from Naija works out better

airsaylongcome:


It needs patience and some "tough skin" cos initially it will be flying over your head. Stay the course. FreePBX recently updated to v17. It's mostly the same but a bit "not-so-straight-forward" to install like v16. Start of with v17 iso. Sometimes figuring out how to install it is part of the learning process. Holla if you hook

I just gave it a bit of thought. You be Networking guy. You should be able to try the "deep" end. Look up The VoIP Guys Asterisk Tutorial on YT. I will say try these guys first. If you feel it's too "over your head" then FreePBX. But if you have handled Network stuff before, go with this second one. German sounding guy in Red shirt

It sounds great, but I have less than two years of networking experience. let's say my networking knowledge is CCNA level and currently do more of Vsat. I will look into everything you said and definitely get in touch. Thanks once again

Does knowing C/C++ and having built Audio app for android and iOS give me an edge if I decide to start learning this?

airsaylongcome:


It's mostly networking. It's niche I know but part of the aim is to get readers interested. An L1 VoIP tech with zero experience will be earning around $17.50/hr for a US business. That's for someone with 0 years of experience and just basic idea about it o. A good self starter would be doing around $30/hr within 3 years with self development. And that's not hard stuff doing crazy UI/UX or CSS stuff o. I literally got my first role after watching a 30-part YouTube tutorial. From zero knowledge o. Someone with some networking background and a bit of drive could be starting at around $20/hr. It's just a bit frustrating having almost no one interested in it. I was on a call with an African-American in the space and the first thing he said was "THANK GOD you are black!" Said he's tired of attending VoIP conferences across the world and being almost the only black person in the room. He's almost always only the black speaker at these conferences.

That's for just tech. Devs could be building VoIP apps for mobile/desktop. Linphone already has any interested dev half the way. Add WebRTC using SIP.js or JSSIP and people here could be playing in that space

Is asm a reference to Assembly language? RISC or CISC?

lexdino:
Does knowing C/C++ and having built Audio app for android and iOS give me an edge if I decide to start learning this?

Asterisk, the biggest open source VoIP software is built with C/C++. You would be playing in higher leagues than where I'm even trying to get people started. Have a look at their repo see what low hanging fruits tickle you. I've come across two Naija guys living in Naija and working for Telnyx (think MTN but on a more massive scale). They were doing something similar. Working from here. Not with Asterisk but with Freeswitch (the second big open source player)

ios and Android experience just makes it even better. If that's your preference, look at Linphone mobile app and SDK.

It's a niche field though, so jobs aren't "in the open". Get into the community. Especially the developer community side of it. I literally just got "something" from a Detroit and British Colombia businesses. Simply from just being in the forums.

Thank you very much for your response.

Unfortunately, experience have made me to become very skeptical of professional developers who give directions to younger developers because I realized a lot have an ulterior motive (gatekeeping) to frustrate these younger developers out of the industry by sending them towards the wrong directions.

I would really appreciate if you could please respond to these other questions I have.
* Could you give me cues on the minimum VoIP programming skills/concept to learn, or if possible, a portfolio project to build, which will serve as proof of knowledge before applying for jobs in this niche?
* How long do you think it takes to master these learnings to a point where employers are willing to pay you money for your work?
* And what sort of tasks / daily activities should one look forward to performing on the job as a VoIP software engineer?

Thank you very much

airsaylongcome:


Asterisk, the biggest open source VoIP software is built with C/C++. You would be playing in higher leagues than where I'm even trying to get people started. Have a look at their repo see what low hanging fruits tickle you. I've come across two Naija guys living in Naija and working for Telnyx (think MTN but on a more massive scale). They were doing something similar. Working from here. Not with Asterisk but with Freeswitch (the second big open source player)

ios and Android experience just makes it even better. If that's your preference, look at Linphone mobile app and SDK.

It's a niche field though, so jobs aren't "in the open". Get into the community. Especially the developer community side of it. I literally just got "something" from a Detroit and British Colombia businesses. Simply from just being in the forums.

airsaylongcome:


Asterisk, the biggest open source VoIP software is built with C/C++. You would be playing in higher leagues than where I'm even trying to get people started. Have a look at their repo see what low hanging fruits tickle you. I've come across two Naija guys living in Naija and working for Telnyx (think MTN but on a more massive scale). They were doing something similar. Working from here. Not with Asterisk but with Freeswitch (the second big open source player)

ios and Android experience just makes it even better. If that's your preference, look at Linphone mobile app and SDK.

It's a niche field though, so jobs aren't "in the open". Get into the community. Especially the developer community side of it. I literally just got "something" from a Detroit and British Colombia businesses. Simply from just being in the forums.

👆I will respond later. I've been up for almost 48 hours straight so I'm not mentally alert now. Nudge me if you haven't gotten a responded in a few days. I'm not in the core software engineering for this field, rather I use the tools to build. But follow up. I will ask the engineers. Something else you could look at with your C/C++ knowledge is Linux drivers. Canonical (makers of Ubuntu) regularly have openings. Look up their career page.

Regarding gate keeping, I totally feel you. I don't subscribe to that nonsense though, and I have been looked at as a fool for being liberal with info and knowledge. For me, I got it "free" and will point folks to sources I got them from. You have to understand that it comes with the terrain sha. Even in work settings. Had an Argentinian colleague who I wish I could break his stupid coconut head. Man used to fence knowledge like his life depends on it. Ask him "how did you get this done". He will answer, "I fixed it". Like WTF, if you nor fix am would I have been asking you? Luckily, I don't mind tearing stuff up to understand them. But it's a whole lot easier if someone explains to you. On the contrary, some people are outright dunces. Nigerian colleague in the same field. This one literally cost me a job. Spent hours (during work o) trying to get him to learn and upskill. He got hired for one-third what I was getting (it's not like I was getting something "big" o). He kept complaining about pay and thought I earned the same as him as per we be Naija together. I would spend hours on Slack and Telegram working customer issues with him. Explaining the basic concepts and trying to get him to make notes. The guy just had Zero capability to learn on his own. And maybe 1% capacity to learn while being taught. I poured myself into him. Baba was just thick skulled. My productivity eventually dropped cos he would drag me into every issue he had to resolve. And foolish me would work it with him to resolution. But it would be in his name. And since the training we were doing was unofficial, it didn't count for me. Las las I had to step. Since then, I no dey drag Nigerians gum body for work. If they like to learn, I point them to resources. If they come back for clarification, book a date on my calendar so higher ups see it. So there's some background to why some more experienced folks "gate-keep". For example I don't mentor. Well it's not like I don't outright mentor, I select. The way we work in Nigeria is a completely different mindset from the West. Sorry if I'm rambling. Like I said, I'm exhausted.

Edit: For portfolio projects, I "steal" from Upwork. So I search for posts in my field. I pick anyone that catches my fancy and go to work on it. On my time and my resources. I'm not bidding o. Just looking at what real life stuff people need done. I've only started doing this. I shared one on LinkedIn and I shock the number of impressions. And sudden new adds from others. I have my location on LinkedIn set to US so I get a different audience than if I had it set to Nigeria. Part of the "foolish" me giving Expo publicly. But I'm exhausted and in the mood to be "foolish"

Edit 2: Have a look here: https://community.asterisk.org/c/development

That category is for folks that write/modify the Asterisk code

To the readers here, I'm going to put a pause on subsequent comments here until the mods restore my most recent post (on a different thread) that the antispam b07 removed. I am sorry if this means I will leave a lot of people hanging. I apologise for that. But I won't have someone tell a narrative based on limited information they have. And when I respond with a rebuttal, my rebuttal gets removed for being "spam". My apologies to everyone who followed this so far.

Thank you

Nice Information here, I think the reason why people don't do niche development in this part of the world is due to the learning curve and quick aim for money, You need to have some pre-Knowledge of some certain technologies before getting comfortable in some niche.

airsaylongcome:
To the readers here, I'm going to put a pause on subsequent comments here until the mods restore my most recent post (on a different thread) that the antispam b07 removed. I am sorry if this means I will leave a lot of people hanging. I apologise for that. But I won't have someone tell a narrative based on limited information they have. And when I respond with a rebuttal, my rebuttal gets removed for being "spam". My apologies to everyone who followed this so far.

Thank you

Thank you.

lexdino:
Thank you very much for your response.

Unfortunately, experience have made me to become very skeptical of professional developers who give directions to younger developers because I realized a lot have an ulterior motive (gatekeeping) to frustrate these younger developers out of the industry by sending them towards the wrong directions.

I would really appreciate if you could please respond to these other questions I have.
* Could you give me cues on the minimum VoIP programming skills/concept to learn, or if possible, a portfolio project to build, which will serve as proof of knowledge before applying for jobs in this niche?
* How long do you think it takes to master these learnings to a point where employers are willing to pay you money for your work?
* And what sort of tasks / daily activities should one look forward to performing on the job as a VoIP software engineer?

Thank you very much

Have a crack: hxxps://www[.]sipwise[.]com/archives/career/telecom-sip-engineer

For those more with a Business Development mindset (Sales):

hxxps://www[.]sipwise[.]com/archives/career/business-development-manager-all-genders

If you're having trouble installing Freepbx 17, use this resource https://sangomakb.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/FP/pages/230326391/FreePBX+17+Installation

olamilarks:
If you're having trouble installing Freepbx 17, use this resource https://sangomakb.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/FP/pages/230326391/FreePBX+17+Installation

You can also work with v16: hxxps://s[.]freepbxdistro[.]org/ISO/SNG7-PBX16-64bit-2306-1[.]iso

V17 is still doing anyhow. Minor differences between between v16 and v17. The YT series uses v15 I think. But the concepts are still the same.

Also look up TangoPBX, a fork of FreePBX. I'm most likely going to go with that splinter as Chris Sherwood don waka go there too. But right now, I'm straddling both.

hxxps://community[.]tangopbx[.]org/
hxxps://community[.]freepbx[.]org/


Olamilarks: if you go with v17 script, run it with the
--opensourceonly option.

Thank you.
I will be going through everything and let you know how it's going later in the day.
Have a nice day.

airsaylongcome:


Have a crack: hxxps://www[.]sipwise[.]com/archives/career/telecom-sip-engineer

airsaylongcome:


You can also work with v16: hxxps://s[.]freepbxdistro[.]org/ISO/SNG7-PBX16-64bit-2306-1[.]iso

V17 is still doing anyhow. Minor differences between between v16 and v17. The YT series uses v15 I think. But the concepts are still the same.

Also look up TangoPBX, a fork of FreePBX. I'm most likely going to go with that splinter as Chris Sherwood don waka go there too. But right now, I'm straddling both.

hxxps://community[.]tangopbx[.]org/
hxxps://community[.]freepbx[.]org/


Olamilarks: if you go with v17 script, run it with the
--opensourceonly option.

Thanks Chief. I already installed V17 sir. I'll look up TangoPBX, thanks for sharing sir.

Just ed the PBX16 image now.
Still on part 1 of that YT series though.
Seems I will have to learn how to use the Windows inbuilt Hyper-v as against the VirtualBox and Vmware workstation VMs I have been using in the past.

airsaylongcome:


You can also work with v16: hxxps://s[.]freepbxdistro[.]org/ISO/SNG7-PBX16-64bit-2306-1[.]iso

V17 is still doing anyhow. Minor differences between between v16 and v17. The YT series uses v15 I think. But the concepts are still the same.

Also look up TangoPBX, a fork of FreePBX. I'm most likely going to go with that splinter as Chris Sherwood don waka go there too. But right now, I'm straddling both.

hxxps://community[.]tangopbx[.]org/
hxxps://community[.]freepbx[.]org/


Olamilarks: if you go with v17 script, run it with the
--opensourceonly option.

lexdino:
Just ed the PBX16 image now.
Still on part 1 of that YT series though.
Seems I will have to learn how to use the Windows inbuilt Hyper-v as against the VirtualBox and Vmware workstation VMs I have been using in the past.

Why don't you want to use Virtualbox? That's what I used starting out

I guess it's just the part of me that always tries to run before learning to walk
I will stick with virtualbox in that case.

What do you think about that tutor's recommendation against the virtualization method for running the server?

airsaylongcome:


Why don't you want to use Virtualbox? That's what I used starting out

lexdino:
I guess it's just the part of me that always tries to run before learning to walk
I will stick with virtualbox in that case.

What do you think about that tutor's recommendation against the virtualization method for running the server?

We have almost 2000 FreePBX VMs for our customers. Data Centre sitting in Vegas.

I understand his worry, but to multiple tenants using FreePBX as the PBX, almost every provider hosts multiple instances of FreePBX behind something called a Session Border Controller. Sangoma has one available for testing. There's also a somewhat limited open source one called dsiprouter. Limited in the sense that it's API is behind a pay wall. But the developer, is a super cool guy. African-American. Had a brief call with him recently and the first thing out of his mouth when I got on the call was "Thank God you are black!".

That's several steps ahead though. Focus on getting your head around understanding and working with FreePBX

Did I mention training[.]sangoma[.]com? there if you can and follow the PBXACT training. Same instructor. PBXACT is FreePBX with Sangoma's commercial modules. Licensed and requiring subscription. But it can begin to give you ideas how the open source offering of FreePBX is monetised.

There's an interesting Webinar coming up on 05/20 for a well received open source module.

at: hxxps://[.]gotowebinar[.]com//4365743306136387670

and if you can. Definitely not an attempt to market or . Just interesting stuff to keep eyes on.

Don't forget to start looking into the Asterisk codebase. As a dev, that's where you want to play. AstriDevCon should be interesting

Wow
A truckload of resources to consume!

Still struggling with understanding all the basics of PBX as explained in the part 1 of that series.
But I managed to to the PBX VM on Virtualbox today.
Hopefully, will make more progress tomorrow.

Are you into embedded systems as well? I mean I2C, SPI, RTOS and those bare metal stuffs?

airsaylongcome:


We have almost 2000 FreePBX VMs for our customers. Data Centre sitting in Vegas.

I understand his worry, but to multiple tenants using FreePBX as the PBX, almost every provider hosts multiple instances of FreePBX behind something called a Session Border Controller. Sangoma has one available for testing. There's also a somewhat limited open source one called dsiprouter. Limited in the sense that it's API is behind a pay wall. But the developer, is a super cool guy. African-American. Had a brief call with him recently and the first thing out of his mouth when I got on the call was "Thank God you are black!".

That's several steps ahead though. Focus on getting your head around understanding and working with FreePBX

Did I mention training[.]sangoma[.]com? there if you can and follow the PBXACT training. Same instructor. PBXACT is FreePBX with Sangoma's commercial modules. Licensed and requiring subscription. But it can begin to give you ideas how the open source offering of FreePBX is monetised.

There's an interesting Webinar coming up on 05/20 for a well received open source module.

at: hxxps://[.]gotowebinar[.]com//4365743306136387670

and if you can. Definitely not an attempt to market or . Just interesting stuff to keep eyes on.

Don't forget to start looking into the Asterisk codebase. As a dev, that's where you want to play. AstriDevCon should be interesting