Joseph Baking
Group Head, Network Orchestration Lab — Samsung R&D Institute Philippines
Summary
I'm a hands-on engineering leader with 15+ years delivering production software across fintech and 5G telecommunications. As Group Head at Samsung R&D Institute Philippines (SRPH), I lead teams building network automation and orchestration software for leading telecoms operators, and champion Microservice Architecture, DevOps, Cloud-Native Computing, and AI-augmented engineering across the organisation. Across banking, payments, and telecom I've shipped production systems that are available and scalable at production grade. My mission is to bridge the gap between programmers and operations specialists — and to put AI to work for the teams I lead. I care as much about the engineers I grow as the systems we build.
Experience
- Leads AI adoption across the full software engineering lifecycle — spanning design, planning, project management, AI-assisted development, and agentic coding workflows — setting the benchmark for AI-augmented engineering across SRPH; advocates for responsible, efficient, and practical AI use as a force multiplier for engineering teams.
- Provides technical direction and oversight for a network orchestration suite frontend team — supported by a project leader who serves as telecom domain SME and product owner; the suite is the operator-facing portal for end-to-end network lifecycle automation, commercially deployed with multiple Tier-1 operators.
- Provided technical direction and oversight for a RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) platform team — E2, A1, and O1 interface development — co-delivering an industry-first 5G end-to-end network slicing demonstration incorporating a RIC.
- Delivered the organisation's first-ever public-cloud deployment of 5G Core cloud-native network functions (CNFs) on a major hyperscaler — serving as Project and Technical Leader; also led NF enablement across the other major hyperscalers, completing multi-cloud coverage.
- Architected a multi-platform CI/CD pipeline for 5G Core CNFs across multiple Kubernetes platforms — reducing deployment cycle from days to hours.
- Containerised and cloud-enabled an AI-driven, GPU-accelerated 3D ray-tracing RAN planning & optimization tool for Kubernetes and public cloud; modernised CI/CD for multi-country development teams.
- Founded and leads the SRPH Center of Excellence in DevOps — establishing institute-wide engineering standards, running regular knowledge-sharing sessions, and managing shared R&D infrastructure.
- Built a 100+ VM dev/test infrastructure from repurposed COTS servers — clustered compute, redundant active-active storage, and isolated networking with independent IP provisioning — with zero new hardware procurement.
- Deployed a full self-hosted developer platform on the same infrastructure — SSO, multi-format artifact registry (apt, RPM, npm, Maven, PyPI, Docker), file sync, and internally-developed tooling including a URL shortener and dashboard.
- Co-inventor on 2 patents filed with Samsung Electronics: GPU scheduling for containerised applications (filed 2021) and mobility management with optimised paging for 5G networks (granted US 12262344, 2025).
- Institute-wide architecture consultant — engaged across teams at Samsung R&D Institute Philippines (SRPH) for system and infrastructure design decisions.
- Architected and built a digital lending marketplace from inception as Solution Architect and Lead Engineer — which grew into one of the country's largest digital loan platforms, reaching nationwide coverage with a broad network of lender partners.
- Designed and built a mobile card-control security product as Solution Architect and Lead Engineer — recognised at a major international fintech innovation showcase.
- Delivered full technical design and implementation of a government salary-loan platform as Solution Architect and Lead Engineer — one of the country's first fully electronic salary loan services, recognised with multiple international banking awards.
- Spearheaded decomposition of monolithic core services into SOA/Microservices Architecture, improving deployment independence and reducing inter-team coupling across the platform.
- Led maintenance and structured decommissioning of a sticker-based NFC contactless payment product — systematically salvaging reusable components for future platform use.
- Eliminated significant commercial identity-management licensing costs by replacing it with a bespoke SOA authentication platform.
- Platformised SMS messaging infrastructure into a shared SOA service, enabling reuse across multiple consumer-facing products.
- Modernised core payment infrastructure by migrating ISO8583 services to Spring Boot and SOAP interfaces to REST.
- Served as Project Lead and Lead Java Developer for a mobile payments customer (WAP) portal, and Lead Developer for HSM platformisation.
- Drove platformisation of ISO8583 processing into a microservices, event-driven architecture as key developer on core libraries; key engineer for PCI DSS compliance across the platform.
- Led an on-site international deployment as Team Lead — sole in-country representative coordinating directly with the operator's technical team through go-live.
- Modernised the legacy codebase by migrating ASP.NET systems to Grails.
- Led development of the bank's all-in-one branch banking operations system as Team Lead — deployed bank-wide across every branch nationwide; served concurrently as Consulting Lead for the bank's customer-facing online banking portal.
- Built an in-house specimen-signature digitisation and indexing system — digitised and indexed customer specimen signatures in-house, eliminating outsourced imaging and generating significant recurring cost savings.
- Extended the core branch banking system with anti-counterfeit banknote-reader hardware integration and built Web Service APIs bridging legacy AS/400 and core banking systems to modern web interfaces.
- Standardised Java application deployment on GlassFish across all branches, reducing deployment overhead and system downtime — recognised with Security Bank's Certificate of Recognition.
- Automated ETL reporting pipelines (SAP SQL, MS Access, Excel), eliminating manual report generation for the IT department.
- Built an Online Reports Cataloging and Archiving system integrated with the internal Content Management System.
- Built a multi-site CMS (PHP, ASP, MS SQL 2000) powering four company web properties — enabling non-technical staff to manage content autonomously across the intranet and public-facing sites.
- Delivered a Survey System, File Sharing/Archiving system with group-level access controls, and a Data Archiving prototype; recommended by the e-Services Department for Best Intern and offered employment upon graduation.
Education
Patents
Three-stage optimized paging system for 5G wireless networks — predicts likely base station location using a filtered list of candidate stations to reduce unnecessary paging overhead across tracking areas.
A pending patent application in the area of GPU scheduling for containerized workloads on Kubernetes.
Speaking
Recognition
Recognised for outstanding performance, superior dedication, and positive attitude throughout the year. Presented by Managing Director Yongduk Hwang.
For stabilising the production infrastructure of the bank's nationwide branch banking operations system — which had suffered major stability issues prior to my involvement; through GlassFish/JVM tuning, deployment standardisation, and naming-convention discipline that significantly reduced downtime across every branch.
Recognised for excellent analysis and programming skills; delivered an in-house specimen-signature digitisation and indexing system (which eliminated outsourcing costs) and a signature verification system on time and with minimal resources.
Recommended by the e-Services Department for Best Intern; cited for exceptional technical output, initiative, and going well beyond OJT requirements. The department offered employment upon graduation.