May 17, 2011 06:42 GMT  ·  By

A recently discovered job listing for a "carrier engineer" located near the Sprint headquarters in Missouri spurred speculation that the Kansas City-based operator was on track to carry Apple’s next iPhone.

An analyst with Jefferies & Co. went on record last week to claim that his industry checks indicated Apple would release an iPhone "4S" in September through carriers T-Mobile and Sprint.

The Apple job posting seemed to corroborate these claims, with the discoverers noting that Sprint greatly needs to carry Apple’s iPhone in order to stay strong, should the AT&T/T-Mobile merger materialize.

However, Apple has since edited the ad, changing the office location to Santa Clara Valley, Cupertino, California.

According to the post, Apple needs a “Member of the Carrier Engineering team that supports taking products through technical approval at the carriers.”

“A Carrier Engineer team is responsible for day-to-day technical interactions with the one or more carriers to track down issues reported by the carrier, assist the carrier with testing they might be conducting and working with program management, software development and test teams to get products approved by the carriers,” Apple details the job.

The ideal candidate will have technical understanding and experience with GSM/GPRS, Edge, CDMA and UMTS, and a minimum of 3 years prior experience working on phones or similar products that operate on cellular networks.

A minimum of 2 years direct experience working with one or more carriers to roll out products that work on their network is also necessary, Apple says. This includes supporting lab testing at the carrier.

The new recruit will need the ability to quickly triage issues reported by carriers, as well as to assist engineering teams in tracking down such issues.

Finally, Apple’s new Carrier Engineer needs strong verbal and written communication skills, and Bachelors in Engineering or Computer Science.