25+ Wireless Network Engineer Interview Questions

Wireless network engineering is a growing and important field, so you’ll likely interview multiple people before finding the best fit. To find your winning candidate, you’ll have to ask the right questions during the interview process.

When asking wireless network engineer interview questions, you’re looking for information about:

Past experience in wireless network engineering
How candidates handle stress in difficult situations
Their general strengths and weaknesses
How much technical knowledge candidates possess about wireless network engineering
Their philosophies with various wireless network engineering technologies and skills
Their leadership capabilities and career goals

This can be difficult information to elicit sometimes, so we’ve put together a list of the best wireless network engineer interview questions to help you get the information you need and make the right hiring decision.

General Wireless Network Engineer Interview Questions

Technical abilities are important to know assess for a wireless network engineer, but first, an interviewer will need to gauge whether their candidate is a good fit for the position by asking about their experience, strengths, weaknesses, and work ethic.

These are just general conversational-type questions that dig into a candidate’s experience and behaviors. (The more specific technical questions are below.)

Let’s review a few introductory questions you should ask during a wireless network engineer interview:

1. What is your experience with wireless networks?
2. Describe a time you ran into a problem when you were in the field you didn’t know how to solve right away, and how did you address it?
3. What are your strengths?
4. What are your weaknesses, and how are you addressing them?
5. Tell me about yourself. How would you describe yourself as a person?
6. Talk me through a project where the requirements changed after it was already underway. How did this affect the project and what solutions did you find?
7. How would team members in the past describe you?
8. Have you led a team of engineers before?
9. What career goals do you have in the wireless network engineering space?
10. Do you have any questions for me? (Asked at the end of the interview)

Technical Wireless Network Engineer Interview Questions

The technical portion of the interview is where your candidate should demonstrate how much they know about wireless network engineering by detailing their experience in various areas. Their answers to these questions should assure you of their knowledge and expertise.

You’ll want to match these questions with the requirements of the job description, too. For example, if this specific job requires them to deal with Cisco WLCs, make sure they have experience with it. If your company doesn’t use those, though, it probably isn’t appropriate to this specific job interview.

You might not need all of these, but here are some example technical wireless network engineer interview questions:

11. What types of challenges do you face most often when designing networks?
12. How do you start troubleshooting a wireless network issue?
13. What was your most difficult network troubleshooting event? How did you handle solving the problem?
14. What are some common mistakes you’ve seen when setting up wireless networks?
15. What is your experience with implementing an SSO feature?
16. Do you have experience with Cisco Prime, WLCs, and other Cisco products?
17. Do you have any experience managing WLAN security?
18. What is SNR? How do you fix SNR issues?
19. What’s your experience with various wireless monitoring tools? Do you have a preferred tool or a tool with the most experience?
20. How do you troubleshoot RF issues?
21. What’s your experience with WLAN design, and describe your most successful outcome with WLAN design?
22. What’s your experience with RF propagation and/or interference?
23. Where do your strengths lie with wireless network engineering? Where do you want to improve?
24. What experience do you have with designing wireless mesh networks?
25. When would you use the FHSS technique, and when would you use the DSSS technique?
25. Have you implemented MIMO processes before?
26. What’s the most common issue you run into with regards to beamforming when looking at an overall wireless network?
27. What EAP method do you prefer and why?
28. Describe a time you’ve used RFID technologies in your day-to-day management?

Almost every person relies on wireless network engineers to provide them with a stable internet connection for working, streaming, and other day-to-day activities. It’s an important job, so make sure you keep this list handy and so you can get to know your candidate’s background, experience level, and overall technical expertise.