What is a Software Engineer at A. O. Smith?

As a Software Engineer at A. O. Smith, you are stepping into a critical role at one of the world's leading manufacturers of residential and commercial water heating equipment and water treatment products. Software engineering here is not just about building isolated applications; it is about bridging the gap between digital innovation and physical hardware. Your work directly impacts the efficiency, sustainability, and user experience of products relied upon by millions globally.

In this position, you will be tackling complex challenges at the intersection of IoT (Internet of Things), cloud connectivity, and enterprise manufacturing systems. Whether you are developing smart-home integrations for the iCOMM™ platform, building internal tools to support continuous improvement on the factory floor, or writing firmware for next-generation water heaters, your code will have a tangible, real-world footprint.

You will frequently collaborate with cross-functional teams—including Thermal Mechanical Engineers, Quality Engineers, and Manufacturing Project Engineers across key hubs like Milwaukee, WI, and Ashland City, TN. This role requires a unique blend of traditional software engineering rigor and an appreciation for hardware reliability. If you are passionate about building scalable software that powers sustainable, physical products, this role offers an exceptional platform for your skills.

Getting Ready for Your Interviews

Preparing for an interview at A. O. Smith requires a balanced approach. You must demonstrate strong technical fundamentals while showing that you can thrive in a highly collaborative, manufacturing-adjacent environment.

Expect your interviewers to evaluate you against the following core criteria:

Technical Execution and Architecture Your interviewers need to know you can write clean, maintainable, and scalable code. For A. O. Smith, this also means understanding how software interacts with hardware, cloud infrastructure, and potentially constrained embedded environments. You can demonstrate strength here by emphasizing reliability, security, and edge-case handling in your technical answers.

Cross-Functional Problem Solving Because you will be working alongside mechanical, electrical, and manufacturing engineers, you must be able to translate complex software concepts to non-software stakeholders. Interviewers will look for your ability to structure ambiguous challenges, gather requirements from diverse teams, and deliver pragmatic solutions.

Focus on Quality and Continuous Improvement A. O. Smith has a deep-rooted culture of manufacturing excellence and quality assurance. You will be evaluated on your approach to testing, CI/CD pipelines, and how you monitor software performance post-deployment. Highlighting your commitment to robust testing methodologies will strongly signal your alignment with their engineering values.

Adaptability and Culture Fit The company values integrity, innovation, and teamwork. Interviewers will assess how you navigate setbacks, handle shifting project requirements, and contribute to a positive, safety-conscious team culture.

Interview Process Overview

The interview process for a Software Engineer at A. O. Smith is designed to be thorough but practical. Unlike hyper-growth tech startups that might rely on obscure algorithmic puzzles, A. O. Smith grounds its technical evaluations in real-world scenarios relevant to their product lines. The process moves at a steady pace, usually spanning three to four weeks from the initial conversation to the final decision.

You will typically begin with a recruiter screen to discuss your background, location preferences (such as Milwaukee, WI, or Johnson City, TN), and high-level technical experience. This is followed by a technical screening with a hiring manager or senior engineer, which often involves discussing your past projects, architecture decisions, and a light coding or technical Q&A session.

The final stage is a comprehensive panel interview. This is usually conducted virtually or onsite and consists of multiple sessions covering system design, deep-dive coding, and behavioral/leadership principles. You will likely meet with engineers from adjacent disciplines, reflecting the company's highly collaborative environment.

This visual timeline outlines the typical stages you will progress through during the A. O. Smith interview loop. Use this to structure your preparation, focusing first on high-level resume narrative for the recruiter screen, and then diving deep into system architecture and coding practice for the technical rounds. Keep in mind that for specialized roles (like IoT or embedded software), the technical screen may heavily feature domain-specific questions.

Deep Dive into Evaluation Areas

To succeed, you need to understand exactly what the engineering team is looking for across different competencies. Here is a breakdown of the primary evaluation areas.

Software Architecture and System Design

For A. O. Smith, system design is heavily skewed toward IoT connectivity, telemetry data ingestion, and enterprise software scalability. Interviewers want to see that you can design systems that handle intermittent connectivity, secure data transfer, and large volumes of sensor data.

Be ready to go over:

• Data Ingestion pipelines – How to handle high-throughput telemetry data from thousands of connected water heaters.
• API Design – Creating robust, versioned APIs for mobile apps or third-party smart home integrations.
• Security and Authentication – Securing device-to-cloud communications and managing user access.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Edge computing logic, MQTT protocol specifics, and real-time anomaly detection in hardware.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Design a cloud architecture to ingest, store, and analyze temperature and usage data from 100,000 smart water heaters."
• "How would you handle firmware over-the-air (OTA) updates for devices that frequently lose Wi-Fi connectivity?"
• "Walk us through how you would secure an API endpoint used by our mobile application to control a user's boiler."

Coding and Algorithmic Problem Solving

While you will face coding challenges, A. O. Smith typically focuses on practical application over abstract theoretical problems. The goal is to see how you structure your code, name your variables, and handle edge cases.

Be ready to go over:

• Data Structures – Practical use of hash maps, queues, and trees for data processing.
• Object-Oriented Design – Structuring classes and interfaces for maintainability.
• Concurrency and Multithreading – Handling asynchronous tasks, especially relevant for hardware communication or background data processing.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Low-level memory management (if applying for an embedded-leaning software role).

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Write a function to parse a continuous stream of sensor data and trigger an alert if the temperature exceeds a specific threshold for three consecutive readings."
• "Implement a rate limiter for an internal API used by our manufacturing execution system."
• "Refactor this block of legacy code to improve its time complexity and readability."

Cross-Functional Collaboration and Behavioral

Because you will interface with diverse engineering disciplines (like Thermal Mechanical and Materials Engineering), your ability to communicate effectively is paramount. The behavioral interview focuses heavily on your past experiences working in multidisciplinary teams.

Be ready to go over:

• Conflict Resolution – How you handle disagreements on technical direction with non-software stakeholders.
• Project Ownership – Examples of taking a feature from conception to deployment.
• Adaptability – How you pivot when hardware limitations force a change in software design.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Tell me about a time you had to explain a complex software limitation to a hardware or manufacturing engineer."
• "Describe a situation where a project's requirements changed abruptly. How did you handle it?"
• "Give an example of a time you discovered a critical bug right before a major release. What steps did you take?"

Key Responsibilities

As a Software Engineer at A. O. Smith, your day-to-day work is highly dynamic. You will be responsible for designing, developing, and deploying software that either interfaces directly with consumer products or supports the internal manufacturing and quality processes that build those products.

A significant portion of your time will be spent writing clean, testable code and participating in code reviews to maintain high engineering standards. You will collaborate closely with product managers to define software requirements for new smart-home features, and work alongside Quality Engineers to ensure that software updates do not compromise product safety or reliability.

Additionally, you will be deeply involved in troubleshooting and continuous improvement. This might mean investigating a telemetry anomaly reported by a fleet of commercial boilers, optimizing a database query for an internal supply chain tool, or working with the Continuous Improvement team in Ashland City to automate a manual data-entry process on the factory floor.

Role Requirements & Qualifications

To be competitive for this role, you need a solid foundation in software engineering principles, coupled with an appreciation for the manufacturing and hardware context of A. O. Smith.

• Must-have technical skills – Strong proficiency in at least one major programming language (e.g., Java, C#, Python, or C++ depending on the specific team). Experience with cloud platforms (AWS or Azure), RESTful API development, and relational databases.
• Must-have soft skills – Excellent verbal and written communication. The ability to translate technical constraints to non-technical audiences. A strong sense of ownership and a proactive approach to problem-solving.
• Experience level – Typically requires a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field. Mid-level roles generally look for 3+ years of experience, while senior roles require 5+ years with a track record of leading system architecture.
• Nice-to-have skills – Experience with IoT frameworks, embedded systems, MQTT, or working in a manufacturing/industrial automation environment. Familiarity with HVAC&R or water treatment technologies is a massive plus that will set you apart.

Common Interview Questions

The questions below represent the patterns and themes you are likely to encounter. A. O. Smith interviewers use these to gauge both your technical depth and your alignment with their engineering culture. Focus on the why behind your answers, not just the what.

Technical and Coding

These questions test your practical coding abilities and your understanding of software fundamentals.

• How do you handle database migrations in a production environment with zero downtime?
• Write an algorithm to merge two sorted logs of telemetry data based on timestamps.
• Explain the differences between TCP and UDP, and when you would use each in an IoT context.
• How do you approach writing unit tests for code that relies heavily on external hardware APIs?
• Describe a time you had to optimize a slow-performing query or application feature.

System Design and Architecture

These focus on your ability to build scalable, secure, and reliable systems.

• Design a system to monitor the health and status of thousands of commercial water heaters deployed globally.
• How would you design a caching layer to reduce load on our primary database during peak usage hours?
• Walk me through how you would architect an event-driven microservice to handle device registration.
• What are the key security considerations when designing an API for a smart home device?

Behavioral and Leadership

These evaluate your collaboration skills, cultural fit, and problem-solving mindset.

• Tell me about a time you had to work with a team outside of software engineering to deliver a project.
• Describe a situation where you had to make a technical compromise to meet a strict deadline.
• How do you prioritize technical debt versus building new features?
• Tell me about a time you received critical feedback on a design or pull request. How did you handle it?

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How difficult are the technical interviews compared to big tech companies? A. O. Smith focuses more on practical, domain-relevant engineering rather than abstract, competitive programming puzzles. The difficulty lies in your ability to design robust systems and explain your thought process clearly, rather than your ability to invert a binary tree under extreme time pressure.

Q: Do I need to have a background in manufacturing or hardware? No, a background in manufacturing or hardware is not strictly required for most software roles. However, having an interest in how software interacts with physical products will make you a much stronger candidate. Demonstrating curiosity about their water heating and treatment products goes a long way.

Q: What is the work culture like for a Software Engineer here? The culture is highly collaborative, stable, and focused on long-term quality. Because you are working on products that sit in people's homes for a decade or more, there is a strong emphasis on doing things right rather than just doing them fast. Work-life balance is generally well-respected.

Q: How long does the interview process typically take? From the initial recruiter screen to the final offer, the process usually takes about three to four weeks. The recruiting team is generally communicative, but timelines can occasionally stretch depending on the availability of cross-functional panel members.

Q: Are these roles remote, hybrid, or onsite? This depends heavily on the specific team and location. Many roles tied closely to manufacturing or hardware testing (such as those in Milwaukee, WI, or Ashland City, TN) require a hybrid or onsite presence to interact with the physical products. Always clarify the working model with your recruiter early on.

Other General Tips

• Understand the Product Ecosystem: Take time to research A. O. Smith's product lines, particularly their smart/connected water heaters and the iCOMM platform. Speaking intelligently about their actual products shows high intent.
• Emphasize Reliability: In consumer hardware and manufacturing, software bugs can lead to physical consequences or massive recall costs. Highlight your experience with robust testing, error handling, and fail-safes.

• Speak the Language of Cross-Functional Teams: Be prepared to talk about how you gather requirements. Show that you respect the constraints faced by mechanical and manufacturing engineers.
• Prepare for Behavioral Deep Dives: Use the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) to structure your behavioral answers. Ensure your examples highlight collaboration, safety, and continuous improvement.

Summary & Next Steps

Interviewing for a Software Engineer position at A. O. Smith is an exciting opportunity to bring modern software practices to an industry leader in water technology. You will have the chance to work on projects that blend digital innovation with critical physical infrastructure, ensuring sustainability and efficiency for millions of users.

The compensation data above provides a snapshot of expected salary ranges, which can vary significantly based on your location (e.g., Tennessee vs. Wisconsin), your level of experience, and the specific engineering division you join. Use this information to anchor your expectations and inform your negotiations once you reach the offer stage.

To succeed in this process, focus your preparation on practical system design, clean coding practices, and your ability to collaborate across engineering disciplines. Remember to ground your technical answers in the reality of physical products—emphasizing reliability, security, and user experience.

You have the skills necessary to excel in this environment. Take the time to refine your narrative, practice communicating complex technical concepts simply, and approach the interviews with curiosity about their products. For more insights, practice questions, and peer experiences, continue exploring resources on Dataford. Good luck—you are well-equipped to ace this interview!