To succeed in your Ericsson interviews, you must approach your preparation with a clear understanding of what the hiring team values most. Interviewers look for well-rounded candidates who can balance technical execution with strong communication.

Role-Related Knowledge – You must demonstrate a solid grasp of fundamental QA methodologies, test design techniques, and automation practices. Be ready to explain how you apply these concepts to practical scenarios rather than just reciting definitions.

Problem-Solving Ability – Ericsson values engineers who can systematically analyze complex problems, identify root causes, and propose structured quality solutions. You should be prepared to discuss how you troubleshoot issues and validate system behavior under stress.

Collaboration and Communication – Working in a global enterprise means you will interact with diverse, cross-functional teams. You need to show that you can articulate technical issues clearly, advocate for quality constructively, and build positive relationships with developers and product managers.

Culture Fit and Adaptability – The telecommunications industry evolves rapidly, requiring a mindset of continuous learning. Show your interviewers that you are proactive, adaptable, and eager to master new technologies and tools as project needs shift.

The interview process for a QA Engineer at Ericsson is highly collaborative, structured, and designed to feel more like a technical conversation than an interrogation. While the exact steps can vary slightly depending on your geographic location and seniority, the overall flow remains consistent and focused on assessing your practical skills and team compatibility.

In North American locations like Plano and Ottawa, the process tends to be conversational and heavily project-focused, often consisting of a recruiter screen followed by a single, comprehensive panel interview with the hiring manager and team members. In European hubs such as Sweden and Hungary, you can expect a more structured technical sequence that includes practical online coding or testing assessments, followed by detailed technical panel discussions. Regardless of the region, candidates consistently report a smooth, supportive, and professional experience with highly respectful interviewers.

The visual timeline above outlines the typical progression of the Ericsson hiring journey from your initial contact to the final offer. It highlights the transition from high-level screening to deep-dive technical evaluations and practical assessments. Candidates should use this roadmap to pace their preparation, ensuring they allocate sufficient time to both practical test practice and project walkthrough preparation.

To stand out during your Ericsson interviews, you must understand the specific technical and behavioral pillars upon which you will be evaluated. Each round is designed to assess a distinct set of competencies.

Project Walkthroughs and Technical Ownership

Interviewers will spend a significant portion of the conversation exploring your resume. They want to see that you didn't just execute tasks, but that you understood the broader system architecture and took true ownership of quality.

Be ready to go over:

• System Architecture – A clear explanation of the architecture of the systems you have tested in the past, including databases, APIs, and client-server interactions.
• Your Specific Contribution – Articulating exactly what you did, the automation frameworks you built or maintained, and the specific bugs you uncovered.
• QA Strategy Design – How you decided what to test, how you defined test coverage, and how you measured the success of your QA efforts.

Advanced concepts (less common):

• Designing test strategies for legacy system migrations.
• Implementing continuous testing within complex, multi-stage CI/CD pipelines.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Draw or walk me through the architecture of the most complex application you have tested, and point out where the highest risk of failure existed."
• "Describe a scenario where you had to refactor an existing test automation framework to make it more scalable."

Testing Fundamentals and Automation Tooling

Your core QA expertise will be thoroughly evaluated. You must demonstrate that you understand how to design effective test cases and automate them efficiently using industry-standard tools.

Be ready to go over:

• Automation Frameworks – Practical experience with tools like Selenium, Playwright, Cypress, or Appium, and language-specific testing libraries.
• API and Backend Testing – Validating RESTful or gRPC APIs using Postman, SoapUI, or custom code, focusing on status codes, payloads, and boundary values.
• Test Design Techniques – Applying equivalence partitioning, boundary value analysis, and decision table testing to optimize test coverage.

Advanced concepts (less common):

• Performance and load testing using JMeter or Locust.
• Mocking and stubbing dependencies in distributed microservices environments.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "How would you write an automation script to validate a multi-step user registration flow that includes an email verification step?"
• "What is your approach to handling flaky tests in a pipeline that runs hundreds of automated checks daily?"

Problem Solving and Practical Assessments

Depending on your target office, you may face a practical take-home test or an online browser-based assessment. These tests evaluate your logical thinking, coding style, and practical approach to verifying software correctness.

Be ready to go over:

• Basic Scripting and Coding – Writing clean, readable code in languages like Python, Java, or JavaScript to solve algorithmic problems or parse data.
• Test Case Writing – Creating a structured, comprehensive test suite for a specific feature or component described in a prompt.
• Bug Analysis – Analyzing log files or system outputs to identify, isolate, and document a software defect.

Advanced concepts (less common):

• Optimizing algorithmic complexity (Time and Space complexity) in your test code.
• Writing custom test utilities to parse complex telecommunication protocol logs.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Write a function to find the first non-repeating character in a string, and write the unit tests you would use to validate your solution."
• "Given a specification for a simple online shopping cart, write a set of high-priority integration test cases."

As a QA Engineer at Ericsson, your daily activities will extend far beyond simply executing pre-written test cases. You will be an active participant in the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC), driving quality initiatives from the initial requirements phase through to deployment.

Your primary responsibility will be to design, develop, and maintain robust automated test suites that integrate seamlessly into the team's continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. This involves writing test scripts, building custom testing tools, and analyzing test execution results to identify regressions. You will collaborate daily with software developers to debug complex issues, reproduce defects, and verify fixes, ensuring that quality feedback loops are as short and efficient as possible.

Additionally, you will play a key role in defining testing strategies for new features. You will analyze product requirements, identify potential quality risks, and write detailed test plans that cover functional, integration, performance, and security testing. By participating in agile sprint planning, daily standups, and retrospectives, you will act as a champion for quality, ensuring that the team maintains a high standard of engineering excellence throughout every release cycle.