A Guide on How to Become an IoT Engineer | Optymize

Within living memory, the future was imagined with smart homes, where everything would be automated with trivialities like switches would give way to a wave of the hand or voice commands, giving the owner absolute control within their property. Yet at present, the problems with connecting to the Internet are common cautionary tales so if smart homes and similar ideas are to become a reality, they would have to rely on IoT and IoT engineers.

Common interview questions for IoT Engineers:

At present, there is an excess of questions related to the various facets of IoT thanks to the various prerequisites that IoT Engineers have to cover. As such, while interviewing potential IoT Engineers, the questions tend to be varied and cover multiple fields rather than focusing on a particular technical aspect. Moreover, there should be an equivalent test for the practical aspect as IoT engineers have to spend nearly just as much time on sensors and similar devices as they do in codes and databases. However, some of the possible beginner-level technical questions for IoT Engineers include:

1.    What are the common features of IoTs? What advantages and disadvantages do these features provide to IoT engineers?

2.    Describe some of the components of IoT systems and as an IoT engineer, what should the focus be on for each portion?

3.    What are the different communication models available for the standard IoT system?

4.    Give an idea about the general working of an IoT system.

5.    What are the different databases that are available to IoT Engineers?

Define Sharding and Replication.

Some of the advanced technical interview questions for IoT engineers include:

1.    Differentiate between IoT, IIoT, WSN, and M2M.

2.    Describe the working of the IoT gateway.

3.    Describe the role of device management in IoT.

4.    Differentiate between Arduino and Raspberry Pi.

5.    Define the following terms:

6.    BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy)

7.    QPMPQM (Pulse Width Modulation)

8.    Shodan

9.    IoT Contiki

10. WiT (Web of Things)

11. MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport Protocol)

12. Bluegiga APX4 protocol

13. Arduino

14. Raspberry Pi

15. GPIO (General Purpose Input/Output)

16. IoT GE-PREDIX

17. Thinggful

The personal questions meant for IoT Engineers include:

1.    What previous experience do you have as an IoT Engineer?

2.    What are your favored tools as an IoT Engineer?

3.    Name some projects that you have worked on as an IoT Engineer.

Applications for IoT and IoT Engineers

Due to the various advantages that IoT presents, it has seen massive popularity in recent years, with any field that has some use for wireless devices has found some use for IoT and requires the help of IoT engineers. These include

Smart Homes and Smart Cities: Smart homes are the most practical usage of IoT and are presented above as an example of the advantages and practicality of using IoT systems. Regardless of the level of integration, whether it is an automated heating and ventilation or a simple set-top box system, they are all a variant of IoT. Expanding in scale, it can go from a simple smart home to a smart city.

Medical Systems: In medical health, connected systems can allow for remote, real-time monitoring of patient health. Outside of that, it also improves efficiency by allowing for better coordination.

Driverless or autonomous cars: While autonomous vehicles are associated with mostly AI, however that is a focus on the personal level whereas if it is meant to spread and gain mass popularity, the autonomous vehicles should be able to coordinate with each other and prevent deadlocks and similar issues. As such, IoT helps enable coordination, increase efficiency, and prevent accidents.

Hospitality: The hospitality industry has been a recent, surprising but promising field of application for IoT. Tracking guest billing for various spendings, placing orders, billing, booking, and other tasks are simplified thanks to IoT.

Farming: In this sector, IoT takes the form of various sensors which measure environmental conditions. This includes weather aspects such as humidity, rainfall, etc., and uses the data to optimize the productivity of the fields.

Industry: Industries, in general, tend towards automation when technology makes it feasible and practical. IoT is one of the technologies which helps in that as it ensures proper coordination between various parts of the industry, preventing issues such as bottlenecks in the assembly line.

Conclusion

IoT Engineers are a high-end career choice for professionals in technical fields due to the myriad prerequisites involved. However, while this may seem daunting, due to the investments in time and effort required, the advantage of this is that anyone who completed the requirements possesses multiple qualifications, allowing for job opportunities in multiple fields.