20 Top Aerospace Engineering Interview Questions to Ask at a Job Interview

Aerospace engineering is one of the most revenue-generating and impactful fields for startup managers and business owners. Companies like SpaceX, Space Tango, and many more are pushing the borders of innovation by introducing satellites, aircraft that will help scientists look for extra-terrestrial, life, even brain organoids for studying the effects of gravity.

Aerospace engineering is an ambitious field to set foot into - having to comply with a ton of regulations is a headache on its own. That’s why, rather than walking this road alone, you need to find reliable aerospace engineers to join your team.

To hire a skilled engineer for your project, start by asking the right interview questions. In this post, we’ll go through the list of questions that help test the candidate’s motivations, stress resistance, and focus and assess how well the engineer is versed in the theory of engineering.

5 Attitude Interview Questions For Aerospace Engineers

The job market for aerospace engineers is relatively narrow - on the other hand, the are over 900,000 professionals in the field. Talent shortage shouldn’t be a huge concern for you - however, screening talent is a challenge business owners have to deal with.

Apart from having a degree in aerospace engineering and a decent amount of experience, what separates an excellent candidate from a mediocre one? According to seasoned professionals, these are the red flags for an aerospace engineer you don’t want to hire:

Lack of respect for the industry or the position.
No desire to learn - you can often hear such candidates say “it’s not my job”.
Communication barriers - not knowing how to voice concerns and explain ideas.
No desire to educate juniors and share knowledge.

To make sure the next candidate you hire is reliable and open-minded, open the job interview by asking the following behavioral questions.

Question #1. Why did you apply for the position?

This question is an immediate way to test the candidate’s motivation and willingness to commit to the project. Here are a few pointers talent managers should pay attention to when evaluating a job candidate’s answer:

Depth of research - ideally, you want to hire someone who took some time to dig into your company’s work and achievements.
The way the candidate connects the company’s activities with her own experience and skillset.
Profound motivation - look for candidates who are in the field to drive innovation and make a change.

Question #2. Was there a time you questioned a conventional opinion? Tell me about it.

There’s a lot of conservatism in aerospace engineering. However, if you are eager to start an innovative project, it’s better to find a teammate who’s willing to challenge widely accepted ideas and knows how to back his thinking up with relevant data and practical examples.

Here’s how you can evaluate engineers’ answers to the question:

Ensuring that an aerospace engineer has a habit of careful research before opposing a popular opinion.
Checking whether an aerospace engineer doesn’t have an inflated ego and is ready to consider different points of view.
Evaluating whether the suggestion a candidate made in a described scenario is, indeed, the most feasible one of the project.

Question #3. What are your career goals?

Aerospace engineering is a high-pressure environment. That’s why a lot of entry-level candidates crack under the pressure as soon as they realize that there’s more to the job than a cool title and a decent salary.

To make sure you don’t spend time onboarding candidates who are not in it for the long run, focus on hiring engineers with well-defined career goals and a defined professional advancement plan.

Here are a few good trajectories engineers take when answering this question:

A candidate who has an understanding of which field of aerospace engineering she sets eyes on - aerodynamics , flight mechanics, control systems , etc.
Candidates with long-lasting career development plans.
Engineers who wouldn’t consider changing a field of work in the near future.

Question #4. Describe a time you failed a project. What, in your opinion, led to the failure? What are the takeaways from the experience?

In aerospace engineering, things rarely go according to plan. Rather, each successful project is a range of trial-and-error decisions, and setbacks are as common as advancements. That’s why, as you hire aerospace engineers, you want to know how well job candidates deal with failures and which conclusions they derive from struggles.

Here are an engineer’s skills you should be assessing when listening to failure stories:

Adaptability - how well a candidate can come up with a plan B when plan A backfires.
Resilience - how easily a candidate can bounce back from failures.
Open-mindedness - making conclusions after each setback and ensuring that a failed scenario doesn’t happen again.
Communication skills - how the candidate handled arguments with the team, how an engineer decided who should take responsibility for a setback.

Question #5. Describe the most stressful work assignment in your career

Stress is an integral part of an engineer’s day-to-day work. Quick decision-making, knowing how to deal with responsibility, and keeping a cool head when the stakes are high set skilled engineers apart from mediocre professionals.

To hire a stress-resistant, focused candidate, add a question about describing a stressful situation to the interview. It helps business owners and talent managers find out the following:

Which types of assignments are more stressful to a job candidate - you might want to assign fewer of those if you hire the engineer.
How an engineer is dealing with stress and keeps a cool head when making important decisions.
Which strategies and thinking patterns does a candidate use to solve problems quickly?

Question #6. Did you have a favorite college course? What was it, and why did you like it the most?

This question is a great ice-breaker that gives employees a better understanding of a candidate’s personality. Other than that, you can get a lot of relevant information by asking engineers to elaborate on their academic interests.

Here’s why companies love asking this question:

It helps understand how passionate the candidate is about aerospace engineering (if an engineer’s favorite courses had nothing to do with the aerospace industry, there’s a risk a professional might switch fields in the future).
It determines how deeply a candidate understands the field he works in.
It helps see which learning strategies a candidate prefers and encourages business owners to hire aerospace engineers that are a cultural fit for the project.

Question #7. Share a time when you improved a process on your position

When hiring an aerospace engineer, most talent managers prefer professionals with a keen eye for operational inefficiencies and readiness to improve processes. To make sure you don’t miss out on such a valuable professional, ask job candidates to describe instances when they influenced a significant change at work.

Here are a few additional questions you can follow up with to make sure an engineer is a tight fit.

How did a candidate realize that an existing workflow was inefficient?
What tools did an engineer use to optimize processes?
How did a job candidate measure the efficiency of the change?
In hindsight, is there anything an engineer would have done differently?

Question #8. Describe a situation when you got into a conflict with a teammate. How did you handle it?

In aerospace engineering “Teamwork makes dream work”. However, whenever a group of ambitious professionals gathers to work on the same project, tension will inevitably arise. To make sure there’s no perfect storm in the workplace, it’s important to find engineers who know how to gracefully deal with heated arguments.

Here’s the anatomy of a perfect answer to this question:

A detailed description of the incident
Sharing the reasons behind the candidate’s stance on the issue and arguments used to convince the team.
Retrospective view - what did the conflict teach the candidate?

Question #9. Describe a project you are working on in your spare time

Finding a candidate who’s committed to the project is awesome. However, scouting an engineer who is excited about aerospace engineering and works on projects outside of the office is priceless since it will be a natural innovator and a change-maker.

When shortlisting candidates, prefer those who tinker with ideas even in their free time - these professionals are likely to be more passionate about a work-related project as well.

Question #10. Why do you want to be an aerospace engineer?

Although obvious, it’s always an interesting question to watch candidates answer. Hearing stories that cover early-life aspirations, mature motivations, and the description of the candidate’s hopes for the future gives talent managers an understanding of how to structure an engineer’s work routine and continuous education after welcoming a new hire to the team.

10 Technical Aerospace Engineering Interview Questions

Communication skills, stress resistance, and passions are important qualities for skilled aerospace engineers. However, people who are “all talk” are the last candidates you want to hire.

That’s why, other than testing the candidate’s wit and decision-making in behavioral questions, you need to put some effort into finding out how well an aerospace engineer tackles technical questions. Here are my top 10 favorites:

1. In your opinion, what are the day-to-day responsibilities of an aerospace engineer?

Answer : since the job field is so broad, the responsibilities of an aerospace engineer range from flight testing, design, parts manufacturing, system control, and others. In most cases, professionals get a mix of field and desk activities, alternating between testing and problem-solving.

It’s also a good idea to ask a candidate about the tools aerospace engineers use .

2. What is the difference between aeronautical and astronautical engineering?

Answer : while aeronautical engineering deals with atmosphere-operating vehicles (e.g. aircraft), astronautical engineering deals with machines moving in space (e.g. satellites).

The responsibilities of an aeronautical engineer include funnel testing, flight data analysis, designing robotic aircraft maintenance systems, propulsion development , creating efficient flight trajectories, etc.

On the other hand, the day-to-day work of an astronautical engineer comprises building spacecraft, creating communication systems for space probes, and working on robotic systems for operating satellites or other vehicles.

3. Describe the main elements of electronic warfare

Answer : these elements are:

Electronic protection (EP) - using both passive and active techniques to protect personnel.
Electronic attack (EA), based on a passive or active denial of the radio frequency spectrum.
Electronic Support (ES) - acquiring data about enemies and allies.

4. What are the requirements for becoming a professional aerospace engineer?

Answer : to be recognized as a professional engineer, one needs to obtain a professional engineer license. To get one, college graduates take the Principles and Practices of an Engineering test in their specialty.

5. Describe which augmentation lift devices are used in aircraft design?

Answer : although there are different tools engineers use for lifting, flaps - the movable parts of the wing - are the most common ones. There are different types of flaps used in aircraft models - e.g., fixed or retractable.

There are trailing- and leading-edge flaps that help manipulate the airflow. The former reduces the airflow pressure on the wing while the latter improves the wing’s camber.

6. What is the use of rudders?

Answer : the purpose of a rudder is to keep the vehicle straight by providing latitude. Other than that, it makes turning an aircraft slightly easier. Finally, a rudder helps reduce the risk of a vehicle entering the spin - even if it does, stabilizing will take less time.

As for smaller aircraft models, rudders are commonly used to steer a jet or an airplane while it’s on the ground.

7. Which design features help optimize the efficiency of airliners flying at high altitudes?

Answer : To make sure an aircraft can stay stable at high altitudes while maintaining an equally high speed, engineers increase the wings’ stiffness and make sure they resist diversion by torsion. Another popular design feature is equipping a vehicle with two sets of ailerons and pairing them with spoilers.

To find out more about fuel assistance design features, check out the post we wrote covering wingtips, winglets, and sharklets .

8. How is aircraft speed classified based on the Mach number?

Answer : there are six types of aircraft speed determined by the Mach number (listed in the table below).

Name of the category	Mach number	Example
Subsonic	Less than 0.8	Most commercial aircraft models, propeller-driven aircraft
Transonic	0.8-1.2	Aircraft models with swept wings.
Supersonic	1.2 - 5.0	Supersonic aircraft models have distinct features: thin aerofoils, sharp edges, all-moving canards or tailplanes. F-104 Starfighter or BAC/Aerospatiale Concorde are some examples of supersonic vehicles.
Hypersonic	5.0-10.0	The X-15 is one of the most prominent examples of hypersonic aircraft models. Small wings, a nickel-titanium body are the vehicle’s exceptional characteristics.
High-hypersonic	10.0 - 25.0	Examining high-hypersonic vehicles like NASA X-43 makes the need for thermal control vital. Other than that, to avoid corrosion, engineers should protect a vehicle using silicate tiles.
Re-entry speed	Greater than 25	Poster characteristics of such models are a blunt shape and reduced (if any) wings.

Are you curious about the fastest plane ever created? Find out more about it in our post .

9. What are the main categories of vehicle maintenance?

Answer : there are two main types of aircraft maintenance - avionics and mechanical .

Avionics is a branch of maintenance that deals with reviewing the condition of flight instruments and radars.

Mechanical maintenance ensures the error-free operation of engines, airframes, equipment, and power systems.

10. Why is it important to account for strain when designing aircraft?

Answer : the strain is the way the material of an aircraft is affected when outside forces (e.g. airflow pressure) are acting on it.

There are three strain types - compressive, tensile, and shear. Accounting for them during aircraft production helps prolong the plane’s longevity and avoid deformation.

Conclusion

Hiring an aerospace engineer for the project is an important decision. That’s why it’s better to take job interviews seriously and take all the time needed to gauge out how skilled a candidate is. Asking aerospace engineers a series of behavioral and technical questions is a powerful way to test both a skill set and a cultural fit.

If you want to hire a team of aerospace engineering experts , consider reaching out to experienced providers of engineering services. Post your project on Engre and get matched with a top team to bring your idea to life. Take a look at the industries we support as well as the list of service providers.