How to Get a Job at Ericsson: Application Process, CV Tips, and What They Actually Look For

Ericsson employs around 100,000 people across more than 180 countries and provides the radio and core network infrastructure that runs a significant portion of the world's 5G networks. It is a different kind of technology employer from the consumer-facing companies that dominate hiring conversations — Ericsson's products are largely invisible to end users but foundational to everything from video calls to autonomous vehicles to industrial IoT. The hiring culture reflects this: it is engineering-deep, process-oriented, and built around the complexity of building systems that must work reliably at global scale under strict standards bodies.

How Ericsson's Hiring Process Works

Stage 1: Application. Ericsson recruits globally but the largest concentrations are in Stockholm (global HQ), Kista (the main R&D campus in Sweden), Linköping, and major offices in Montreal, India (Bangalore, Noida), Hungary, and Germany. Applications go through the Ericsson careers portal. The ATS is keyword-based and the job descriptions are specific about the technologies and domain expertise required — telecom is a niche field and generic applications without relevant background rarely progress.

Stage 2: Recruiter or HR screen. A 20-30 minute call assessing your background, interest in the role, and work authorization status. Ericsson sponsors highly skilled migrant visas for certain technical roles in Sweden, but the process is structured and requires demonstration of rare expertise. The recruiter screen also establishes whether your background actually maps to telecom — candidates from adjacent fields without any networking or embedded systems exposure are often redirected or declined at this stage.

Stage 3: Technical assessment or take-home. For R&D and engineering roles — which make up the majority of Ericsson's technical headcount — this typically includes a technical questionnaire or coding assessment, sometimes combined with a take-home problem. The domain is important here: Ericsson's technical interviews are calibrated to telecom protocols (3GPP standards, LTE, NR, IMS, EPC, 5G Core), embedded C/C++, DSP, and radio frequency systems. Candidates with a pure web software background are assessed against a different rubric than those with embedded or networking backgrounds.

Stage 4: Technical interview. One or two interviews with senior engineers or a hiring manager focused on technical depth. For hardware and radio roles: RF design, antenna theory, signal processing, protocol stack. For software roles: embedded systems, real-time operating systems, protocol implementation, cloud-native network functions (CNCF, Kubernetes, OpenStack for network), and CI/CD for large-scale C/C++ codebases. For product management and commercial roles: telecom market knowledge, operator (telco) relationship management, and the business model of network equipment vendors.

Stage 5: HR interview and offer. A final conversation with HR covering values, working style, and practical details. Offers in Sweden are made in line with applicable collective bargaining agreements; salary expectations should be set accordingly.

Total timeline: four to ten weeks. Ericsson's process is methodical.

What Ericsson Actually Looks For

Deep telecom domain expertise. Ericsson operates in a highly specialized field. The 3GPP standards that define how mobile networks work — Release 15 through 18 for 5G, and the ongoing work on 5G Advanced and early 6G research — are the technical context for nearly all of Ericsson's R&D work. Candidates with direct experience in LTE/NR radio access network, 5G Core (AMF, SMF, UPF), IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem), or packet core architectures are at an immediate advantage.

Reliability and standards orientation. Ericsson's products must work — not in the "our web app was up 99.9% of the time" sense, but in the "a hospital network or a country's emergency services depend on this infrastructure" sense. Candidates who have worked in safety-critical, high-reliability, or standards-compliant domains (aerospace, defense, medical devices, financial infrastructure) understand this mindset and adapt to Ericsson's engineering culture faster.

Systems-level thinking. Ericsson's architecture spans radio hardware, embedded firmware, virtualized network functions, cloud orchestration, and managed services. Engineers at any level need to understand how their component connects to the broader network. Candidates who can discuss system-level trade-offs — latency vs. throughput, centralized vs. distributed processing, software-defined networking vs. hardware acceleration — are valued.

Collaboration across time zones and cultures. Ericsson's R&D is distributed across Sweden, India, Hungary, Montreal, and other centers. Teams routinely include engineers from five or more countries. The ability to collaborate asynchronously, communicate with precision in English across technical and cultural contexts, and manage deliverables across time zones is not optional — it is a daily reality.

For commercial and product roles: operator relationships. Ericsson's customers are mobile network operators — Vodafone, AT&T, T-Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, Telia, and their peers globally. Candidates for product management, sales, and solution architect roles are evaluated on their understanding of how operators buy, deploy, and manage network infrastructure. Knowing the difference between CAPEX and OPEX conversations in telecom, understanding operator RFP processes, and having direct operator-facing experience are strong signals.

CV Advice Specific to Ericsson

List your 3GPP standards knowledge explicitly. This is not standard practice in most CV writing guides, but at Ericsson it is directly relevant. If you have implemented LTE RRC, worked on 5G NR PDCP/RLC, implemented SIP for IMS, or built gNB/gNB-DU software, these specific protocol and interface names belong in your CV. Generic "worked on 5G" is far weaker than "implemented 5G NR MAC scheduler in C++ for a gNB product compliant with 3GPP Release 16."

Include patents and publications. Ericsson is one of the most active patent filers in the world — it holds around 50,000 patents including foundational SEPs (standard essential patents) for 4G and 5G. If you have patents, publications in IEEE or IEEE Communications Letters, or contributions to standards bodies (ETSI, IETF, 3GPP working groups), include them. They are meaningful signals at Ericsson in a way they are not at most employers.

Certifications in telecom and cloud are relevant. For engineers working on cloud-native network functions: CKA (Certified Kubernetes Administrator), AWS or GCP certifications (Ericsson uses both for managed services), and RHCE for OpenStack-based deployments are valued. For more traditional network engineering: vendor certifications in OSPF, BGP, MPLS, and NSO (Ericsson's own network automation platform) are relevant.

Adjust the format for the division. Ericsson's business units differ significantly: Networks (radio access), Cloud Software and Services (cloud-native network functions, OSS/BSS), Enterprise Wireless Solutions, and Managed Services. The CV that works for a radio software role in Networks should look different from one targeting an OSS/BSS product manager role in Cloud Software and Services.

For Swedish-based roles: Gothenburg Swedish (and Kista is in Stockholm). The Kista campus in Stockholm is Ericsson's primary R&D hub. Swedish is widely used in day-to-day office life even though English is the official working language. Mentioning Swedish proficiency is worth it if you have it.

Common Mistakes Candidates Make

Generic software engineering CV applied to Ericsson. A CV built for web or cloud-native SaaS roles does not map well to Ericsson without significant tailoring. Ericsson's engineering is predominantly embedded, real-time, and protocol-oriented. A React/Node.js-focused CV for a backend software role will be screened out before any human sees it.

Overstating telecom knowledge. Ericsson interviewers are domain experts. Candidates who describe familiarity with "5G technologies" without being able to discuss specifics — what the NR air interface changes from LTE are, what the functional split is in the disaggregated RAN architecture, what gNB-CU/DU/RU mean — are quickly identified as having surface knowledge rather than depth. Only claim what you can defend.

Not researching Ericsson's current business situation. Ericsson has navigated significant headwinds — the DOJ settlement over bribery in Iraq and other markets, the reputational damage, the competitive pressure from Huawei and Nokia. Candidates who come into interviews without awareness of the company's recent history and turnaround effort read as disengaged. Showing that you have read Ericsson's technology strategy publications and annual reports is a basic due diligence signal.

Expecting a consumer tech culture. Ericsson is not a startup-adjacent tech employer. The processes are longer, the documentation standards are higher, the release cycles are longer, and the culture is more formal than at Stockholm's fintech and consumer tech companies. Candidates who need frequent public recognition, rapid career advancement, or startup-style equity are often disappointed.

Ignoring the IP angle. Ericsson monetizes its patent portfolio significantly — licensing fees from Huawei, Apple, Samsung, and others contribute meaningfully to revenue. Candidates for technical roles who have prior patent experience or who demonstrate understanding of standard essential patents and FRAND licensing stand out for roles with any IP adjacent responsibility.

Ericsson's engineering culture rewards deep specialists who can demonstrate their technical domain clearly and specifically. NextCV tailors your CV to the precise technical language and domain signals that Ericsson's job descriptions require — so your expertise reads clearly to engineers who know exactly what they are looking for.