Wi-Fi continues to grow rapidly and take on more of the traffic that would otherwise go over cellular networks. According to Cisco’s VNI Mobile, Wi-Fi traffic from mobile and Wi-Fi-only devices will account for 53% of total IP traffic by 2019.
“Wi-Fi is part of the way the world works. It’s assumed that’s how you’re going to connect, unless you specify otherwise,” said Matthew Gast, director of product management for Aerohive and the author of several books on Wi-Fi.
Total Wi-Fi hot spots, including commercial, public and “home spots” with dual SSIDs that enable public access, are projected to grow sevenfold by 2020, according to Cisco, from 64.2 million units last year to 432.5 million units in 2020. Asia Pacific will see the most robust growth in hot spots, accounting for nearly 40% of the global total by 2020, with North America coming in at just over 20%.
As part of that growth, companies are looking for engineers familiar with Wi-Fi in positions focused on hardware, software and networks. Among the companies with current openings for Wi-Fi engineers:
Honeywell has openings around the world – including in the U.S., India and China – for software, application, network and test engineers, many of which focus on and/or require Wi-Fi skills. The company has been focused on industrial “Internet of Things” as well as consumer applications, and Bruce Calder, CTO of its Honeywell Process Solutions organization, was quoted in Industry Week as saying HPS is making “a big push on all these emerging technologies like mobility, cloud, analytics, big data, collaboration, mobile devices like wearables and augmented reality.”
In-flight Wi-Fi provider Gogo has a long list of open engineering positions, based mostly in Chicago and Irvine, California, including experts to work on airborne RF hardware development, software engineers with Wi-Fi experience and technical project managers.
Lightbridge Communications, part of Tech Mahindra, is looking for Wi-Fi engineers, including a Wi-Fi field testing engineer in Mountain View, California, and a senior Wi-Fi systems engineer specializing in dense venue deployments.
Staffing agency Cynet Systems has numerous jobs listed that require deep knowledge of Wi-Fi, from contract support positions to full-time jobs in Wi-Fi software engineering, WLAN engineers and automation test engineers.
Wireless networking company Aerohive has a handful of open engineering positions, ranging from a Wi-Fi software focus to leveraging big data analytics and system testing.
Ruckus Wireless, which is the process of being acquired by Brocade, nonetheless still has a wealth of positions open around the world, from the U.S. to India, Israel and Taiwan. The jobs range from software engineering to staff engineers focused on Wi-Fi and wireless system performance engineering.
Boingo Wireless is looking for software engineers and contract RF engineers around the U.S., as well as Wi-Fi network engineers.
Want more insights on where Wi-Fi is headed? Join RCR Wireless News for a webinar on The Future of Wi-Fi this Thursday, and download the free special report available that day.
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