Power Generation Application Engineer
Posted Sep 8, 2026 · We last checked this listing on Sep 20, 2026
Likely interview questions for this role
Written from this job description, not a generic list. Each one notes what the interviewer is really checking.
Behavioral
Tell me about your engineering degree and coursework. Why did you choose engineering if you're now looking at a sales-focused career?
whether the candidate has genuinely thought through moving from a technical degree into a customer-facing sales path, rather than defaulting to it
Tell me about a time you had to learn a technical system or process quickly on the job. How did you get up to speed?
ability to absorb the heavy front-loaded training in this role, including SAP, Windchill, and Generac's product lines
Describe a situation where you had to build trust with someone who didn't report to you and wasn't obligated to work with you.
capacity to develop and retain distributor relationships without formal authority
Tell me about a negotiation you were part of, even a small one. What was your role and how did it end?
real exposure to negotiation dynamics versus rehearsed theory, given the job requires negotiating and closing contracts
Tell me about a time you worked on a process improvement, even informally. What did you change and what happened?
fit with the continuous improvement component of the role and whether the candidate looks for structural fixes, not just workarounds
You'll rotate through several business models here, Lead Gas, Telecom and GES, EPC. How do you personally approach being a beginner over and over in a short period of time?
resilience and humility needed for a rotational training structure where mastery keeps resetting
Technical
Explain how a transfer switch works and why it matters in a standby generator system.
baseline technical grounding needed before this person can credibly support distributors and coordinate design options with engineering
What does contribution margin mean to you, and why would a company track it separately from revenue?
basic financial literacy needed to hit the contribution margin targets called out in the job
How do you usually present technical information to someone who isn't an engineer?
communication skill for translating engineering detail into terms a distributor or customer can act on
Situational
This role asks you to relocate outside Wisconsin once training is complete and travel about 75 percent of the time. Walk me through how you're thinking about that.
whether the candidate has actually weighed the lifestyle demands or is just saying yes to get the job
Say a distributor is quoting a project on diesel and you believe natural gas is the better fit. How would you approach that conversation with them?
comfort with the core selling motion of this job, converting diesel quotes to gas, and ability to make a technical case persuasively
A distributor's customer wants a special design option that isn't standard. Walk me through how you'd coordinate that between the distributor and our engineering team.
ability to translate between technical and commercial stakeholders, which is central to the coordinate-design-options duty
If you were handed a sales territory with flat growth for two years, how would you start figuring out what's going wrong?
analytical approach to market expansion and whether the candidate can think in terms of forecasting, budgeting, and P&L rather than just relationships
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As published by Generac.
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