ElevenLabs Full-Stack Engineer Interview Experience
ElevenLabs · Frontend Engineer
I thought they meant a technical decomposition interview, and then I got there and they were like, oh no, we’re actually talking about product. I was basically ad libbing for 45 minutes, trying to mentally adjust in real time.
Interview process
I got in through a referral for a front-end leaning generalist engineering role, and the whole process was way more streamlined than most engineering loops I've done. It was a recruiter screen, a LeetCode-style Python round, a practical front-end debugging round in a small React app, and then a final decomposition interview that turned out to be much more product-focused than I expected. The interviewers were generally engaged, friendly, and professional, and the recruiter was especially responsive, but the final round felt awkward because I never really knew what they wanted from me. What stood out most was how short the process was and the fact that there was no system design at all. They seem to expect their engineers to have real product sense, not just coding skills.
Interview rounds · 4
- 1
Recruiter screen
BehavioralProject DiscussionI started with a pretty standard recruiter screen. The recruiter was extremely nice and super responsive anytime I wanted to clarify something, and it felt more like checking boxes than really evaluating me. He told me exactly what the process would be, and that part ended up being totally accurate.
Q1. Can you give me an intro, talk through your last role, and tell me what you're looking for in general?
How they answeredI gave a quick intro, talked through my most recent role, and then gave a pretty generic answer about what I was looking for: culture fit, learning opportunity, career growth, compensation, and location. He basically nodded along and was like, yeah, that makes sense. It didn't feel like he was probing very hard. He also didn't ask me why ElevenLabs, which stood out a little.
- 2
Technical round
CodingData Structures & AlgorithmsThe first technical was just a LeetCode-style coding screen. The only process thing I remember clearly is they said not to use LLMs.
- 3
Technical round
DebuggingCodingTechnicalThe second round was a front-end debugging interview, and this one was much more practical. They gave me a small React codebase and had me run the app, click around, figure out what was broken, and implement the missing functionality. The interviewer was very engaged and collaborative the whole time, almost managing me through the problem.
Q1. Here’s a small React web app. Figure out why the text highlighting isn’t doing what we want, then design and implement a fix.
How they answeredThe app was an audio player with a transcript, and they wanted the piece of text currently being read by the audio to highlight in yellow. It wasn't a one-line bug. The core functionality basically wasn't implemented, so I had to reason through how to build the logic, including using a timer. I worked in a small JavaScript/React file, maybe around 150 lines. They were very collaborative and kept nudging me along step by step, which was unusual but actually pretty friendly and professional.
Follow-up questions- What are you doing now?
- Okay, let’s move on. What would you change next?
- 4
Final / onsite round
Product DesignProduct StrategyExecutionThe final round was the weird one. They called it a decomposition interview, and I went in expecting technical decomposition, but it turned out to be much more product-y. It was just one hour, mostly verbal, and I never really got a clear signal on whether they wanted technical thinking, roadmap thinking, or both.
Q1. Imagine you're an engineer working on our audio transcription studio for teams dubbing content from one language into another. Walk us through feature ideas, how you'd prioritize them, and how you'd turn that into a roadmap.
How they answeredI was pretty caught off guard because I expected a technical discussion and suddenly had to do roadmap thinking out loud with no whiteboard. I pulled up their website in real time to refresh myself on the product, then started riffing on areas like the task list view, transcription view, auth, and roles. The hard part was the interviewers gave very short prompts and not much reaction, so I'd talk for a couple minutes, stop, and get the sense they wanted more. I was basically ad-libbing the whole time and trying to infer what they actually cared about.
Follow-up questions- Do you want to talk about the task list view?
- Do you maybe want to talk about the transcription view?
- What do you think about authentication?
- What do you think about roles?
Tips from the candidate
I’d go in expecting a weirdly short process and not assume “decomposition” means technical decomposition. If I were doing it again, I’d explicitly ask what kind of decomposition they mean so I can get in the right headspace before the call. I’d also be ready to talk through product ideas and roadmap tradeoffs out loud without relying on a whiteboard, because that final round felt way more PM-ish than a normal SWE interview. For the coding side, the practical front-end round was totally manageable if you’re comfortable reading a small React app and debugging live.
Company culture
They look like they’re hiring in a very streamlined, low-bureaucracy way. The process was only a few hours of actual interviewing, there was no system design, and the recruiter was very clear and accurate about what was coming. The interviewers themselves felt professional and engaged, and in two rounds there was also a shadow interviewer sitting in. The unusual part is that they seem to expect engineers to cover product thinking too. I was told they don’t have PMs, and that made the product-heavy final round make more sense after the fact, even though I wish they’d framed it more explicitly up front.