ElevenLabs Forward Deployed Engineer Interview Experience
ElevenLabs · Solutions Architect
I passed the interviews and it was verbally confirmed, but when the process was finished they decided they only want to hire in SF. Even though I was open to moving, they saw some immigration risks that they didn’t want to continue.
Interview process
I got into ElevenLabs through a connection and the whole process moved pretty fast, about two weeks end to end. My loop was recruiter screen, a timed coding assessment, a live coding interview in a Google Doc, a customer-style case study, and then a CTO/founder interview. The consistent theme was that they wanted strong individuals, not people who hide behind team language, and they mixed behavioral questions into basically every round. The coding and case rounds were on the harder, more signal-driven side, while the founder round felt a bit off-topic and oddly fuzzy about the actual role definition. I passed the interviews and got a verbal yes, but I ended up not getting the final offer.
Interview rounds · 5
- 1
Recruiter screen
BehavioralThe recruiter screen was more clinical than most initial calls I get. She went pretty deep on experience and motivation, and stayed focused on asking about individual contributions, which I appreciated it because it gave me a clear read on what they care about.
Q1. Tell me about the biggest project you're proud of, and be specific about what you built yourself.
How they answeredI think she was really testing whether I had strong individual ownership. I could feel her trying to separate "team built X" from "I built X," and that theme stayed consistent. The vibe was focused and pretty clinical, but in a good way. I came away thinking they want strong individuals who are proud of specific things they shipped themselves, not people who only talk in team-level abstractions.
Follow-up questions- What exactly was your individual contribution, not just the team's?
- Why are you motivated by this kind of role?
- 2
Online assessment
CodingData Structures & AlgorithmsTechnicalAfter the screen they sent me a timed coding link, basically a CodeSignal-style exercise. It was three questions in about an hour. It did not feel like a brutal bar to me, more like a sanity check.
- 3
Technical round
CodingData Structures & AlgorithmsTechnicalThe live coding round was in a Google Doc in Python, not an IDE, which made it feel a bit more raw. I've seen this problem asked before so it seems like they're pulling from a standard question bank. The hard part was not syntax, it was noticing the permission inheritance edge case and coming up with a clean way to reason about the latest effective access.
Q1. Given a file system with folders and files where each folder can allow or disallow users or groups, write functions to check whether a given user ID has access to a file.
How they answeredI treated it like a permission-resolution problem over a folder tree. The interesting twist was that if a parent folder grants access, everything below inherits it, so you have to walk the hierarchy and figure out the latest applicable rule. I explicitly introduced timestamps to resolve the most recent access change, which I think was the key improvement.
Follow-up questions- How would you handle inherited permissions from parent folders?
- What happens when nested folders have conflicting permission changes over time?
- What changes would you make to the design to determine the latest effective access?
- 4
Other round
Product DesignSystem DesignCustomer InteractionProduct StrategyThe case study was the most role-specific round. The interviewer role-played as a CTO customer and wanted to see whether I could ask good questions, understand the real pain, and come up with a practical solution instead of jumping straight into "let's build agents." It sat somewhere between product, customer discovery, and light system design.
Q1. Imagine I'm the CTO of an airline. When planes break or schedules change, our operators reschedule everything manually and we don't like that. We want to hire you to help us. What would you do?
How they answeredI treated it as an open-ended customer discovery problem. I started by asking how they solve it today, what is most painful, and what success would look like, because I felt the point was to uncover what the customer actually cares about. Once I heard it was heavily manual, I read a cost concern there and steered toward a reasonable system to support or automate rescheduling rather than just saying "let's build agents." I talked through it verbally, sketched boxes in Excalidraw, and got the sense they cared much more about my questions and tradeoffs than some flashy AI answer.
Follow-up questions- How would you understand what actually matters to us?
- How do we solve this today?
- What pain points are you hearing from that current process?
- What would your proposed system actually look like?
- 5
Final / onsite round
BehavioralThe founder round was with the CTO and a lot of it drifted into curiosity about my past work that did not feel very relevant to the actual role. It also exposed some fuzziness around what the forward deployed engineer role owned versus what a solution architect owned.
Q1. Tell me more about your previous company and what happened around the acquisition.
How they answeredThis part felt odd to me. He got pretty curious about a previous company I'd been at getting acquired and wanted nitty-gritty details that felt more like something you'd talk about over drinks than in an interview. I didn't think he meant anything bad by it, but I also didn't feel it generated much signal for whether I could do the job.
Follow-up questions- What were the details around that situation?
Q2. Why ElevenLabs, and how do you think about the customer-facing side of this role?
How they answeredI explained that I really like customer communication, but this is where it got confusing. He brought up the solution architect role and didn't seem to have a crisp answer for how forward deployed engineering was scoped relative to that. My takeaway was that he felt more scientific than operational, like he might spend more time in the science side than the engineering org. That was the one round where I left not fully understanding what signal they were trying to get.
Follow-up questions- How does that differ from what a solution architect would do?
- What exactly does a forward deployed engineer own here?
Tips from the candidate
I'd prep for this by getting really crisp on what I personally built, because they keep pushing on individual ownership. Don't assume there's one separate behavioral round because they weave values questions into almost every interview. For the case study, don't jump straight to some shiny AI answer. Ask how the customer solves it today, what hurts, and what they actually care about, then propose something practical. Also, if you're interviewing for a forward deployed role at a company that also has solution architects, I'd ask early how those two roles split the customer work. And if location or visa matters at all, I'd force clarity on that sooner rather than trusting that it will sort itself out at the end.
Company culture
My read was that they're very result-oriented and pretty flat. I didn't get a warm, people-first vibe. I got a "we care about outcomes and signal" vibe, which some people will really like. They seem to want builders with entrepreneur DNA, side projects, hackathon energy, and clear examples of individual ownership. The process itself felt structured enough that I think they're reusing questions, and they can move very fast when they want to. At the same time, I also saw that headcount/location decisions can shift late, so even if the interview feedback is strong, I'd treat role scope and hiring location as things that still need to be confirmed.