Engineering Manager Interview Experiences & Questions
47 real Engineering Manager interviews from 35 companies: what each round covers, the exact questions, and who got the offer.
What to expect · Engineering Manager
Based on 47 real interviews
Engineering Manager interviews by company
The Engineering Manager interview process
Most common round types: Behavioral (30), System Design (27), Technical (18), People Management (15), Coding (10), Data Structures & Algorithms (6).
Real Engineering Manager interview questions
- Why did you apply for this role?
- WHO Interview
- Here is a design on the screen. Can you walk the end to end flow, critique it, and tell us what you would change?
- How would you set the talent bar, run design reviews, and divide work when two people both want the same feature so they can still grow?
- Coding question was not leetcode but it had lot of probing questions.
- Tell me about a project where a stakeholder changed priority in the middle after work had already started. What did you do?
- Present a recent large project end to end.
- Design a system similar to Twitter.
- How would you work with cost management or finance to manage host cost effectively for a large observability system?
- Review this code, identify the problems, fix it, and walk through test cases so it correctly finds the lowest missing integer from a stream of inputs.
- Reviewing TDD
- Tell me about yourself.
- The recruiter screening was mainly about the role, what they are looking for, and the team’s background. We also discussed my previous experience and how it relates to the position.
- We are replacing an old metrics storage system with scaling issues. How would you migrate the data without interrupting live traffic or losing any internal data?
- Tell me about managing poor performance and low performers.
- Write code to validate a solved 9x9 Sudoku board.
- Tell me about a project where resourcing changed in the middle and timelines were affected.
- Walk me through one of your most recent projects.
- Design the ad management logic for surfacing ads based on user preferences or profiles.
- Walk me through the companies and projects on your resume. Why this company, what was that project about, and what was unique about working there?
- Describe a challenging project you worked on and what made it difficult.
- How would you design the new storage system, especially the partitioning, as volume grows from millions of records to hundreds of millions or billions?
- Tell me about a conflict you resolved.
- Given a set of numbers, find the number in the set that is closest to the mean of the entire set.
- Why did you move from IC work into management, and why do you want to keep doing management?
- How do you manage high performers?
- How would you manage your team while working with very senior engineers and other stakeholders on a problem like this?
- How do you give hard feedback to a low performer without losing their motivation?
- Solve a doubly linked list problem.
- What technologies and design patterns did you use, why was the project done, and what impact did it have?
- As a manager, how do you handle trade-offs?
- Design a storage system for large block data, where keys can be up to about 1K and values can be up to about 300K.
- How do you manage a project with hard deadlines if you expect it to slip?
- Solve two easy coding problems in CoderPad.
- Tell me about a bug or mistake you shipped, what the impact was, what you learned, and how you would handle that situation here.
- How do you build and manage a project schedule?
- If we also need to support Europe, how would you keep the data consistent while still giving users low latency?
- How would you handle an underperforming engineer?
- How would you design security for something like Stripe?
- What would you do if there was a feature that was profitable for the company but clearly cost customers more money?
Showing 40 of 225 questions. Open any experience for every question and how the candidate answered.
Latest Engineering Manager interview experiences
“The interview went well overall, but I wish we had spent more time discussing technical topics in depth rather than just covering them at a high level.”
“The process and short and well communicated. The role was removed while I was in the process so that was not good.”
“It was performed by two employees. It was a bit like good cop/bad cop scenario ;) They were both professional, we dug deep into tech, didn't touch any soft skills”
“the initial discussion was over zoom and was very friendly. I was given a brief description of the position, offered to ask questions and then was asked to share more about myself and how I feel…”
“The interview process was professional and informative overall. The recruiter did a good job of explaining the role, the team structure, and some of the challenges the organization is looking to…”
“I got reached out by HM directly, then recruiter call with some hygiene questions - they asked me to prepare well for system design as most candidate chipped during that round. So was I eventually..…”
“The interviewer seemed to be uninterested. It felt like there was no way he would pass me. I should have asked the recruiter properly about what they are expecting.”
“The process was rigorous for the screening. They expect you to be proactive and drive all aspects of the System design. For leadership roles, that's the key and you need to partner with the…”
“Everyone was extremely professional, polite and friendly. It was a very welcoming interview where they kept the pressure off and let the candidate shine.”
“The process is geared towards providing async quality feedback. What went well is providing detailed feedback upfront and being thorough”
“the recruiter was very prompt and communicative. i wish the people doing the interviews were at the same level, sometimes they were very junior”
“Process was good. However it was slow, I needed more practice and time during the technical interview.”
“The initial round with recruiter was good. Along with experience he asked some data platform related questions.”
“This was first technical round of interview, I went through typical System design videos but it needs in depth knowledge of system design rather knowing on high level. I kind of assumed it is going…”
“The request from the interviewer was simple: design Instagram. - Users should be able to upload photos and videos. - Videos up to 1GB - max 1 per day. - Photos up to 10MB - max 5 per day. - Users…”
“Till now it went well. Let me see feedback. All the rounds were very much aligned to leadership principles. Prepare answers in STAR format and try not to tell any details where you have not worked…”
“Prepared a concise self-introduction and walked through a major project from my experience that is highly relevant to the role. For the questions what are you most excited currently? my answer is…”
“didn't go well: (1) missing image data handling was not a good answer. i realized a better solution right after (2) hierarchical classification, how to do level by level? (3) overall infrastructure…”
“The recruiter did not explain very well about the second round. It turned out to be an AI assisted round that included solving for system architecture, implementation scope, staffing and project…”
“The process was more rigorous than anything I’d done at other big tech companies, but the recruiter was actually accurate and helpful on what to prepare. A few things caught me off guard: one round…”
“Practical interviews, focussed on the role requirements. System design had unique twists, but nothing too out there.”
“The process was smooth and candidate friendly. The recruiter gave enough context about the rounds. I found the feedback received was at a very high level and not much details were shared…”
“The process went well. The screening round itself has two interviews: the behavioral one and the technical one. I didn't do well on the technical one, so the behavioral one was very much a…”
“About Why Anthropic. They seem to really care. The recruiter seemed like they were really busy to even talk to me. They got interested after we started speaking. One question on how I handled low…”
“Interviewer were assessing for the role, They were looking for control plane experience. My experience is been with data plane and they were not interested with after then”
“The interviewers were prepared, were all very nice except for one of them. I think by the last round during the onsite they probably made up their mind on not to hire me, I got the feeling. If they…”
“I prepped for a normal EM system design, and then they put half an Anthropic inference design on the screen and asked me to tear it apart. That was when I realized they cared way more about design…”
“The overall interview process consisted of a recruiter screen, a technical call with the hiring manager, a written narrative exercise, and a 5-round virtual loop focusing on System Design, People…”
“Coding question was not leetcode but it had lot of probing questions. I ended up not having sufficient time to complete it. The interviewer sounded positive like I would pass but I didn't”
“The wildest round was not system design. It was a cross-org interview with a cost management partner grilling me on how I would forecast host spend for an observability team, and I had not seen that…”
Frequently asked questions
How many rounds are in the Engineering Manager interview?
Candidates report a typical 3 rounds, usually including a recruiter screen, online assessment, phone screen, take-home assignment.
How hard is the Engineering Manager interview?
Candidates rate it 3.4/5 on average (medium), across 47 interviews.
How long does the Engineering Manager hiring process take?
About 3 weeks from first contact to decision, based on reported timelines.
What percentage of Engineering Manager candidates get an offer?
18% of candidates with a final result got an offer (6 of 33).
What does the Engineering Manager interview focus on?
The most common round types are Behavioral, System Design, Technical, People Management.