my own experiences both as an individual contributor and later on in engineering management / leadership,
observations in the industry,
discussions with friends and colleagues, and
interviewing many engineering manager candidates.

At this time, I have broken down the interview into 3 rounds, but I think there is scope for fitting in one more round in there - I will likely revisit this in the future and update the post at that point.

Behavioral Skills

Communication Skills [Round 1] [Round 2] [Round 3]

How well does the candidate communicate?
How well does candidate convey technical information?
Does candidate dive deep and into specifics?
Is candidate concise and to-the-point?
Was candidate able to get their point across and was responding accurately to questions. Communication can be both written and verbal; the candidate’s resume is a sample of their ability to communicate in written form.
Typically, ask the candidate
- to give a summary of their work experiences, focusing on last few years. [Round 3]
- to talk about their most impactful project. [Round 2]

Context on Job Switch [Round 3]

Why are you looking for a new job?
Why <this company> and what do you know about <this company>?
What are your looking for in next job? What are you looking for in terms of career growth?

Inquisitiveness, Ability to Learn New Things and Generally Always Looking to Improve [Round 3]

How do you keep yourself updated with new developments in the technological landscape?
What is something new (technical) you have learnt recently?
Does candidate have a mindset of continuous improvement? Does the candidate actively seek out opportunities to learn new skills? Is candidate approaching the interview process as a discussion and opportunity to learn something.

Awareness [Round 1] [Round 2] [Round 3]

Receptive to feedback for self and team.
Exhibits ability to learn and improve.
Has an idea of their strengths and weaknesses.

Empathy [Round 1] [Round 2] [Round 3]

Has the ability to understand others’ perspectives?

Passion and Sense of Ownership [Round 1] [Round 2] [Round 3]

Tell me about one technical problem you solved that you particularly recall and how did you solve it?
Tell me about your most impactful project.

Not Afraid to Take on Challenges [Round 1] [Round 2] [Round 3]

Evaluate the candidate’s desire to tackle problems of significant complexity. Look for history of working on challenges projects and innovating novel solutions.

Will Speak Up and Proffer Positive Change [Round 1] [Round 2] [Round 3]

Looks for signs of candidate improving processes and proposing best practices in previous jobs.
Does candidate make things better? Does candidate bring about positive change?
Does candidate challenge the status-quo and proffer positive change, while doing so in a positive / diplomatic manner? Keep in mind not to confuse this with insubordination or going off in different direction or not bring a team player, which are different things.
Will candidate bring good ideas to the table?

Tenacity and Resoluteness [Round 1] [Round 2] [Round 3]

Will candidate give up when things get tough?
How does candidate deal with failure?

Culture Fit [Round 1] [Round 2] [Round 3]

Is candidate curious?
Is candidate hard-working?
Does candidate have a generally positive and can-do attitude?

Technical Competency

Programming Languages of Choice and Self-Rating in Decreasing Order of Skills [Round 1]

Ask candidate to rate self on top n programming languages of choice. This is more of a check for self-awareness.

Data Structures and Algorithms [Round 1]

A coding exercise to test for code competency. Does not need to be at the same level as a senior IC, but candidate must exhibit ability to understand problem by identifying the correct algorithm. A problem at difficulty level between easy to medium would be apt. Working code must be provided, even if candidate needs few hints along the way. Candidate should also be able to reason through time and space complexity.

Systems Design [Round 2]

Candidate must exhibit a strong understanding of machine learning and is applications with regard to large-scale systems. This may include things like understanding deep learning frameworks, NLP, ML tooling including working with ML pipelines, etc. From large-scale systems perspective, it may include consistency models, CAP theorem, retry handling, pub-sub architectures, etc.

A typical way to probe for this may be to have candidate give a rundown of a relevant project from their resume. Another approach could be asking candidate about a specific ML systems problem and seed a discussion from there touching on multiple concepts. Candidate does not necessarily need to have a direct answer, but needs to demonstrate:

strong understand of machine learning
strong understanding of large-scale distributed systems.
ability to hold their own in a technical conversation.
ability to ask the right questions.

Some possible questions may be around:

Design a natural language search engine for a large corpus of text that is updated in real-time based on newly available text.
Can you explain what are embeddings? What is chunking? What is tokenization? How does chunk size matter?
How would you design a model fine-tuning systems. What are the considerations?
How would you optimize for improving model inference time?
What are the pros and cons of a low-latency inferencing systems?

Experience with Public Cloud Platforms and/or Open-Source Big-Data Technologies [Round 2]

Probe candidate on experience with public cloud platforms and open-source big-data technologies.

How Hands-on [Round 3]

Does candidate still write code, even if not daily?
Does candidate do code reviews?
What sort of development tickets does candidate work on?
What percentage of candidate’s time is spent on coding, design discussions, etc.?
Is candidate interested in keeping their technical skills intact (to some degree)?

Experience in Providing Technical Direction (even as an IC) [Round 3]

Data driven decisions.
Ability to convince others.
Following-through.
Dealing with setbacks.

Managerial Skills

Motivation – Why Manager (and not IC) [Round 3]

Candidate should have decided to become a manager for the right reasons. We absolutely want to avoid individuals who decide on a managerial track because they might not have been good coders, and/or they think it is easier than being an IC. Some acceptable answers may be:

Likes helping developers with career development.
Likes cross-functional collaboration.
Likes building teams.
Likes hiring / mentoring developers.
Likes having a sense of ownership / responsibility over a product.

Key Values / Tenets [Round 3]

What are some of the key values / tenets candidate establishes in their team? In general, what is their leadership style / philosophy.

People Leadership

Retaining High Performers [Round 1]

What is candidate’s philosophy around retaining high performers? How do they go about it? Look for specific data points.

Keeping high performers engaged and challenged.
Providing career development opportunities.
Providing opportunities for broader impact.
Coaching them and providing opportunities for working with stakeholders.
Giving them a say in direction of team, growth, etc.
Making them important stakeholders in success of team and its charter.
Rewarding them - compensation and responsibilities
Gradually mentoring them into leadership opportunities.

Handling Low / Poor Performers [Round 1]

What is candidate’s philosophy around handling poor performers? How do they go about it? Look for specific data points. Ask for examples if any.

Do they look for any root causes?
Are they able to identify a potential problem before it even develops into a problem?
Do they have a plan for helping any dev get out of a rut?
- Dev plan – an informal improvement plan.
- PIP (formal) - PIP should not be a way to manage a person out of the company. The candidate should truly believe that the purpose of the PIP is to help the dev get back on track. And candidate as manager should be invested in that process.
Do they also have a point after which they are willing and able to make difficult decisions as people leaders?

Retaining Talent [Round 1]

Keeping team morale high.
Working with lead developers to proactively identify risks of attrition.
What steps would candidate take to prevent the loss of a developer?

Handling Conflicts [Round 1]

How does candidate (or how would they) handle conflict?

Do they take a neutral stand?
Are they able to leave any bias at the door?
Do they work towards resolution?
Are they able to keep team unaffected / insulated?

Expectations from a Senior Level Engineer [Round 1]

What attributes and signals would candidate expect from a senior level candidate in their team? In terms of technical competency, leadership, mentoring?

Promoting Developers [Round 3]

What is candidate’s process around promoting developers? What would candidate do if a junior dev who has been around for around 1.5 years in a 1:1 says that s/he would like to get promoted to a senior dev?

Ideally, we would like to see candidate anticipate this sort of situation where they have already been working with said individual on a career development plan.
A dev should ideally be exhibited expected signals for a level at which point they get promoted to that level, so they are set up for success.
Candidate should exhibit an approach where they work with the dev with a specific promotion plan. Regular check-ins are necessary so that any course correction can be made if needed.

What does a typical 1:1 look like for you [Round 3]

With direct reports?
With your manager?

Miscellaneous [Round 3]

How big is your team?
What does day-to-day / typical day look like?
- Look for signals of time management, cross-functional collaboration, wearing multiple hats, being invested and active in the immediate team, etc.

Processes and Best Practices

Interviewing Methodology [Round 2]

What is the candidate’s process for interviewing?
Are they involved in the process?
Do they take a role in defining and/or refining the process?
Have they established standards that their candidates need to meet?
Do they encourage and help their own devs become good/effective interviewers?

Sprint Planning / Development Cycle [Round 2]

What sort of development process is followed?
If Agile - Scrum, how long are sprints?
How is sprint planning done?
- Look for collaboration with stakeholders.
- Does EM look to make the actual planning meeting run as smoothly as possible?
How is sprint progress tracked?
How are MSA items handled?
What does review and retrospective look like?

Look for a well-defined process.
Does candidate use objective data?

Performance Reviews [Round 3]

What is candidate’s role in the performance review process?
Does candidate collate (360) feedback, and if so, how?
Does candidate use quantitative data?
How does candidate provide perf review feedback to employees?

Collaboration (Including Cross-functional) [Round 3]

Within Team

Does candidate foster a culture of teamwork and collaboration?
Does candidate give credit to others? Looks for “I” vs. “We” when candidate speaks of positive accomplishments.
Does candidate proactively ensure developers do not end up being compartmentalized?

Collaboration with Product / Program Management

How does candidate work with PMs.
How does candidate manage asks from PMs that may come in the middle of sprint?
How does candidate foster a successful working relationship with PMs?
How does candidate handle the tech debt vs. feature conversation with PMs?
Will candidate mentor and coach senior devs on how to successfully handle PM engagements?
Will candidate mentor lead engineers to more more closely with PMs as he/she takes more of a “being-in-the-loop” role?
How does candidate handle conflicting priorities with PMs?

How does candidate manage a smooth and non-disruptive pipeline of operational issues?
Does candidate establish best practices?
What is candidate’s philosophy around operational excellence?
5 9s?

Driving Engineering Initiatives [Round 2]

Keeping team / developers motivated.
Tracking and reporting progress.
Ability to keep team / developers focused.
Ability to meet timelines.
Managing stakeholder expectations.

Interview Format

There will be three rounds. Areas covered in each round have been tagged in the preceding sections.