Engineering Manager Interview Questions

General Questions

• What is the role of an engineering manager?
• What was your purpose in moving into management?
• What are you looking for in your next role?
• Why are you leaving your current role?
• Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
• What is the difference between leadership and management?
• What is the largest team you have ever managed?
• What size team are you looking to manage?
• How big a team are you comfortable to manage?
• What are the differences and tradeoffs between managing a small team and a large team?
• What is the composition of your current (or last) team, and how is your team organized?
• Have you managed other managers?
• How is managing other managers different from managing individual contributors?
• How would your current (or last) team describe you?
• How hands-on are you with the team? Are you involved in coding, design reviews, architecture, etc.?
• Do you have experience managing remote teams or individuals? What is different about that?
• What kinds of meetings do you hold to run your team?

Feedback and Performance Management

• What was some difficult feedback you had to give recently? and why was it hard to deliver?
• What was some difficult feedback that you received? and why was it hard to receive?
• How you do coaching and career development?
• Tell me about a few people on your team and the career development plans you created with them.
• How do you coach engineers on your team that are smarter and better engineers than you?
• Have you ever promoted anyone?
• How have you managed low performers?
• Tell me about a time you turned around a low performer.
• How do you deal with difficult team members?
• Have you ever had to fire someone?
• How often do you do 1 on 1s?
• What is the structure of your 1 on 1s?

Hiring Talent

• What do you look for when hiring?
• Tell me about the diversity of your team.
• What do you do ensure you have diversity?
• How do you recruit and hire in SF Bay Area (because it is so hard and competitive)?
• How much time do you spend hiring and sourcing candidates? What do you do?
• How do you work with your recruiters?

Working with Tech Leads and Technology

• What is the role of a tech lead?
• What is the relationship between the engineering manager and tech lead?
• What if all your team is new and junior and you don’t have a tech lead? What if no one on your team wants to be a tech lead, or do the things tech leads do?
• How do you grow and develop tech leads?
• Have you ever disagreed with one of your tech leads?
• What do you do, or say, if one of your engineers is really pushing hard for a new sexy technology (assume: you don’t agree it is the right choice)?
• How do you ensure (code) quality and keep a lid on tech debt?
• How do you establish ownership in your teams?

Prioritization and Execution

• How do you manage multiple requests to your team? How do you deal with competing priorities?
• Did you ever disagree with your product manager about the priority of tasks or if something needed to be done at all?
• How do you see the tradeoffs between scope, quality, and schedule?
• How do you work with product managers, UX team, etc.?
• Tell me about a project you are most proud of.
• Tell me about a time you exceeded expectations and went above and beyond.
• Tell me a time when a project you were responsible for was late or not meeting expectations. What did you do?
• Tell me a mistake you made that hurt the business.
• What was your biggest failure?
• What are you not good at?
• Explain to me the roles and responsibilities in a Scrum team. (This company was very into Agile and Scrum.)

Conflicts

• Tell me a time you had a conflict with another manager and how you resolved it.
• Tell me about a time you did not see eye to eye with your manager and how you resolved it.
• Tell me about a time there was a conflict between members of your team and how you resolved it.

Other Questions

• What is the hardest lesson you have learned as an engineering manager?
• What would you say is the main responsibility or most important thing for an engineering manager to do?
• Tell me about a project that did NOT go as planned and what you learned from it.
• What is an area you are working on improving?
• How have you grown as a manager over the last year?
• Tell me when you took a risk hiring someone and how it worked out.
• How do you measure your success?
• How do you describe your job to people outside the industry?
• How do you build a team?
• How do you keep people motivated?
• What is the point of a 1:1?
• Think of a mistake or failure you’ve made in the past two years. What did you learn from it and/or do differently in the future?
• What would a report/peer/manager feedback on you be? Strengths, areas for development, etc.
• How would you assess if someone is a good manager?
• Why is management attractive to you?
• What in your mind are the responsibilities of a manager?
• What kind of process have you followed in the past and what has worked well for you? What hasn’t worked?
• How do you institute the right process at the right time? How do you know when you need something more formal?
• Have they ever removed process? Why or why not?
• What are you looking for in an engineer when you recruit? Do they prefer to hire only experienced folks? Are they more comfortable with generalists or specialists?
• How have you optimized the recruiting process in the past? Have they thought about the recruiting funnel and how you can optimize different parts of it?
• What are their thoughts on structured interview loops vs. non-structured free-form loops?
• How do you deal with people performance issues?
• Have you ever had to implement a PIP (performance improvement plan)? What are your thoughts on it?
• What are the pros/cons of public vs. private titles?
• How do you identify engineers who could make good managers? How do you help them develop?
• What do you do when a team completely disagrees with the founder/VP on the direction of a product?
• How do you bootstrap technical leadership in an organization that has no public titles?
• How do you handle a great engineer with communication problems?
• How do you handle someone who really wants a promotion but isn’t ready?
• Describe a situation in which you were able to use persuasion to successfully convince someone to see things your way. 
• Describe a time when you were faced with a stressful situation that demonstrated your coping skills. 
• Give me a specific example of a time when you used good judgment and logic in solving a problem. 
• Give me an example of a time when you set a goal and were able to meet or achieve it. 
• Tell me about a time when you had to use your presentation skills to influence someone’s opinion. 
• Give me a specific example of a time when you had to conform to a policy with which you did not agree. 
• Please discuss an important written document you were required to complete. 
• Tell me about a time when you had to go above and beyond the call of duty in order to get a job done. 
• Tell me about a time when you had too many things to do and you were required to prioritize your tasks. 
• Give me an example of a time when you had to make a split-second decision. 
• What is your typical way of dealing with conflict? Give me an example. 
• Tell me about a time you were able to successfully deal with another person even when that individual may not have personally liked you (or vice versa). 
• Tell me about a difficult decision you’ve made in the last year. 
• Give me an example of a time when something you tried to accomplish and failed. 
• Give me an example of when you showed initiative and took the lead. 
• Tell me about a recent situation in which you had to deal with a very upset customer or co-worker. 
• Give me an example of a time when you motivated others. 
• Tell me about a time when you delegated a project effectively. 
• Give me an example of a time when you used your fact-finding skills to solve a problem. 
• Tell me about a time when you missed an obvious solution to a problem. 
• Describe a time when you anticipated potential problems and developed preventive measures. 
• Tell me about a time when you were forced to make an unpopular decision. 
• Please tell me about a time you had to fire a friend. 
• Describe a time when you set your sights too high (or too low).
• How do you “run” your team?
• Tell me when you got feedback about your team and had to make a change based on that feedback. 
• Tell me about a time you had to make a difficult resource tradeoff.
• What was your most successful product or project and why?
• What was your worst product or project and why?
• Explain your quarterly or long term planning.
• How do you manage dependencies in your team and across teams?
• How do you manage existing tech debt?
• How involved were you in developing features and tech spec creation?
• How do you ensure quality?
• What was the interaction like between dev, product management and design and were there opportunities to make improvements?
• Tell me how you helped drive a process or cultural change across teams or orgs.
• Tell me how you communicated your roadmap externally.
• Tell me about a time you received guidance from manager and had get buy in from your team.
• Tell me about a time you had to lead a team through and org change.