The ultimate guide to engineering manager interviews. Developed by FAANG engineers, prep faster with proven strategies, real-world questions, and a structured approach. Get interview-ready in hours.

Engineers working as individual contributors may want to switch to management roles in the middle of their careers. A significant part of this transition will involve preparing for the engineering manager (EM) interview. This course is meant for folks preparing for an EM interview, enabling them to systematically cover the often-asked questions and strategies to come up with good answers.
The course begins with education about the EM role and the interview process for this role. It then covers the patterns and strategies to answer typical management questions in a story-like fashion. These involve people management, project and cross-functional management, and behavioral questions.
The course has been prepared by experienced engineering managers and directors for top-tier tech companies with years of experience giving and taking interviews for this role. This course will help you to persuasively present your own management experience during the interview and get your dream offer.

Acing the Engineering Manager Interview

Your customer can be internal or external. In both cases, it can become tricky to communicate engineering limitations when the customer has a certain vision in mind about what product they want. Balancing your own limitations with the need to satisfy the customer is something you and your team need to calibrate carefully. 



# What the interviewer is looking for 
- How well you manage communication across groups, as well as cross-team collaboration and stakeholder management.
- How you prioritize and execute tasks around requirements. There will always be competing requirements coming in from all sides, and, as an engineering manager, you have to prioritize and put a cost factor on everything. 
- Whether you take a balanced approach or zoom in on the limitations and try to overrule your customer’s concerns.
- How you empathize with the customer’s concerns and demands.

# What a good answer looks like

“When you're faced with certain customer requirements, it takes a bit of maneuvering to get the right amount of information from your client. Sometimes, they will tell you about the ideal solution they want without expanding on the problem. Once you identify the problem, the engineering limitations can be identified, and a solution drafted.

An example from my career is that once, our sales and marketing team wanted us to integrate a particular product with our system. They were adamant about this and were unwilling to consider alternatives. I realized their decision was a premature one based on certain very valid issues. In a meeting with them, I laid down all the repercussions of their decision in front of them, like certain technical issues, all the things they would have to keep in sync, and all the hours that would be spent in maintaining the whole thing. We decided to take a pros and cons approach in trying to explain to them how to decide which product to use. We identified the pros of the product they wanted and then listed the cons as well. This is how we were able to figure out another way.

The important thing was clearly communicating with the customer---in this case, our sales and marketing teams. I had to make sure their concerns were acknowledged and heard, but given that my team and I were the ones who understood how things worked on the engineering side, we had to present a clear picture of what exactly they wanted and what would be the outcome in the long run from an engineering standpoint.”




Let's discuss how to balance engineering limitations with customer requirements.

Introduction

The EM Interview Loop

Management Interview Patterns and Strategies

People Management Questions

Project and Cross-functional Management

Behavioral Questions

How Do You Discuss Engineering Limitations with Customers?