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

Building a strong team is essential for an organization. The first step is to hire the right talent. Hiring people can take a long time and a lot of effort. However, it’s a crucial responsibility for a manager to work through their organization’s particular processes to ensure that they hire and retain the right people.

# What the interviewer is looking for

- How you source your team.
- What efforts you make to sell your team to the right candidate.
- How cognizant you are of diversity and inclusion.
- What steps you take to ensure a smooth hiring process.
- How well you prioritize taking out time to hire the right people.

# What a good answer looks like

“Hiring talent varies depending on the project title and the company I work with. For example, I worked at a place where I was the first engineer hired, and I had to build a team of 20+ engineers over the year. The first step was to identify what our hiring needs were and the pace at which we wanted to grow the team. I worked very closely with the product team and management to flesh out what the product roadmap would look like at a high level. Through that, we estimated what team size would be needed and what structure we should follow to deliver that.

In the beginning, we had to do a lot of estimation. For every couple of junior engineers, we would need one senior engineer; for three senior engineers, we would need a principal-level engineer. The sourcing of candidates and their interviews were owned by HR, so we worked closely with them once the requirements were derived from the project roadmap. There can be multiple sources to find new recruits, such as certain universities, or even switching around people within the company and offering referral bonuses. The market in which we were interviewing was also known to have a lot of fluff; often, folks didn't actually possess the skills we would need but would have them listed on their resumes. To counter that, we also added an online test for every candidate to take before their coding interview. The test had rotating questions to avoid plagiarism. 

After that, the biggest challenge was to make compelling offers to the shortlisted candidates. Since they had an offer from us, they most likely had an offer from other places as well. At this point in the process, you have to act as a salesperson and tell them what you think they need and how your company can offer that. It's obviously important to be honest and not give any false ideas, but you have to give them an attractive, yet fair, view of the team. To be able to do this effectively, we had HR ask what the candidate was looking for and why they wanted to leave their old jobs during their interviews. They could have any reason, such as bad timing, or they were bored and were seeking new technologies to work with. We formed a case around this information provided by HR, which helped us pitch convincingly to the candidate. It helped present us as great employers.”

# Red flags in your answer
- Acting on urgency and not spending enough time on the hiring process.


Introduction

The EM Interview Loop

Management Interview Patterns and Strategies

People Management Questions

Project and Cross-functional Management

Behavioral Questions

How Do You Hire Talent?