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Estimated reading time: 14 minutes
Assessing engineering manager candidates on the right exercises and rubrics ensures you hire the right fit for you and your team.
The cost of a wrong hire is significant for any company, but when the hire in question is an engineering manager (EM), the stakes rise drastically. Because of these risks, companies use a deliberate and well-defined process to vet EM candidates before bringing them on board.
The role of engineering management varies across teams, companies, and even within a single organization over time. This is one of the reasons why it is difficult to create a guideline for what is assessed in an EM interview. Due to this, the role is often perceived as a catch-all role that encompasses a remarkably diverse set of responsibilities – from gathering customer feedback for product insights to crafting roadmaps, setting priorities, coordinating with dependent teams, providing technical direction, assisting with debugging sessions, preparing promotion documentation, and offering performance coaching, among many other duties.
Drawing from my experience conducting 100+ interviews at Amazon and Juniper Networks and participating in 50+ interviews at Meta, Google, Microsoft, DataDog, Oracle, etc., I’ll outline the key competencies companies evaluate during the EM hiring process, the interview formats candidates should expect, and practical tips to prepare effectively.
Initial screening
This is typically the first step in the interview process and contains one or two interviews. The first call, typically with a recruiter or hiring manager, assesses mutual fit. Recruiters generally gauge cultural fit and verify that candidates meet minimum qualifications.
If a second call occurs, it often involves a preliminary evaluation of competencies. The goal is to evaluate mutual fit before proceeding to an on-site interview. The bar for passing an initial screening is a typically bit lower compared to the on-site interview.
On-site interview
An on-site job interview can vary from one to five interviews, contained to half a day or spread across several days. Before COVID-19, companies used to invite candidates to one of their campuses, hence the name “on-site,” but now, the majority of the companies perform virtual interviews. You’ll meet with different stakeholders, such as senior managers, peers, or cross-functional team members, who will each assess you on specific competencies.
In the on-site interview, the candidate evaluation can involve one or both of these stages:
- Individual assessment: each interviewer focuses on assigned competencies and provides a rating using a standard rubric, for example, this four-tier scale: “does not meet expectations,” “mixed,” “meets expectations,” and “exceeds expectations” to give a more nuanced understanding of each rating. Candidates who deliver consistently outstanding or notably weak performance across most areas typically receive “exceeds expectations” or “lower expectations,” respectively. Those demonstrating a roughly equal blend of strengths and weaknesses may be rated as “mixed.” A candidate who meets all core requirements without significantly surpassing them generally earns “meets expectations.”
- Panel review: once all interviews are completed, a panel consisting of the same or different interviewers may convene. In the meeting, they’ll discuss feedback, strengths and weaknesses, and reach a final hiring decision. In a few companies, panel members, such as the “hiring manager” or “hiring bar raiser,” are empowered to veto in case of a split decision.
Engineering manager evaluation is usually bench-marked across four key competencies: technical leadership, people management, program management, and product management. Depending on the role and the organization, there may also be additional assessments, such as culture fit and domain-specific assessments.
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Technical leadership
When assessing candidates on their technical leadership, it’s important to consider that technical requirements will vary based on the role, level, and organization. Some positions, especially frontline management roles, require managers to be hands-on, i.e., designing large-scale systems, writing code, and even participating in on-call rotations. Even in roles that don’t demand direct coding, companies still assess technical expertise to ensure EMs can guide teams in building and maintaining scalable, high-quality systems.
Technical leadership is typically evaluated across one or two interview types: problem-solving/coding interviews and system-design interviews.
Evaluation rubric for problem solving
In this round, candidates are expected to solve a small technical or business problem. This type of interview generally tests problem-solving skills, computer science fundamentals such as data structures and algorithms, and code quality. Table 1 below outlines a sample rubric used in the evaluation for this type of interview.
Table 1: sample rubric for problem solving
Evaluation rubric for system design
EMs are evaluated on their expertise in building and maintaining production services. This assessment seeks to understand if they make informed technology decisions and can guide a team in building reliable, available, and scalable systems. In these interviews, EMs are often presented with pen-ended questions. The below outlines a sample rubric used for evaluating system design interviews.
Table 2: sample rubric for system design
How to gauge people management skills
People management is arguably the most critical skill for an EM (or any people manager). While they may rely on senior engineers for deep technical expertise or product managers for roadmaps, EMs are accountable for building effective teams, sustaining a positive culture, resolving conflicts, offering feedback, managing performance, and hiring and retaining top talent.
Below is a sample rubric illustrating how people management skills may be assessed via situational questions such as, “Tell me about a time you addressed underperformance on your team” or “How did you resolve conflict between two direct reports?”
Table 3: sample rubric for people management
Program management
EMs are responsible for the projects their team delivers, including setting the right goals, aligning and communicating with stakeholders and the leadership team, proactively identifying risks and mitigation, and prioritizing the high-impact features first. This area is also evaluated by asking situational questions. Situational questions may explore past project planning, stakeholder management, or risk mitigation strategies; for example, “Tell me about a complex project that required coordination with multiple stakeholders.”
Table 4: sample rubric for program management
Understanding a candidate’s product management skills
EMs often have considerable ownership over a company’s product, even if there’s a dedicated product team. The EM role involves balancing customer needs with technical debt, defining KPIs to track progress, and articulating a clear product vision. EMs are also expected to proactively identify customer requirements and chart a roadmap that aligns these needs with overarching business objectives. Questions asked to evaluate product management are “How do you balance between feature requests and technical debt?” and “How do you come up with a roadmap for the product you owned?”
Table 5: sample rubric for product management
Ascertaining a culture fit
Many companies assess cultural alignment through unique lenses. These sets of guiding principles or traits influence day-to-day decisions and how employees collaborate. Expect targeted behavioral questions that probe how well you align with these values.
Domain-specific interviews
Some roles may require deep expertise in particular fields, such as machine learning, computer networks, or distributed systems. Interviewers typically begin with fundamental concepts and then extend the conversation to the boundaries of your knowledge. The depth of the evaluation depends on how critical domain expertise is for the specific position.
Final thoughts
The role of an engineering manager is unique because it requires balancing technical and managerial skills. Engineers act as the connective tissue between teams, stakeholders, and business objectives.
By understanding key competencies such as technical leadership, people management, program management, and product management and the rubrics used to evaluate them, candidates can better prepare for and position themselves for success in interviews.
