Interview with your Technical Partner

The Behavioral interview with your technical partner is stressful for many, it shouldn’t be. 

Most PMs (ICs and Managers) will have one round of interviews with a led or people leader within the engineering organization. A lot of people find this interview intimidating, you should not. Working with an engineering partner is a large part of why PMs exist. They are the bridge between engineering and the rest of the company. 

Some companies are more technical than others and might require some architecture diagrams. But generally speaking, you should feel completely comfortable when chatting with your engineering counterpart. If not, the role isn’t a good fit for you.   

This is what might come up on your Interview with the engineering manager you are likely to partner with:

• Walk through a project you're proud of. Go deep on product reqs and how they relate to the system that your engineers built. Speak to general architecture and your understanding of technical underpinnings.

• Speak to AB Testing

• Working with Engineers: How do you build trust with engineering; assess if engineering team estimates are reasonable; weighing technical debt; partnering with your Eng Manager and team; and rolling things out.

• How does product and engineering partner well together? What have you seen work well, and not so well?

• Collaborating with engineers to collect product metrics.

• A time you disagreed with an engineering counterpart, how did you handle it.