Interviewing a forward deployed engineer means testing two things at once: can they build, and can they work with the people who will use what they build? This guide sets out a four-round loop and the questions to ask in each round.
A four-round loop
- Shipped work. A deep conversation about something the candidate put into production.
- A case. A realistic problem with unclear scope and imperfect data.
- A customer conversation. A non-engineer plays the business owner.
- Production debugging. Something is broken in a system they did not build.
Shipped-work questions
- Walk me through something you shipped to production for users. What was your part?
- What broke after launch, and how did you find out?
- What would you do differently with what you know now?
- Who used it, and what did they push back on?
Case questions
- Here is a vague request from a business owner. What do you ask before you build anything?
- The data you need is spread across three systems that disagree. What do you do first?
- Security will not grant access for two weeks. How do you use that time?
- How would you know whether what you built is working?
Customer conversation questions
- Explain a technical trade-off in this design to someone who has to approve the budget.
- The business owner wants a feature you think is a mistake. How do you handle it?
- An operator does not trust your system's recommendations. What do you change?
Production debugging
- Here are logs from a failing integration you have never seen. Talk me through what you look at.
- The answer is almost right, but not quite. How do you find out why?
Red flags
- Cannot describe a system they shipped in concrete detail.
- Starts building before asking what the problem is.
- Talks down to the non-engineer in the customer round.
- Blames the customer's environment rather than working within it.
This is the same shape as how we vet engineers.