Engineering manager interview questions

I think that elaborating on interview questions for the Engineering manager role is an interesting topic. Especially because I'm looking for a new job now, and I sometimes have an interview, and I note questions.

Let's go with the first set of questions I noted this morning!

Can you provide an example of where you've initiated and implemented an Engineering Process improvement that has helped your team(s)?

A team complained that they have a lot of meetings and they constantly don't have enough time to focus on their tasks. We checked the schedule of events for the team, and I noticed that all the meetings in the schedule are spread over a day. I implemented the rule "no meetings after lunch". I aligned with stakeholders, PM, PO that they should try to follow this rule. Finally, I got positive feedback that the team's performance increased.

Can you provide an example of how you've influenced a strategic decision that had a positive impact on those within and outside of your direct team?

The team I was on once implemented a new integration based on file processing. Unfortunately, we encountered an unexpected file structure in the production environment and couldn't revert back. This led to having to handle a half-million EUR flow daily. Initially, we had to manually fix the data in the files until we updated our software to accommodate the new file format. To alleviate the demotivation among the team, I proposed a solution of using weekly shifts with 2 team members, which proved to be very effective. This practice was later adopted across the department and now we have dynamic incident resolution teams in place.

Can you provide an example of a time when you've made or influenced an architectural decision that helped your team and the product(s) they support?

It is about the same integration I wrote above. Supporting a new file structure required a significant amount of effort and time. To address this, I proposed that the team create a preprocessor to automatically fix the files before they are processed by our system. While this wasn't a complete fix, it did reduce the time spent resolving incidents from 12 mandays per week to 5 mandays per week. Importantly, this architectural decision did not require system interruptions or regression testing time. This approach proved to be easy and efficient, and the preprocessing has since become an official part of the system, incorporating several short-term solutions.

When developing your people, what is the most important thing you do to support them?

In my opinion, trust and self-management are the most important things in a team. I coach people in my team who don't hesitate to act, follow internal processes, and are not afraid to make mistakes and learn from them. To implement this, I use one-on-one meetings, sometimes participate in retrospectives, and prepare presentations together with Agile coaches to teach teammates to resolve their impediments. I always clarify the processes to my teammates instead of being a middleman.