Program Engineer Interview Experience
The system design round was basically, “Come up with a radar tower model for a moving ship,” and even though they said I didn’t need defense experience, the interviewer definitely got a little frustrated when I didn’t know the air defense specifics.
Interview process
A recruiter found me on LinkedIn, then I had a recruiter screen, a surprisingly early screen with a skip-level manager in the air defense org, and then a four-part panel. The panel was one domain-heavy system design plus three behavioral TPM-style interviews on execution, ownership, deliverables, decision-making, and alignment. The hardest part by far was the technical/system design round because it was built around designing radar coverage for a moving ship, and even though they said they knew I didn't come from that industry, the actual expectations still felt pretty domain specific. Everyone I talked to was very professional and genuinely into the work, and even the skip-level person was unusually involved in the details. I didn't get the role because they wanted someone a little more senior for that L6 spot.
- Recruiter screen
- Phone interview
- Final round
Interview tips
I'd say treat the TPM part like a pretty standard big tech loop, but go way deeper on the actual domain than you normally would. For me that meant digging into air defense, Anduril's products, radars, how those systems work, and even the subdomains under that. The technical round was very team specific, so generic system design prep only gets you part of the way there. Also ask the interviewers a lot of questions, because the people I talked to actually had real context and would give useful answers.
Company culture
This team was pretty flat, pretty serious, and very mission oriented. Everybody I talked to was professional, engaged, and clearly cared a lot about the work, and even the more senior people seemed very hands-on. The process itself felt like they were borrowing the big tech pillar model, but in practice there was more overlap across interviews than you'd expect. They do bring up startup expectations, but mostly in an implicit way, like probing for whether you're okay with longer hours and a lean environment instead of saying it outright. On the defense side, they do not make ethics a big explicit interview topic unless you bring it up first. The recruiter was better informed than a lot of big tech recruiters I've talked to, and the fact that they wanted someone slightly more senior for this role also made it feel like they're hiring pretty intentionally right now.
Questions asked
Overview
The final was a four-part panel that felt a lot like a big tech loop broken into pillars, except the interviews overlapped more than I expected. Three of the four were basically behavioral TPM rounds on execution, ownership, deliverables, ambiguity, decision-making, and alignment. The outlier was the system design round, which was very domain specific and centered on air defense on a moving ship. That was the one round where I felt real tension because they said upfront they knew I didn't come from that industry, but once we got into it the expectation felt higher than that.
Question types asked
Specific questions asked
Where on the ship would you place the radars to maximize sensing around it at all times?
How is this different from one of our standard ground-based products?
What difficulties do you foresee because it's on a ship instead of on land?
What sort of radars would you use, and would you use something different from our freestanding ones?
I handled it at a broad functional design level instead of a classic component-by-component system design. I reasoned from coverage, radar placement, ship movement, and the need to sense around the ship at all times, and I tried to tie that back to the air defense products and radar concepts I'd researched beforehand. They led a lot of it question by question, which helped, but this was still the round where the interviewer got a little frustrated because my domain knowledge wasn't as deep as theirs.
What do you do at the beginning of a program?
How do you scope it out and find the right people?
How do you lead the team through execution and closeout?
What TPM tools have you used?
Do you have experience with the technical areas in the job description?
I walked through my full program flow: how I scope the work, identify the right people, run the process through execution, and close things out at delivery. I also covered the TPM tools I've used and tied my background back to the specific technical asks in the job description. Since this was with the actual hiring manager, it felt very much like, can this person step in and run the job.
I explained how I surface risk early, communicate it clearly, and make tradeoffs when something starts to derail the plan. Risk came up all over this process, and here it felt like they cared just as much about the communication path and judgment as the mitigation itself.
How did you handle ambiguity?
What did you do when you hit a last-minute blocker?
I used an example around stepping in on work that wasn't formally mine and pushing it to a deliverable anyway. The interviewer kept layering on ambiguity and last-minute blockers, so it ended up feeling a lot like another risk and execution round. The overlap with the hiring manager interview was noticeable, but they were clearly testing ownership and whether I can keep things moving when the edges are messy.
What processes do you use?
Why did you set up those processes?
I talked about how I get the data I need, what processes I put in place, and why I set those processes up in the first place. The interviewer seemed to care less about a fancy framework and more about whether my decision-making is deliberate and whether I can justify it.
What has your startup experience been like?
Are you comfortable with longer hours?
Do you have any concerns about the mission or the work this position would be doing?
I told them I'm familiar with startup life, including building process from scratch and working beyond a standard 9 to 5 when needed. Their questions were pretty implicit, but I read them as testing whether I was really okay with the pace and the mission. They also explained what the company does and why, then asked if I had any concerns about the work.
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