Updated by Meta candidates
Engineering Manager (M1) Interview Experience
Not all interviewers may be able to adequately ask the right questions to go in depth, but they are absolutely looking for you to provide that depth by yourself. Your examples should not be surface level, but show you actually lived through the situation.
Interview process
I interviewed for an M1 Engineering Manager role, and the process included a screening round first, followed by the main loop. The screening consisted of one broad behavioral interview and one system design interview, in which I could choose between machine learning systems, software systems, and products; I chose machine learning. In the main loop, I had another ML system design round, a project deep dive, a team management interview, another behavioral round, and an AI-assisted coding interview. The AI-assisted coding piece was the newest part of the process for me, but the bigger surprise was how behaviorally heavy the EM loop was. My main takeaway is that they expect you to provide depth on your own, even if the interviewer isn't especially good at eliciting it.
- Phone interview
- Technical interview
- Other
- Final round
Interview tips
If I were prepping again, I would spend a lot of time on the behavioral side because for an EM it is extensive. There are three behavior-related rounds in the final loop and one in screening, so you need a lot of examples, and you need them in depth. I would not rely on the interviewer to guide me to the good parts of the story. I would come in ready to show that I actually lived through the situation, with specifics on conflict, performance, ambiguity, delays, and feedback, instead of giving surface-level answers. What I took away is that Meta is evaluating EMs pretty holistically across multiple rounds, especially on leadership depth. The two ML system design rounds felt very similar in style, so it seemed they were treating both as data points rather than treating one as fundamentally different from the other. On the behavioral side, the bar felt high even when the interviewer wasn't great at asking the right follow-ups, because they still expected me to go deep without much prompting. The AI-assisted coding round also felt like a newer process element, so it seems like they are experimenting a bit while still keeping the core EM evaluation very behavior-heavy.
Questions asked
Overview
There was also a separate behavioral round in the final loop, which reinforced how much weight they put on detailed leadership examples for EM candidates.
Question types asked
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