Apple Engineering Manager (EM) Interview Guide

Engineering leaders at Apple understand scale, have a passion for consumer products, and are on board with Apple’s uniquely intense obsession with loyalty and privacy. The Engineering Manager role at Apple is hands-on, so hiring managers will test your coding skills during the interview. A decade of overall experience is a prerequisite, and you’ll need ample experience managing engineering teams.

Generally, engineering managers at Apple are compensated above market rates. There are three levels for engineering managers at Apple: M1, M2, and M3. Their average total compensation is:

• M1: $383k
• M2: $557k
• M3s: $715k

Apple EM interview

Each Apple team has a specific hiring process, which is different from a company like Google, where all teams have the same process. Candidates should expect a high degree of variability between interview loops with different Apple teams, because they’re notorious for refining their interview process to fit the exact needs of the position. For example, if you’re going to manage a team of Swift engineers, your technical round might be a deep dive solely into Swift.

Apple’s workplace culture is unique from other companies because of their obsession with privacy and loyalty, so familiarize yourself with their approach and values before your interview:

Privacy

Apple’s obsession with privacy isn’t just a marketing gimmick—it’s a pattern in their organizational culture. When Steve Jobs said, “Isn't it funny, a ship that leaks from the top,” he was referring to his own habit of being tight-lipped with the press. You can see the effects today: current employees are tight-lipped too, and trying to get details out of an Apple employee can be very challenging.

Why this matters for candidates: an Apple interview is harder to prepare for because while the content of each interview round varies widely, it’s tough to extract specifics to prepare when the team .

Loyalty

Without their undying loyalty to making great products, Apple wouldn’t be Apple. When Steve Jobs came back to Apple, he asked the good employees why they were still there. They remarked: “I bleed in six colors,” meaning their blood runs in the same colors as the original Apple logo. Fans of Apple used to say the same thing. No other FAANG company has more open or intense common displays of loyalty.

Why this matters to candidates: A Siri hiring manager once said, "If they don't have an iPhone, why would I interview them?" Apple is famously dogmatic about, and loyal to, their products, so candidates should use their products, think about times when an Apple product is associated with a strong emotional memory. When you speak about their products, it’s not enough for you to be passionate. Your words need to elicit emotion from your interviewer.

Interview process

Even though Apple’s hiring process is less predictable than other big tech companies, we've put together an example of what the average hiring process looks like, based on conversations with Apple engineering managers and candidates. Applicants generally describe going through 3–5 interview stages:

• A recruiter screen, if necessary, to check for general fit and that you meet the minimum requirements for the role
• A hiring manager round, which can be technical
• A technical phone screen made up of domain-specific questions
• A final-round interview loop that consists of 6–7 rounds
• A skip-level round, if necessary, to get more signal

Recruiter call (if necessary)

The recruiting round, when it happens, bears no difference to most big tech companies. Expect to be asked about your current role, why you’re looking, why Apple, your past work (as related to the requirements on the job description), and your compensation expectations.

Sample questions include:

Hiring manager round

The hiring manager round will be specific to the engineering manager role you’re applying for, and can be highly technical. Expect nuanced questions about the team’s specific domain and their specific service, and your related experience. For example, if you’re interviewing for the Siri team, they might grill you on Natural Language Processing (NLP). Be diligent in asking your recruiter for more details about their expectations.

Sample questions include:

• Tell me about your experience with speech recognition software.
• How would you improve the user experience of Siri?

Technical screen

The technical screen will be specific to the role you’re applying for. Expect questions about the specific domain and their specific service. For example, a team that does a lot of concurrency in Java might focus entirely on asking you about concurrency in Java.

On this specific team, you might be asked:

• What are the issues that using hashmap on a multithreaded environment may cause and how would you deal with them?
• Why might you use volatile instead of synchronized?

Final round

Most often, the final round is an all-day onsite interview at the Apple campus in Cupertino. Expect around 6–7 rounds of interviews; the majority of the rounds are usually concentrated in behavioral and system design rounds, and the rest will be domain-specific rounds and coding.

Because coding isn’t the primary role of an engineering manager at Apple, the coding round usually involves easy-to-medium data structures and algorithm questions coded in your language of choice, though preference is given if you code in the language used by the team you’re hoping to join.

Skip-level round (if necessary)

If more signal is needed after the final round, you might be invited to talk to a skip-level manager. This part of the interview will focus on domain knowledge and behavioral or system design.

Example interview questions to expect at Apple

Behavioral

Expect several behavioral rounds throughout the interview process. Apple places very high importance on these rounds, so you can’t wing it.

Check out some other behavioral interview questions asked at Apple.

“Why Apple?”

Expect a question like “Why do you want to work here?” But don’t expect to give them your answer and then move on. Since Apple prioritizes people with a loyal and intense passion for Apple products, this question will likely lead to an in-depth conversation. Your interviewer might stay on the point until they've got enough signal. Usually, their judgment is tied to the level of emotion you can elicit from them.

Tell a story that provokes excitement, nostalgia, or empathy. Revolve the story around an Apple product making a marked difference in your life. Measure your success by the response the interviewer gives you.

“Tell me about a time you faced a conflict while on a team.”

One common mistake candidates make when answering this question is forgetting to clearly state what the conflict was. Many candidates’ stories start with a prolonged tiptoeing before they get to the point. The interviewer's first follow-up question to your answer might be: “So, what was the conflict?” If you hear that, it means you fell by the common mistake.

❌ Don’t say: At my last company, we had an infrastructure team. I ran an SRE team, and we would work together a lot with the infra team. The issues we talked about were things like how to stay up during peak traffic. And over the course of a few months, I had some arguments about how to solve the peak traffic crashes. There was a guy on the SRE team, and he wanted to do it one way, but I wanted to do it another way…”

Instead, start with a clear, sharp statement describing the conflict. Don’t be apologetic about what happened. Shortcut any emotion you may associate with the conflict, and start with a brief statement about what happened. You can even include a direct statement such as “the conflict was…”

✅ Do say: “We had an issue staying up during peak traffic. The conflict was with someone above me in the org; we couldn’t agree on what to do about it.”

“Tell me about a specific situation where you had to solve a difficult problem.”

This question is an opportunity to highlight your technical know-how. Prepare by grilling yourself about your process for solving technical problems to have the details fresh in your mind. What did you consider? What solution did you choose? Why did you choose that over another solution? How did you factor in scalability?

Go into the weeds. Mention precise technical details of what caught you off guard. Engineering managers aren’t always rewarded for digging into low-level details, but here, it scores points. If it was a security authentication problem, what did you stumble into along the way? JSON Web Tokens? Go into the details a bit more than usual. Showcase your ability to be hands-on (which Apple loves).

Don’t gamble with stale data, refine your behavioral answers with our Engineering Manager Course.

System design

To prepare for the system design rounds, practice with questions that are relevant to the specific team’s service and their day-to-day work. For example, if you’re interviewing with an ecommerce team, practice system design questions in the ecommerce domain, such as “Design Shopify.”

One pattern we’ve found in Apple system design rounds is a focus on reliability. That means that you’re likely to be asked about CDNs, web caches, or load balancers. Here are a couple questions on this topic:

Sample questions include:

• How would you design a web cache?
• Design a load balancer from scratch.

Domain-specific

Because your interview round is customized to the hiring team, expect questions specifically related to their service. For example, if they’re an Apple Maps team, technical questions could deep dive into the intricacies of relevant mapping technology such as GIS.

If you’re interviewing with a team that makes a consumer-facing product, expect to be asked what you think of that product. You might even be asked how you would improve it.

Sample questions include:

• Describe your experience with [Technology listed on job description].
• Open-ended trivia questions about [Technology listed on job description].

Coding

Again, because coding isn’t the primary role of an engineering manager at Apple, the coding round will involve easy-to-medium questions. The goal is to prove that you can be hands-on. If it’s been a while since you’ve done a live coding round, don’t let Apple be where you get your rust off. Practice live coding with similarly skilled peers for free using Exponent Practice. Or, brush up on your DSA skills with our software engineering course.

Sample questions include:

• Design a method to find the first available slot for a meeting between multiple parties.
• Common easy and medium difficulty-level algorithm and data structures problems such as: Heaps, Strings, Arrays, Linked lists, Sorting, and Trees.

Hiring decisions

Apple doesn’t have a consistent process for training interviewers. Interviewers may throw curve balls in their interviews, so don’t be surprised if you get an interviewer who asks unusual questions or follows an unusual format.  One candidate who interviewed at Apple said their interviewer kept asking, "Can we do better?" even after they'd found an optimal solution.

Another Apple quirk is their informal hierarchy: the hiring manager has the most power, their right-hand person has almost just as much power, and the rest of the interviewers have less power. Oftentimes this “right-hand” is an extremely technical person, who the hiring manager considers the overall technical litmus test; the creed of these hiring managers might be “If you pass with them then you pass with me (technically) because I trust their judgment.” You won’t find these right-hand people in every loop, but they seem to be especially common at Apple.

If you’re unsure who this right-hand person is, lean towards the interviewers who have the longest tenure on this team.

Additional resources

• To really understand Apple’s culture, listen to this Steve Jobs interview. It describes the spirit of Apple that lives on today.
• To check all the boxes, check out our Engineering Manager Course.
• To sharpen your coding skills, we recommend this coding course.

FAQs

Will I be expected to do live coding?

Live coding may be rare for engineering managers at other companies, but not at Apple. Yes, expect to do some coding. But it won’t be heavy or hard. Again, as usual with Apple, you will score points if you use the same technology the team uses.

What can I expect from my interview at Apple?

Every team is different, but one thing they all have in common is that they put emphasis on the behavioral and system design rounds. And one thing you won’t find anywhere else: interviewers who want you to bring out emotion in them, especially when you talk about your motivation to join the company.

How much do Apple Engineering Managers make?

On average, Apple Engineering Managers can expect these ranges for total compensation:

• M1: $383K
• M2: $557k
• M3s: $715k

How long is the Apple EM interview process?

This differs from one candidate to another. But expect 4–8 weeks, on average.

How should I prepare for an Apple Engineering Manager interview?

• Get to know the team’s specific domain, technology, and service extremely well.
• Brush up on system design and behavioral questions, as they are the most important rounds.
• Be ready for some light coding—it won’t carry much weight, but it will be a part of the process.