Dropbox TPM (Technical Program Manager) Interview Guide
Learn how to prepare for the Dropbox Technical Program Manager interview and get a job at Dropbox with this in-depth guide.Dropbox is known for its incredible team culture and world-class product. As a Dropbox technical program manager, you'll be operating with technical complexity and high-caliber teammates.
Read more in this guide to learn how to ace the Dropbox technical program manager (TPM) interview.
Interview Process
Interview Stages
Typically, there are two rounds of interviews for Dropbox TPM roles: phone screen and onsite.
Phone Screen
The phone screen is meant to assess your candidacy for the onsite interview, and will be conducted by a recruiter or a TPM manager. The questions are behavioral in nature and ask about why you want to work at Dropbox, and your interest in technical program management.
No need to prepare much for this one! Review your resume to speak off it, and be sure to research a bit more about Dropbox, like their company mission.
On-site
The onsite Dropbox TPM interview consists of five or more interviews, where you'll be asked TPM specific questions, as well as engineering specific questions from engineers and engineering managers. Read up in the next section on how to prepare for the on-site, and the different types of questions you'll receive.
Sample Interview Questions
Generally, the interview questions types at Dropbox break down into the following categories. There's heavy overlap across the different interviews.
Program Sense
The Dropbox TPM program sense interivew tests your general TPM capabilities, such as your ability to manage risks, deadlines, changes, and requirements. These questions are the bread and butter of being a techincal program manager, and you'll rely heavily on your previous experience with technical program management.
Here is a list of program sense questions recently asked at Dropbox.
To prepare for these questions, review some of the questions in our TPM interview prep course's program sense section.
Deep Dive
In the Dropbox TPM deep dive interview, you'll go "deeper" with a Dropbox TPM on how you solved a technical problem. Consider this interview to be more like a conversation than an interview. Throughout the discussion, highlight aspects where you made tough technical decisions or had to work cross-functionally with other team members.
Dropbox recommends preparing by reflecting on your experiences beforehand. We recommend creating your personal story bank so that you can come in the interview with clear examples you can speak from. Specifically, focus on brainstorming stories with traits you think your interviewer might ask you about.
Technical
Dropbox TPM technical interviews involve meeting with engineering managers and technical leads to assess your technical acumen. Can you work on highly technical projects? Can you handle making decisions about technical tradeoffs? How would you handle scenarios where you need to collect more information?
These questions often involve heavy knowledge of system design concepts, so be sure to review those before the interview.
Here is a list of common system design interview questions.
To prepare for the technical interviews, review our TPM interview course system design section and software engineering interview course at a high-level. Are there areas you're weaker in? Focus more prep to review technical concepts and prepare for the interview.
Behavioral
Lastly, you'll be asked questions about your working relationship with engineering and team culture fit. This is also a great time to learn more about the role and ask questions to your interviewer.
Similar to the deep dive, we recommend creating your personal story bank so that you can come in the interview with clear examples you can speak from.
One tip for these interview questions is to show passion and enthusiasm for the role and for working at Dropbox!
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