Twilio Product Manager (PM) Interview Guide

Interested in becoming a "Twilion"? If you're using voice, text, chat, video, and/or email tools to communicate with businesses, chances are you've used Twilio. Twilio's APIs make it easy for businesses to connect with customers in many secure and effective ways.

The company, which went public in 2016, has grown immensely and now owns a respectable portfolio of messaging providers, IoT providers, and the like. Generally loved by developers, it's also been supportive of the open-source movement. It launched an open-source messaging product as early as 2010, and the list of contributable projects has only grown.

Twilio's company values (sometimes referred to as "magic values") are as follows:

• Be an owner: Owners know their business, embracing the good news and the bad. Owners sweat the details and “pick up the trash.” Owners think longterm, and spend money wisely.
• Empower others: We believe that unleashing human potential — both inside and outside our company — is the key to our success. Be humble and realize it’s not just about us. Invest in each other.
• No shenanigans: Always act in an honest, direct, and transparent way.
• Wear the customer's shoes: Spend the time to deeply understand customers, and solve problems from their perspective. Earn trust through every interaction.
• Write it down: Our business is complex, so take the time to express yourself in prose — for your sake, and for the folks with whom you’re collaborating.
• Ruthlessly prioritize: Prioritization helps break down complex problems, and provides clarity in the face of uncertainty. Decisions are progress, so make decisions with available information and keep learning.
• Be bold: We’re driven by a hunger to build a meaningful and impactful company. Embrace crazy ideas and remember, every big idea starts small.
• Be inclusive: To achieve our goals, we need a diverse set of voices in the room. Build diverse teams, and seek out unique points of view.
• Draw the owl: There’s no instruction book, it’s ours to write. Figure it out, ship it, and iterate. Invent the future, but don’t wing it.
• Don't settle: Expect the best from yourself and others, because there’s no feeling greater than being proud of our work. Hire the best people for every role.

Sound like a good place to work? Many agree! Before you begin your prep, be sure to read our guide on Twilio PM interviewing. The loop has been called grueling, but it's not terribly more difficult than high-growth tech companies. That said, practice makes perfect. We'll examine frequently asked questions about the Twilio interview process, including hiring criteria and tips to succeed in the interview.

First, you'll make contact with a recruiter. Twilio recruiters use many platforms and techniques to source candidates - some interviewees reported being invited to webinars explaining the R&D process, others are messaged directly via email or on LinkedIn.

Next, you will have a short (~15 minute) screening call. This call is meant to prove that you are who you say you are - that is, that you haven't entirely inflated your resume. You'll review the highlights of your past experience, and your recruiter will explain Twilio's mission, any pertinent info on the specific team, and the next bit of the interview loop.

Candidates are sometimes given a case study or take-home assignment to prepare in the next round. Interviewees report being asked to either present a solution you led in your past experience or to present on a fictional company/problem - much like a consulting case study interview.

Tip: One interviewee actually had this call with the engineering manager of the team in which they'd serve as PM rather than a peer or the hiring manager, so be sure to clarify who your interviewer will be. This will help you prepare for follow-up questions.

Not all PM candidates are given a case study, so if you're entering the process with significant experience or through a referral, you may skip this step.

If you pass, you'll advance to the panel interview with anywhere from four to six 1:1 rounds. You may have as many as three rounds back-to-back, so expect to be "on your game" for an extended amount of time. Your panel interviewees can be quite diverse. One interviewee reported rounds with a peer PM and a technical director - another had multiple engineers. You'll face at least one director-level interviewee and at least one "culture fit" interview with someone outside the team you're interviewing for.

Expect the following question types:

• Analytical
• Behavioral
• Product Strategy
• Product Design
• Execution

Let's look at each of these in more depth.