Google Engineering Manager Interview Questions
Review this list of 30 Google engineering manager interview questions and answers verified by hiring managers and candidates.- +257
"Clarify "What do you mean by favorite product? Are you thinking specifically hardware, software, or a feature within those, or something non-electronic? Dealer's Choice. "Are you asking why I love this product, or to explain why this product is a market leader independent of how i feel about it? Talk about why YOU love this product. Rephrase Question With all that in mind, i want to rephrase the question. "What is your favorite software product and what features in this product"
Tim W. - "Clarify "What do you mean by favorite product? Are you thinking specifically hardware, software, or a feature within those, or something non-electronic? Dealer's Choice. "Are you asking why I love this product, or to explain why this product is a market leader independent of how i feel about it? Talk about why YOU love this product. Rephrase Question With all that in mind, i want to rephrase the question. "What is your favorite software product and what features in this product"See full answer
- +79
"My approach to dealing with difficult stakeholders has always been: Engage - Directly engage with the stakeholder, meet or chat Listen - Listen to what they have to say, patiently. Understand - Understand their POV, even if it is impossible at some times Ask - Ask clarifying questions. Why? When? What? Engage again - Keep them in the loop until there is closure For example, we were in the final stages of a very important, strategic project for our organization. I was leading th"
Jane D. - "My approach to dealing with difficult stakeholders has always been: Engage - Directly engage with the stakeholder, meet or chat Listen - Listen to what they have to say, patiently. Understand - Understand their POV, even if it is impossible at some times Ask - Ask clarifying questions. Why? When? What? Engage again - Keep them in the loop until there is closure For example, we were in the final stages of a very important, strategic project for our organization. I was leading th"See full answer
- +87
"Let me tell you about a time where a website I managed suddenly showed slow performance and the mistake on our side was it was unnoticed until a user reported the issue to management. As a PM for that project, I took full responsibility of the situation and worked with the engineering team to quickly resolve it. This mistake taught me the importance of focusing and monitoring non functional requirements as well in addition to new feature development /adoption where I was mostly spending my time"
Sreenisha S. - "Let me tell you about a time where a website I managed suddenly showed slow performance and the mistake on our side was it was unnoticed until a user reported the issue to management. As a PM for that project, I took full responsibility of the situation and worked with the engineering team to quickly resolve it. This mistake taught me the importance of focusing and monitoring non functional requirements as well in addition to new feature development /adoption where I was mostly spending my time"See full answer
- +27
"We had a huge launch on September 1st of this year where we completely redesigned our application from the grounds up and also migrated to a new platform (React.JS). This project took us 8 months and the launch was a huge deal for the team. Unfortunately the launch wasn't as smooth as we expected and despite doing multiple rounds of QA, some major issues cropped up in the core part of the app right after launch and our client was quite upset since it was disrupting their day-to-day workflow. "
Aabid S. - "We had a huge launch on September 1st of this year where we completely redesigned our application from the grounds up and also migrated to a new platform (React.JS). This project took us 8 months and the launch was a huge deal for the team. Unfortunately the launch wasn't as smooth as we expected and despite doing multiple rounds of QA, some major issues cropped up in the core part of the app right after launch and our client was quite upset since it was disrupting their day-to-day workflow. "See full answer
- +42
"A clarifying question: Is this question asking about when I met a tight deadline in a project or how did I manage a project that had a tight deadline? The answer uploaded to this question is good, I would also add 'creating a critical path from overall project schedule and then making sure that none of the deliverables in the critical path are sacrificed in order to meet the tight deadline' as an action taken."
Ushita S. - "A clarifying question: Is this question asking about when I met a tight deadline in a project or how did I manage a project that had a tight deadline? The answer uploaded to this question is good, I would also add 'creating a critical path from overall project schedule and then making sure that none of the deliverables in the critical path are sacrificed in order to meet the tight deadline' as an action taken."See full answer
- +8
"Designing a system to deny services to requests from banned IPs involves integrating real-time IP checking with your service architecture. Here’s a detailed outline of how you can design such a system: System Design Overview The goal is to ensure that your service can efficiently check incoming requests against a list of banned IPs and deny access when necessary. The system will leverage an external API, security.gov.x, to determine if an IP address is blocked or allowed. **Key Compone"
Palak A. - "Designing a system to deny services to requests from banned IPs involves integrating real-time IP checking with your service architecture. Here’s a detailed outline of how you can design such a system: System Design Overview The goal is to ensure that your service can efficiently check incoming requests against a list of banned IPs and deny access when necessary. The system will leverage an external API, security.gov.x, to determine if an IP address is blocked or allowed. **Key Compone"See full answer
+111"As you know, this is the most important question for any interview. Here is a structure I like to follow, Start with 'I'm currently a SDE/PM/TPM etc with XYZ company.... ' Mention how you got into PM/TPM/SDE field (explaining your journey) Mention 1 or 2 accomplishments Mention what you do outside work (blogging, volunteer etc) Share why are you looking for a new role Ask the interviewer if they have any questions or will like to dive deep into any of your experience"
Bipin R. - "As you know, this is the most important question for any interview. Here is a structure I like to follow, Start with 'I'm currently a SDE/PM/TPM etc with XYZ company.... ' Mention how you got into PM/TPM/SDE field (explaining your journey) Mention 1 or 2 accomplishments Mention what you do outside work (blogging, volunteer etc) Share why are you looking for a new role Ask the interviewer if they have any questions or will like to dive deep into any of your experience"See full answer
"I tried solving this problem and here is the recorded video for the answer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1tOkeQjyI4 And here is the link to Excalidraw board - https://excalidraw.com/#json=uabNFHcZm5qNh8CInMvyh,Wn9Vf1ZhGdl_iBCQYFkYdw"
Rjj - "I tried solving this problem and here is the recorded video for the answer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1tOkeQjyI4 And here is the link to Excalidraw board - https://excalidraw.com/#json=uabNFHcZm5qNh8CInMvyh,Wn9Vf1ZhGdl_iBCQYFkYdw"See full answer
- +9
"@Jacob, your videos are really good and helpful. I want to know about the tool, you use for explaining the design in the videos."
anush - "@Jacob, your videos are really good and helpful. I want to know about the tool, you use for explaining the design in the videos."See full answer
"The question is bit vague (I guess deliberately) so I believe firstly we shall ask questions and resolve ambiguity. Some initial questions could be : 1) Is this one time activity or something that should be done on continuous basis. If continuous basis then at what frequency. 2) How much staleness is acceptable in SYSTEM Y data 3) Are there any limitation in SYSTEM Y and is it fair to assume that we would need some kind of transformation to bring data into SYSTEM Y schema. 4) What kind of vol"
Kshitij A. - "The question is bit vague (I guess deliberately) so I believe firstly we shall ask questions and resolve ambiguity. Some initial questions could be : 1) Is this one time activity or something that should be done on continuous basis. If continuous basis then at what frequency. 2) How much staleness is acceptable in SYSTEM Y data 3) Are there any limitation in SYSTEM Y and is it fair to assume that we would need some kind of transformation to bring data into SYSTEM Y schema. 4) What kind of vol"See full answer
- +8
"Rate Limiter is to limit the number of request from a particular IP Address. Rate limiter will block the IP address to reduce the load on server. It should be highly available and handle concurrent requests. Blocked IP addresses should be kept in a pool which is present in shared cache. We need to keep threshold value after it reaches threshold value it should start blocking IP address. All these ip address to be kept in No SQL DB. Batch will run that will clear the cache and delete all the bloc"
Ashish G. - "Rate Limiter is to limit the number of request from a particular IP Address. Rate limiter will block the IP address to reduce the load on server. It should be highly available and handle concurrent requests. Blocked IP addresses should be kept in a pool which is present in shared cache. We need to keep threshold value after it reaches threshold value it should start blocking IP address. All these ip address to be kept in No SQL DB. Batch will run that will clear the cache and delete all the bloc"See full answer
- +1
"Situation - A time I dealt with conflict while on a team was while I was working at Shopify on physical and digital gift card refund point of sale solutions. The situation was that we were dealing with complex technical constraints including not changing particular UI components behavior to act as they should be intended. On the refund screen, the existing design was using a toggle on the same screen to bring up a modal for gift card selection to either select digital or physical options. Thi"
Ben G. - "Situation - A time I dealt with conflict while on a team was while I was working at Shopify on physical and digital gift card refund point of sale solutions. The situation was that we were dealing with complex technical constraints including not changing particular UI components behavior to act as they should be intended. On the refund screen, the existing design was using a toggle on the same screen to bring up a modal for gift card selection to either select digital or physical options. Thi"See full answer
- +5
"Really good advice Abhishek K"
Ds S. - "Really good advice Abhishek K"See full answer
"In my previous role as a Team Leader at XYZ Corporation, our department was facing high turnover rates, and the skill levels within the team were not meeting the company's evolving demands. We were in the midst of a major project that required a skilled and cohesive team to deliver on tight deadlines. My primary responsibility was to enhance team development and retention. Specifically, I needed to reduce turnover by 20% within six months and improve team competency to handle new project requir"
Alexander R. - "In my previous role as a Team Leader at XYZ Corporation, our department was facing high turnover rates, and the skill levels within the team were not meeting the company's evolving demands. We were in the midst of a major project that required a skilled and cohesive team to deliver on tight deadlines. My primary responsibility was to enhance team development and retention. Specifically, I needed to reduce turnover by 20% within six months and improve team competency to handle new project requir"See full answer
- +2
"Situation - A time where I had to collaborate with a team member in another department was while I was at Google working on my hotel project and had to work with the legal department for our OOBE flow. Task - I was tasked to work cross functionally with the legal department to lead the design of the out of box experience for our product to ensure our guest users were sure of policies around data and privacy. Action - In order to establish cadence and effective relationship building, I set up a t"
Ben G. - "Situation - A time where I had to collaborate with a team member in another department was while I was at Google working on my hotel project and had to work with the legal department for our OOBE flow. Task - I was tasked to work cross functionally with the legal department to lead the design of the out of box experience for our product to ensure our guest users were sure of policies around data and privacy. Action - In order to establish cadence and effective relationship building, I set up a t"See full answer
Asked at Google, Meta (Facebook), Gusto + 5 more • +8"This is a great question! If you don't mind, I'd love to list 3 strengths and weaknesses then dive a little deeper on one of each of them. I think my three greatest strengths are: Empathy Openness to feedback Drive And three weaknesses I have been working to strengthen are: Sometimes my desire to achieve can put me at risk of overcommitting Communicating status to the right stakeholders at the appropriate time Creating detailed and strategic lists of priorities so I can meet th"
Adam M. - "This is a great question! If you don't mind, I'd love to list 3 strengths and weaknesses then dive a little deeper on one of each of them. I think my three greatest strengths are: Empathy Openness to feedback Drive And three weaknesses I have been working to strengthen are: Sometimes my desire to achieve can put me at risk of overcommitting Communicating status to the right stakeholders at the appropriate time Creating detailed and strategic lists of priorities so I can meet th"See full answer
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