You're preparing for a Product Engineering Manager interview. What are the key things you need to know?

1 Know the company and the product

Before you go to the interview, do your homework on the company and the product you'll be working on. Research their mission, values, culture, customers, competitors, challenges, and opportunities. Find out what their product engineering process, tools, and standards are. Try to use their product yourself or watch some demos or tutorials. This will help you understand their goals, pain points, and expectations, and show your interest and enthusiasm.

3 Know the technical and behavioral questions

The technical questions will test your knowledge and skills in product engineering, such as coding, design, architecture, testing, debugging, performance, security, scalability, and best practices. You may be asked to solve a coding challenge, review a code snippet, design a system or a feature, or debug a problem. The behavioral questions will assess your soft skills, such as communication, collaboration, leadership, motivation, feedback, conflict resolution, and culture fit. You may be asked to describe a situation where you demonstrated these skills, or how you would handle a hypothetical scenario.

4 Know the STAR method

The STAR method is a useful framework to structure your answers to the technical and behavioral questions. It stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result. You start by describing the situation or context of the problem or challenge you faced. Then you explain the task or goal you had to achieve. Next, you describe the action or steps you took to solve the problem or complete the task. Finally, you share the result or outcome of your action, and how it benefited the product, the users, or the team.

5 Know the questions to ask

The interview is not only a chance for the interviewer to evaluate you, but also for you to learn more about the company and the role. Prepare some questions to ask at the end of the interview that show your curiosity and interest. You can ask about the product vision, roadmap, priorities, challenges, metrics, feedback, or user research. You can also ask about the team structure, culture, communication, collaboration, or expectations. Avoid asking questions that are too generic, obvious, or personal.

6 Know how to follow up

After the interview, send a thank you note to the interviewer within 24 hours. Express your appreciation for their time and attention, and restate your interest and enthusiasm for the role. Mention one or two specific points from the interview that you enjoyed or learned from, and highlight your value and fit for the product engineering team. Keep it brief, polite, and professional. If you don't hear back from them within a week or two, you can send a polite follow-up email to check on the status of your application and reiterate your interest.