Booking.com Technical Program Manager Interview Guide

TL;DR the Booking.com TPM interview loop looks like:

Step 1: Recruiter screen

Step 2: Case study (depending on the team & role)

Step 3: Onsite - 3 to 5 rounds (depending on the team & role)

3.1  Program execution

3.2 Technical depth

3.3 Leadership and values round (with the hiring manager or senior leader)

The interview process for Booking depends on the department and level. We’ve covered the various interview rounds and detailed the differences you might have. This TPM candidate on Glassdoor (and a few others) noted the interview process took 2 months in total, so be prepared for a drawn-out process.

The first recruiter screen covers your career, skillset, motivation, and your understanding of the team and company. 

Usually, there isn’t a separate hiring manager screening before the TPM interview loop so recruiter screens at Booking could be more in-depth than standard TPM recruiter screens at other companies.

Depending on the exact role, domain-specific knowledge about the payments industry might be required (especially if you’re interviewing for the FinTech org). Some TPM interview loops focus on program execution and coordination while some others are focused on the technical aspects of the job. We suggest you ask your recruiter what to be ready for.

Recruiters have asked TPM candidates at Booking.com these questions:

• Walk me through your background.
• Who are our biggest competitors?
• Why do you want to change roles?
• What are your ideal working conditions and what’s important to you in a company?

If you’re interviewing for a senior role expect a case study you have to solve and present either before or during your onsite loop. Sometimes, Booking interviewers assign cases to junior candidates as well, but it’s less common.

Depending on the team & role, this case study can be either:

1. A take-home assignment you have to present.
2. A live case you have to lead and work through with your interviewers.

This round is usually conducted by 2+ interviewers. If you are going for a senior role, expect a larger panel made up of interviewers from different functions of the company.

The prompt could be technical or more business and operational focused, it all depends on the exact role.

TPM candidates at Booking.com have reported questions like:

• Design a hotel search system where users can filter by location, dates, ratings, budget and other important criteria. How would you handle dynamic pricing?
• You’re jumping onto a project that's halfway complete but the team has already used 80% of their resources. What are your next steps?
• Redesign Booking.com’s attractions page.

On top of the basics like the current market and competitors’ strategies, challenges, user segments and features, be sure to also touch upon how you’d help teams test new features. If it’s a big bang redesign, talk about what data you’re using to make decisions since a controlled experiment might not be possible.

Booking.com's mission is to "make it easier for everyone to experience the world". Their ethos to make that happen is to always build, build fast, and build toward a better customer experience.

The technical culture at Booking.com according to CTO Rob Francis is “build first”. Teams are expected to ship fast, and anyone can launch an experiment without permission from management. As a TPM, that means you will have to make sure the build first philosophy is sustainable across the organization.

You should also talk about one-way and two-way doors aka which decisions can be easily reversed so why and how you’d rollback. And which decisions have to be carefully thought out and how you’d make sure teams think that through and test in a controlled environment.

The Booking.com TPM interview loop will have 3 to 5 rounds. We’ve grouped them into three core areas for you to focus on. You should also expect a distinct leadership round that will center on Booking’s culture and if you fit their values.

To prepare for the onsite, we recommend you write out several stories that hit multiple aspects at once because interviewers at the end compare notes and one round can serve as evidence for other interviewers as well. 

If you’re coming in from a different industry make sure you translate your stories and examples or just throw in a crisp line or two so your interviewers can follow along.

You could have a separate program execution round, but also expect similar follow-up questions during the other rounds.

TPMs at Booking.com help balance the business needs with the technical constraints and build the internal foundations that allow teams to deliver for their customers.

You’ll have a conversation with a senior TPM about your past projects. Interviewers will also connect and ask hypothetical questions based on the work Booking does. So if you’re discussing an old program, they might ask “At Booking we do [XYZ], how would you have done this for your work?”

These questions have been reported by Booking TPM candidates:

• How do you work when things aren't necessarily clear?
• What are the key differences if you have to drive a 3 months vs a 3 years program?
• How did you manage a disagreement between the project team and top-level stakeholders?
• Talk me through your work experience in the past year.

If a certain aspect of the program was challenging (but hard to understand why outside of the specific industry), be sure to translate that into general terms or point out how exactly it was challenging and provide more context so interviewers can understand the numbers more.

Conflict and stakeholder management questions are also quite common at Booking.com, and interviewers want you to talk about both sides of the scenario. A great conflict is one where multiple parties are right and you had to figure out what to prioritize and how to solve.

Broadly speaking the technical assessment for Booking focuses on communication. 

Interviewers will mostly ask about programs and systems you’ve worked on in the past. For technical aspects that are new to you, Booking mainly wants to see if you’re enthusiastic and curious about new systems.

If you're asked to diagram architecture or walk them through past system work, the focus will likely be on your technical communication skills and the rationale behind your decisions.

You should be able to discuss complex technical topics with their engineers or engineering managers.

These questions have been asked to TPM candidates at Booking:

• Can you draw the system for this program? Please discuss the different components and interactions along with the technical decisions you had to make.
• Can you elaborate on the technical complexity that you have handled?

You can ask your interviewer about the level of technical depth they want to see. Open at a high level and go deep on certain important components or parts where you can bring in a crisp story and talk about the work you did.

This final type of round focuses directly on Booking.com's values which are: Think customer first, Succeed together, Own it, Learn forever, Do the right thing. 

Interviewers will either explicitly ask how you demonstrate X value or ask a vague question and your job is to connect it to one or more of these values.

The leadership round could also be a case-study format or your interviewers could ask you more technical questions.

These questions have been asked to TPM candidates:

• How do you support the business with prioritization?
• What has been your biggest failure?
• How do you stay on top of the latest tech like AI for instance?
• Tell me about a conflict you had that changed how you operate.

Even if questions are technical, the expectation might be to tie your answer to their values.

The most important value is ‘Think customer first’, so make sure you connect your decisions to the final customer impact wherever appropriate.

Culture and curiosity weigh heavily in this stage. As Paulo Pisano, CHRO of Booking Holdings and Chief People Officer at Booking.com, said on the SHRM podcast, “The most important for us from a cultural standpoint is how do we nurture this space where people are deeply curious and they’re trying to keep really close to the customer needs so we can basically obsess around making the best we can.” 

If you’re asked about a failure or mistake, one of our TPM coaches with 20+ years of experience says you should pick a story that is two or more years old. And once you’ve gone through the situation, the goal, what went wrong, what you fixed and shown how you’ve grown etc. you can go a step further.

Total comp for TPMs at Booking ranges from $140K ( base $108K) at level F (beginning) to $212K (base $128K) for Principal TPMs according to data from levels.fyi. These numbers might be skewed by more Netherlands specific datapoints so if you’re from the US, the salary ranges could be different.  

These numbers also include a significant bonus at 10-15% of the total compensation.

RSUs vest nearly equally either 34/33/33 percent for 3 years or 25% across four years.