Google Engineering Manager

Interview Guide

Oct 26

The role of a Google Engineering Manager

Google has always been a top tech giant that hires skilled candidates with deep technical knowledge who are ready to work on the complex nature of the job. Engineers at Google not only revolutionize its products but also work on large-scale operations and develop new platforms for billions of users.

An Engineering Manager's role at Google involves presenting technical expertise to determine how to build a product that meets the company's and customers' needs. In other words, they are responsible for deciding the overall technical strategies of a product and implementing the same.

They are also expected to be outstanding leaders who can bring together talented, unconventional engineers to work toward a single objective.

How to Apply for the Google Engineering Manager Job?

Carry an engineering certificate background, have deep practical knowledge of working on C++ or Python, and equip yourself with the required skills. Your resume for the Google engineering manager role will see a pass. You can check out the careers.google.com page or LinkedIn for job openings. 

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Responsibilities of an Engineering Manager at Google

  • Drive challenging technological initiatives and exercise leadership while working in a hectic setting.
  • Oversee the organization, operation, and accomplishment of challenging technological projects.
  • Provide complete technical assistance to the team across the entire product life cycle.
  • Depending on the team and your level of seniority- you will need to lead, mentor, and manage a group of software engineers or managers.
  • To address issues with cloud technology platforms, participate in product strategy, direct architectural choices, and build solutions using a variety of cloud and open-source technologies.

Preferred Skills/Qualification

  • Bachelor / Masters in Computer Science or any related technical discipline
  • 10+ years of relevant industry experience, with 4 years of hands-on technical management experience in software development and systems administrators/architects.
  • Carry deep practical knowledge of Java, C++, Python, or C.
  • Technical expertise in maintaining product life cycle, including design, implementation, and delivery of scalable build/test/release infrastructure.
  • Lead experienced software engineers to create and deliver products.
  • Optimize their code and make sure Engineers can optimize their code.
  • Present and implement product strategy.

Interview Overview

There are three rounds of interviews for Google Engineering Manager.

Phone Screening:

Taken by an interviewer for a basic background check. You can also expect typical behavioral and resume-related questions. This round is to check your communication skills.

Technical Interview:

This round includes data structures and algorithms-related questions. You will be asked to present answers in the algorithm method and to optimize the code.

Onsite Interview:

This round consists of three interviews-

  • Leadership
  • System Design
  • Coding Interviews

These are technical interviews. You will be asked about team leading, coding, and operating systems.

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Relevant Guides

Phone Screening

Overview

After screening your resume for the Google engineering manager post, you will undergo the first round: the phone interview. Here you will need to present basic background information, answering why you are fit for the respective post in Google. There will be behavioral and resume-related questions.

Interview Questions

  • Tell me about yourself.
  • Why do you want to join Google?
  • Why will you be a good fit for the company?
  • Tell me about your current day-to-day as an Engineering Manager
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Technical Interview Round

Overview

You'll be tested on your knowledge of data structures and algorithms over the phone or via video chat. You will face questions on topics related to graphs, strings, recursion, dynamic programming, geometry, and algebra. Additionally, you will face questions about your work experience and projects you worked on.

Interview Questions

  • Design a solid system in a graph to view the latest stock prices from the global stock market.
  • Design a software system for our photo-sharing website to store and retrieve photos and thumbnails.
  • Convert the data into workable code or explain it in the algorithm.
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Onsite Interview

Overview

This is the final round of the Google engineering manager's interview process. There will be three divisions in this round-

1) Leadership Interviews

2) The System Design Interviews

3) The Coding & Algorithm Interviews

Leadership Interview-

There will be 2-3 rounds of this interview. Besides technical questions, you will face questions about team leadership and project management. Under this, you will need to discuss your previous experience managing teams, projects, and behavioral inquiries regarding your approach. Questions will be about your approach towards team development and retention, your capacity to lead in complicated, ambiguous, and challenging circumstances, and your capacity to oversee a project from start to finish and deliver. The interviewer will check your ability to face complex situations and manage your team during the project work.

System Design Interview

In this round of interviews, you will need to demonstrate both your creative and organized qualities. However, there are chances that the interviewer may modify the question to fit your background. They might ask you to create an API, for instance, if you've worked on an API product. However, given that this won't always be the case, you should be equipped to develop any system or product at a high level.

You can also checkout the blog on System Design Interview Breakdown for better understanding.

The Coding & Algorithm Interviews

Google software engineers work on solving complex coding or systems. During this round of interviews, you will be tested on your skills in sorting, algorithms, math, and data structure. One of the interview tips you can follow is to have experience writing code without an editor to help with syntax. Also, you'll be coding on a whiteboard, so practice writing on paper or a whiteboard.

Interview Questions

Leadership Interview Questions-

  • Tell me about a time when you faced a technical and interpersonal challenge in your current role.
  • Tell me about a time when you worked with a super performer in your team, and how did you handle it?
  • What do you do when someone you manage doesn’t deliver as promised?

To answer these questions, you can give examples of previous projects. Present the situation on how you evaluated the success or failure of the project.

System Design Interview Questions-

  • How would you design Google Docs?
  • How would you design Google Home (voice assistant)?
  • How would you design a ticketing platform?
  • Design an in-memory cache for webpages

Coding Interview Questions-

  • Given a binary tree, find the maximum path sum. The path may start and end at any node in the tree.
  • Given an encoded string, return its decoded string.
  • Two strings S and T. Task: Find the minimum window in the string S, which will contain all the characters in the string T in complexity O(n).

Interview Tips

Having a clear idea about Google interview questions for the engineering manager post will help pass through interview rounds. EM interview covers testing your leadership, previous track record, and technical skills. Below are a few more interview tips to follow are-

  • Google recruiters would want to know your thought process and decision-making process. So ensure to explain it clearly throughout the interview. 
  • Recruiters would ask open-ended questions to see how you engage with a problem and what method you choose for solving it. Ask for clarification, if needed with such questions. 
  • Google prefers employees who continuously improve on existing products. So feel free to think out loud about improving the proposed solution. 
  • Practice writing your code on paper or a whiteboard. Prepare well in advance and try your codes to deliver it bug-free. 

Get more tips on How to Approach Coding Problems Successfully

Conclusion

Conclusion

Review Google interview questions for the engineering manager post to gain insights. The best you can do is undergo mock interviews, which are available on the Prepfully website. This will further help you practice and prepare for the interview.