Ownership & impact
Tell me about the hardest technical problem you have personally solved. Why was it hard, and what did you do that someone else would not have?
Conflict & disagreement
Describe a time you disagreed with your manager or tech lead on a technical decision. What did you do?
Failure & recovery
Tell me about something you shipped that broke in production. What happened, and what did you change afterwards?
Ambiguity & judgement
Tell me about a project where the requirements were unclear or kept changing. How did you decide what to build?
Influence without authority
Tell me about a time you got a team to adopt an approach they were not initially interested in.
Delivery under pressure
Describe a time you had to deliver something significant under an unreasonable deadline. What did you trade away?
Growth & feedback
What is the hardest piece of feedback you have received, and what did you do about it?
Growth & feedback
Tell me about someone you helped grow. What did you actually do, and how did you know it worked?
Ownership & impact
Tell me about a time you pushed back on work you thought should not be done.
Conflict & disagreement
Describe a conflict with another team — competing priorities, an interface argument, a dependency that slipped.