How to Prepare for Software Engineering Manager Interviews at Big Tech

From June 2025 through August 2025 I interviewed with Meta and started in September 2025 as a Software Engineering Manager. After 15 interviews and countless conversations with my recruiter, this is what worked. For context on my background, you can view my resume. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out.

Once you've built up the experience and history of leading engineering teams, there are two areas of the interview that can be prepared for: Technical Engineering and Behavioral Management. I'll break them both down for you.

Technical Engineering

These interviews are similar to a Senior Software Engineer interview. They include both coding questions and system design interviews. There are two obvious sources to study for these. For coding questions, work through LeetCode problems consistently (I maintain this skill outside of interview season). For system design interviews, the Hello Interview YouTube channel is the way to study. I started with just watching them, and by the end I was doing my own Excalidraw diagrams and scoring myself against the videos.

Behavioral Interviews

The bulk of the interviews is behavioral. Even the team matching tends to fall into behavioral interviews. Luckily after being a CTO I had ample stories and experience for every question even if the actions I took at the time weren't always perfect.

Every answer should be formatted in the STAR structure:

1. Situation - Set the context and background
2. Task - Describe what needed to be accomplished
3. Action - Explain the specific steps you took
4. Result - Share the outcome and what you learned

To study, I found the 7 most common behavioral interview questions and prepared two stories for each one. I wrote those in STAR format and made sure I knew all the details of the history in case I was asked follow-up questions. I framed my answers by starting with "I can tell you what worked, or I can tell you about my series of approaches to find what worked"; the interviewer almost always wanted to hear the story from first attempts. This gave me space to walk through the Situation(s) that fit the question and then the different tactics I've used. This shows a willingness to learn and allowed me to demonstrate I'd seen problems multiple times.

One tip: Finish STAR questions by saying "If I see this again, I would do [X] approach." It shows that you're improving and thinking through situations.

ChatGPT was vital for practicing behavioral questions. I started by creating a project with all the study material I'd found and interview notes I'd taken. Then I had it map out the 7 most common questions. I went through them one at a time. For each, I typed out my response and had it ask follow-up questions. At the end, I had it critique my answers so I could improve going forward. I stored these tuned responses in a doc so I could use the context for future interview prep.

These interviews are scored on a rubric, so make sure to keep the conversation moving and hit everything you need to hit.

Results

This process took months, but I was able to land a Software Engineering Manager role at Meta. These steps will help in Software Engineering Manager interviews, but also in any Software Engineering interview.

Good luck!