Complete Doordash Engineering Manager interview guide in 2024 (2024)

The phone screen is a 15 minute chat where the recruiter goes over your profile, focusing most of the time on why you are looking to switch, what your work history has been like, and whether you have the required qualifications for the role.

Be ready to talk about your past experiences, skills, and what makes you the perfect fit for the EM role (specifically why at Doordash).

Post this, the recruiter will give you an overview of the upcoming process—which will be followed by an email containing the necessary details.

Thus, you can expect a bunch of questions about your background, skills, and professional journey. For instance,

• Tell us more about your work experience and expertise
• Why DoorDash?
• Tell me about the biggest challenge you had to face.
• How do you provide feedback as a manager?

The second screening round for EMs at Doordash is typically a video call that is divided into 2 rounds; one focuses on system design and other revolves around people management.

• During the first screening which lasts roughly 60 minutes, they'll throw real-world scenarios at you, and ask you to architect a solution. For instance, “How will you design the News Feed for Meta?” Or “Design LeetCode ”. You can use HackerRank or Zoom whiteboard for showcasing your design—so get comfortable with those platforms. A good practice is to start practising designing scalable and fault-tolerant systems for different scenarios. You'll be expected to explain your decision-making process; make sure you touch upon subjects like scalability, efficiency, and how you'd tackle complexities in a distributed system.
• Now, the second part dives into people management and is typically about 45 minutes long. This is where it gets more about leadership and less about coding. Expect questions on how you've managed teams in the past, how you handle conflicts, and your approach to coaching and mentorship. They're keen on understanding your softer skills and your ability to navigate the people's side of engineering. Be ready to discuss your track record in such scenarios, have a couple of examples ready to roll that demonstrate your people management skills succinctly.

The onsite round of DoorDash engineering manager interviews focuses on three key areas: system design, programming language skills, team building/people management. Understanding the processes for Engineering Managers at similarly levelled companies such as Amazon can be beneficial. You will interview with a couple of senior EMs and even have a round with a Director of Engineering at Doordash.

Let's explore the onsite rounds in depth:

1. System Design and Domain Knowledge Round

The System Design interview at Doordash for EMs is a 60 to 75-minute round with a senior engineer or manager at the company.

There will be two focus areas to this interview—first, they will question you about a project that you led in your past roles in a technical depth. You will be informed about this prior to the onsite round so you'll have enough time to prepare and present a document explaining the project.

The next part of this interview will focus on system design problems. You will be evaluated on your ability to design an arbitrary solution with an eye on scalability. So, for instance, this could be anything from a Distributed Task Scheduler or a platform like Tinder. You will be expected to clarify and scope, factor in the functional requirements, discuss assumptions, trade offs, and so on.

I have 4 tips for this round:

• First -> Make sure you really understand the problem. Don't jump straight into solution mode; this is a mistake. For instance, your interviewer might want you to go over the data model or spend some time on the API design before jumping into component design. So, lay out your understanding, define the scope, explain your game plan, and let them guide you where they want.
• Second -> Listen intently for feedback. The scope is vast, and interviewers have a checklist of themes to hit during the interview. They'll drop hints like "okay, let’s assume xyz isn’t a constraint" – that's your signal to shift gears to the next theme. Or they might throw a curveball like "what if this is accessed multiple times daily by our global users" – bingo, time to talk about scaling up geographically, maybe with CDNs, and optimising performance with a snazzy cache design.
• Third -> Feel free to brainstorm multiple ideas – it's encouraged, given the constraints. But here’s the trick: talk about each one, break down the trade-offs, and then commit to one. Show that you can weigh options and make a call.
• Finally -> Don't panic if you hit a roadblock or feel like you're not quite hitting the interviewer's wavelength. Admitting you don’t know something is totally fine – it happens to the best of us. Offer to explore through some educated guesses if they’re cool with it, but never try to wing it.

The last few minutes of this round will be reserved for any questions you might have. But before that, You may also spend some time discussing SQL vs NoSQL so make sure you brush up on SQL as well. In addition to this, have a good grip on database structure, scripting languages, and BI Tools (Power BI, Tableau, and others) — it will come in handy.

1. People Management Interview/Team Building & Hiring

This round is another chat with a Senior Engineering Manager, lasting about 45 minutes. They will be looking to dig into your people management skills to make sure you're a cultural fit at DoorDash.

Anticipate a mix of situational and experiential questions, ranging from "how would you achieve X" to "how did you handle Y”. They will ask questions about, say, experiences that you found super interesting or challenging, or your approach to managing high vs low performers, creating growth opportunities, retention strategies, driving team growth, etc. You will also be asked to highlight situations where you worked cross-functionally to remove significant barriers for your team or perhaps dived deep into team dynamics to boost productivity.

So, be ready to talk about your personal leadership style and what your people management philosophy is all about. Be prepared for those "how would you do this" scenarios and "tell me about a time when you did that" experiences. Have a couple of stories up your sleeve to demonstrate your impact in each of these scenarios—from coaching/mentorship, team-building, and talent acquisition skills. And don't forget to include examples of both successes and failures, mistakes you made, lessons you learned – they want the real deal.

3. Leadership and Product Interview

First off, in the leadership round, you'll be meeting with a hiring manager for a 45-minute interview, and deep dive into the behavioural aspects of the role of an engineering manager at DoorDash. So, the focus spans areas such as diversity, feedback, conflict resolution, performance reviews, etc.

The interviewer will typically pose two or three such questions and you'll spend the entire interview discussing those.

Following this, you'll have a 45-minute interview with a Product Director, where the spotlight is on your product acumen.
4. Delivery

Finally, you're in a 45-minute conversation with the Director of Engineering at DoorDash. They want to know how you define team goals and vision— so, basically, the Director will delve into the objectives and key results of your current team, the KPIs of your current and previous projects, and so on. Overall, this interview is to get insight into your Software Development Life Cycle—how you define roadmaps, measure success, and ensure that your team is on the right track.

Once again, he/she may ask about how you manage conflicts (be sure to share a different example than your previous ones).

• Design a system to handle accepting donations for a charity and being able to return a charitable gift receipt to the donor.
• Design a system that would allow customers to rate/review the dishes they ordered. Based on the popularity of the review, the system would give rewards to the customers.
• Design a system for an online bookstore that manages customer reviews for books. The system should prioritise reviews based on their helpfulness and provide incentives for users to contribute meaningful reviews.
• Create a system to manage event registrations and feedback. Users should be able to rate events, and the system should recognize and reward users whose reviews contribute to event popularity.
• Design a platform for a fitness app where users can share and rate workout routines. The system should encourage user engagement by rewarding those who provide valuable insights and popular workout plans.
• Tell me about the most difficult situation you faced as a manager.
• What is the biggest feedback for improvement you ever received as a manager?
• Talk about a time when you had to fire someone.
• What are the things you consider while hiring someone?
• How do you ensure the growth of the people within your team?
• How do you build teams?
• How do you run teams?
• How do you interface with other teams?
• How do you work with the Product?
• How do you work with other engineering managers?
• How would you manage conflicts within the team?
• Describe the planning process followed by your team, and your role at each stage.
• What was the most difficult situation you've had to deal with as a team/project lead/manager, and how did you handle it?
• A time when you had to manage conflict with the team.
• An example of an MVP (Most Valuable Product) manager you've ever worked with.
• An example of dealing with an underperforming product manager.
• A story about handling tight timelines.
• How do you dive into a feasibility study for requirements?