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Skip-Level Behavioral: Commitment, Working With PMs and EMs, and Following Up on SLAs

Goldman SachsSoftware Engineer · Onsite
MediumSoftware EngineerOnsiteBehavioral & Leadership

Last updated

A skip-level manager behavioral round that probes a commitment-to-delivery mindset, asks for a walkthrough of a significant past project, and focuses on how the candidate works with product and engineering managers and tracks and follows through on SLAs. It tests ownership, stakeholder management and reliability.

A skip-level manager ran this round. The interviewer opened by describing the mindset the team expects: a commitment to getting things done. Not knowing something is fine, because it can be learned, but not putting in the effort is not acceptable. The rest of the round was a walk through a significant project from your current or most recent role, with little interest in technical detail. The questions focused on:

  • how you work with product managers and engineering managers, especially when their priorities, scope or deadlines pull against yours or against each other;
  • how you track and follow through on SLAs for the work and the systems you own.

Answer with specific examples from your own experience.

Clarifying Questions

  • Should the walkthrough cover one project end to end, or several short examples?
  • Does "SLA" here mean service-level targets for a production system, delivery commitments to partner teams, or both?
  • How much technical depth does the interviewer want before moving on to how you worked with people?

Hints

Hint 1

Prove the mindset: Agreeing with the expectation is not an answer. Pick a moment when you had to learn something unfamiliar or take on unglamorous work in order to deliver, and say what you did.

Hint 2

Make the SLA concrete: Name the commitment, how it was measured, how you knew it was at risk, and what you did before it was breached.

Follow-up questions

  • Tell me about a time you committed to a date and then realized you could not meet it. When did you say so, and to whom?
  • A PM asks for a feature that would put an existing SLA at risk. How do you handle it?
  • What do you do when you disagree with your EM's prioritization?
  • How do you decide when to learn something yourself and when to ask for help?