Explain Your Current and Previous Engineering Roles

Tell me about your current work and team, and then describe your role at your previous job. Explain how your responsibilities and technical focus shifted from one role to the other.

Constraints & Assumptions

Base your answer on your real background, and leave out any confidential implementation specifics. This is a question about your role and experience, not an invitation to fabricate a project or provide a full work history.

Clarifying Questions

What does each team own? Which responsibilities fall to you? What portion of your work involves design, implementation, operations, or cross-team coordination? Which experience is most relevant to the role you're discussing?

What a Strong Answer Covers

A brief explanation of the team's purpose, your personal scope, concrete work, and how your role progressed.

Follow-up Questions

Which responsibility did you pick up most recently? What did you learn in your previous role that you still apply today? Where do you collaborate with other specialists?

Overview: Present your current and previous engineering roles, making clear the team's purpose, your personal scope, concrete responsibilities, and the relevant progression.

Read the full Rippling Software Engineer interview experience this question came from.