STAR method, behavioral, situational, technical — tailored to how this role actually works day-to-day. Each question has a rubric for what a strong answer covers.
STAR · Universal
Tell me about a time you missed an important deadline. What happened, and what did you do?
What good looks like:Owns the miss (no blame deflection), names the contributing factors, describes recovery actions, and pulls a concrete lesson into a system or habit.
Follow-up: What's different about how you approach deadlines today because of that?
Walk me through a time you had to convince someone with more authority than you that they were wrong.
What good looks like:Names the stakes, shows how they framed the case with data and the person's interests, and describes the outcome — including humility if they were partially wrong.
Follow-up: How did the relationship hold up afterwards?
Describe a project where the scope changed midway. How did you handle the change?
What good looks like:Articulates the original plan, what triggered the change, how they re-prioritized, and how they communicated the new shape of the work upward and across.
Follow-up: If you could redo one decision on that project, what would it be?
Tell me about a time you received hard feedback that surprised you. What did you do with it?
What good looks like:Recognizes the gap honestly, separates the feedback from the messenger, and shows a behavior change with evidence — not just a self-narrative.
Describe the most ambiguous problem you've solved at work. How did you make progress?
What good looks like:Names the ambiguity explicitly, describes the structure they imposed (questions asked, hypotheses tested), and shows how they narrowed scope to a shippable first step.
Follow-up: Who did you pull in, and why those people?
Tell me about a time you disagreed with a teammate's approach. How did you resolve it?
What good looks like:Goes beyond "we talked it out" — explains how they steel-manned the other view, what tradeoffs surfaced, and how the decision actually got made.
Behavioral · Backend Engineer
Tell me about the most complex system you've designed and shipped. What were the hard tradeoffs?
What good looks like:Names the actual tradeoff (consistency vs latency, build vs buy, scope cut), why they landed where they landed, and what they'd do differently now.
Describe a production incident you caused. How did you handle it?
What good looks like:Owns the mistake, walks through the recovery and root-cause work, and names a system-level change (not just "I'm more careful now").
Walk me through a feature you launched that had unexpected behavior at scale.
What good looks like:Specific: what they thought would happen vs what did, how they noticed, and what the diagnostic process looked like.
Situational · Backend Engineer
You're asked to add a feature that you think is a bad idea technically. How do you handle it?
What good looks like:Pushes back with technical reasoning and offers alternatives — but is willing to ship the original if the business case is strong. Doesn't martyrdom-veto.
Your production database is at 80% CPU and growing. What's your first 24 hours?
What good looks like:Triage: identify the workload causing it (slow-query log, APM), buy time with vertical scaling or read replicas, then design the real fix (sharding, caching, schema change).
Technical · Backend Engineer
Walk me through how you'd design a rate limiter for an API serving 50K req/sec.
What good looks like:Names the algorithm (token bucket vs sliding window), the storage strategy (Redis vs in-memory with sync), and how they'd handle distributed counting accuracy.
When would you pick PostgreSQL vs DynamoDB for a new service?
What good looks like:Beyond "Postgres is relational": names access patterns, consistency requirements, scaling profile, and operational overhead.
Describe the worst bug you've debugged. How did you find it?
What good looks like:Specific: symptom, what made it hard (intermittent? load-dependent? cross-system?), the diagnostic loop they ran, and the actual root cause.
Culture · Universal
What's the best feedback you've gotten in the last year, and what did you do with it?
What good looks like:Picks specific, uncomfortable feedback (not a humble-brag), traces the behavior change, and is honest about whether the change stuck.
Describe how you give critical feedback to a peer.
What good looks like:Specific recent example, attention to timing and audience, separates the behavior from the person, and asks for the other side of the story.
What kind of manager brings out your best work?
What good looks like:Self-aware — knows what they need (autonomy, structure, frequent check-ins, etc.) and what they don't. Bonus if they describe how they adapt to managers who don't match.
Tell me about a time you advocated for an unpopular decision.
What good looks like:Names the unpopularity explicitly, walks through their reasoning, and is honest about the outcome — including if they were wrong.
What's a habit or ritual that makes you better at your work?
What good looks like:Concrete and unforced. The best answers are small, specific, and personally invented — not a CEO-podcast trope.
Motivation · Universal
Why this role, specifically?
What good looks like:Has done their homework — references the actual job description, product, or recent company news, not just "I love your mission."
Follow-up: What's the part of this role you're least sure you'd love?
What's the next thing you want to get great at in your career?
What good looks like:Specific, named skill or domain. Bonus points if they can articulate why this role accelerates that vs another role they're considering.
Walk me through the most recent thing you learned that wasn't required by your job.
What good looks like:Specific, recent, and ideally adjacent to (not directly inside) their job — shows genuine curiosity rather than performative learning.
Where do you want to be in three years?
What good looks like:Less about title, more about the kind of work and impact. Honesty about uncertainty is a positive signal; over-rehearsed answers are a flag.
Raffi calls every applicant for a 10–15 minute conversational interview, asks the backend engineer-specific questions from this bank, scores against the rubric, and hands you the top 3–5. SaaS, $25 starter credit.