My Canonical Frontend Interview Experience | Engineering Manager

Overview

This case study outlines a candidate's interview experience for an Engineering Manager position at Canonical. The evaluation process consisted of multiple rounds, including a take-home assignment, a technical assessment, and a psychometric evaluation. The candidate provides detailed information about the questions asked, the coding challenge, and their overall impressions of the process.

Interview Rounds

Round 1: Screening Round (Home Take Assignment)

The candidate was required to answer 11 detailed questions and submit a PDF within seven working days. The questions covered the following topics:

• Web engineering experience
• Software engineering experience
• Open-source software development
• Quality in software development
• Education (High School and University)

Round 2: Technical Assessment (Home Take Assignment)

This round consisted of two sections:

• Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs): 13 MCQs covering various frontend and backend concepts. Examples include HTTP methods, data structures, JavaScript, CSS, RESTful APIs, Docker containers, and Kubernetes.
• Machine Coding Problem: The candidate was tasked with implementing a calculator that uses prefix notation. The calculate function was expected to take a string expression and return the numerical solution. The candidate's solution involved parsing the expression, using a stack to store operands, and applying the operators accordingly.

Round 3: Psychometric Assessment

This round comprised five sections, each lasting nine minutes, focusing on logical thinking, memory, and pattern recognition:

• Section 1: Short-term memory recall.
• Section 2: Matching upper and lowercase letter pairs.
• Section 3: Identifying the odd word out based on meaning.
• Section 4: Finding the largest gap between numbers.
• Section 5: Comparing rotated figures.

Key Takeaways

• The interview process for an Engineering Manager role at Canonical involves a comprehensive assessment of technical skills, problem-solving abilities, and cognitive aptitudes.
• The technical assessment includes both theoretical questions (MCQs) and practical coding challenges.
• Psychometric evaluations are used to assess logical reasoning, memory, and pattern recognition skills.
• Even with a strong performance on the psychometric assessment, a candidate may not be selected if they do not meet the overall requirements for the role.
• The candidate emphasizes the importance of both hard work and luck in the interview process.