Behavioral Questions

It’s good to have these behavioral questions handy when interviewing. Sometimes my mind goes blank when I’m asked questions under pressure, so it’s nice to have a visual cue card like this:

My Star Results

1. Tell me about a time you worked on a critical project.

   • S: Our monolithic build system took too long to execute, slowing deployments.
   • T: I needed to help migrate parts of it to Bazel to speed up builds and support multiple platforms.
   • A: I led a two-person team converting portions of the desktop build to Bazel, managed all aspects of the project, and implemented improvements to the in-house CMake buildfile generation tool.
   • R: Build times dropped significantly, improving developer productivity and accelerating release cycles.

2. Describe a time you resolved a conflict on your team.

   • S: Two engineers disagreed on whether to persist Gradle in GitHub or start with Bazel and convert before transitioning to GitHub.
   • T: I was asked to present technical insights and create documentation to help them make an informed decision.
   • A: I analyzed build logs, visualized industry adoption numbers for both systems, and documented trade-offs for each in a short proof-of-concept.
   • R: The data helped the team agree on a phased adoption approach, where key projects converted to Bazel and then transitioned to GitHub, reducing tension and moving the project forward.

3. Tell me about dealing with ambiguity.

   • S: Our microservice projects lacked clear guidelines on dependency management across multiple releases, causing month-long release cycles.
   • T: I had to determine a workable approach for reducing release engineering’s long cycle times and manage cross-project dependencies.
   • A: I tested dependency resolution strategies in a controlled environment, documented my findings, and delivered a proof-of-concept of a scatter-gather architecture pattern to create release branches for each maintained release’s dependencies with Artifactory and Gradle.
   • R: My recommendations clarified how to maintain consistent dependencies, helping the team proceed confidently.

4. Describe a failure and what you learned.

   • S: An attempt at centralizing database migrations led to reverting my work.
   • T: I needed to fix the issue quickly and prevent build instability.
   • A: I rolled back the change, reviewed logs, and ran more targeted tests to identify missing migrations causing the failure.
   • R: After reverting and verifying there were no regressions, the build stabilized. I learned to validate and clarify architectural assumptions earlier.

5. Give an example of influencing a decision without direct authority.

   • S: The web runtime team considered a custom build system that didn’t integrate well with our CI/CD pipelines.
   • T: I wanted them to consider reusing our stable Gradle alternative.
   • A: I showed them a working prototype using the existing build system, highlighting easier setup and maintenance.
   • R: They adopted the Gradle approach, improving compatibility and saving them significant configuration work.

6. Tell me about delivering under a tight deadline.

   • S: Apple changed the API contract for notarization of macOS builds within a short window.
   • T: I had to implement and test an update to the existing tool quickly.
   • A: I updated our notarization tool, validated it across macOS versions, and ran automated tests in TeamCity to ensure correctness.
   • R: The update shipped on time, meeting compliance requirements and avoiding release delays.

7. Describe a time you raised the bar on standards.

   • S: Our builds were slow and lacked consistency across platforms.
   • T: I aimed to improve reliability and speed using Bazel and better CI practices.
   • A: I helped configure Bazel caching, updated test suites to run in parallel, and added Kotlin build configuration changes streamlining branching, distribution, and notifications.
   • R: Builds became faster and more predictable, establishing higher standards for future development work.

8. Tell me about pushing back on a requirement.

   • S: After we’d launched Bazel as Nerv’s primary build system and completed Tableau’s migration into Salesforce’s GitHub ecosystem, a directive came down from PM/engineering leadership to fast-track a new bash-script bootstrapping feature in the project generator, in order to unblock a specific adopting team’s upcoming product release.
   • T: Rather than simply executing the directive, I needed to determine whether it was actually safe to ship — and if not, raise that with leadership in a way that would be taken seriously despite the decision already having been made above me.
   • A: I audited the toolchain the proposed bootstrapper would install and found it pulled in known-vulnerable versions of curl, gcc, Java, and older ISO C++ library builds — a direct violation of Salesforce’s parent-company mandate against introducing vulnerable dependencies into the newly-migrated GitHub ecosystem. I went back to leadership with the specific finding rather than a vague objection, made clear that shipping as directed would create a compliance violation, and proposed a path forward instead of just blocking: I’d source approved, compatible, replacement versions, and reconfigure Bazel’s toolchain rules to manage them hermetically.
   • R: The feature shipped on the adopting team’s timeline, but without the compliance violation — and the toolchain-pinning pattern I built became reusable for future bootstrapper additions, closing off that entire class of risk going forward.

9. Share a situation where you built consensus across teams.

   • S: Multiple teams needed to ramp up on Bazel.
   • T: I needed to facilitate ensemble programming across those teams.
   • A: I compared workflows, demonstrated a unified approach to learning Bazel by mobbing on work items and rotating control of writing code, and documented an ensemble programming working agreement.
   • R: All teams agreed on a shared method, speeding up integration and enabling monorepo release.