In-depth information on how to get hired as a software engineer at Patreon, including a list of the steps that are taken and the questions that are asked at each stage.
Getting hired at a fast-growing company like Patreon is an exciting opportunity, but you’ll need to be ready to answer some tough interview questions to stand out from the competition. In this article, we’ll cover the top Patreon interview questions across various roles that you’re likely to encounter during the recruiting process, along with tips on how to prepare winning answers.
Whether you’re interviewing for an engineering, product, marketing, or other role at Patreon, this inside look at their interview process will help you highlight your relevant skills and experience so you can ace the interview. Let’s dive in!
About Patreon
Founded in 2013 by musician Jack Conte and developer Sam Yam, Patreon is a membership platform that provides business tools for creators to run a subscription service. It allows creators to earn recurring monthly income directly from their fans or patrons.
Patreon has revolutionized how creators monetize their work online by providing them with ongoing support. The company has over 200000 active creators on its platform across video music, podcasts, writing and more. With over 8 million monthly active patrons supporting these creators, Patreon processes billions in payments each year.
As Patreon continues its rapid growth, the company is looking to hire motivated and talented individuals across many roles. Competition is tough, so being well prepared with strong answers to commonly asked questions is key to landing the job.
General Interview Tips
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Research the company and role – Have a strong understanding of Patreon’s business model, products, culture and the specific responsibilities of the role you’re applying for.
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Practice your answers – Rehearse responding to likely questions out loud to polish your answers. Prepare stories of your past experiences that showcase relevant skills.
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Prepare some questions to ask – Being well-informed about the company and having thoughtful questions ready demonstrates your interest in the role.
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Watch your body language – Maintain eye contact, sit upright, and have a confident tone. First impressions matter, so project an energetic and enthusiastic attitude.
With these tips in mind, let’s look at some of the most common Patreon interview questions and how to best approach them.
Engineering Interview Questions
Engineering roles make up a major portion of Patreon’s team. As a fast-scaling tech company, candidates for software engineering positions can expect highly technical interview questions focused on assessing hard skills. Here are some to be ready for:
Q1: How would you design the architecture for Patreon’s platform? What key components and technologies would you use?
As a core platform engineering role, interviewers want to understand your systems design skills and knowledge. They’ll assess how you break down the key functions and data flows within a platform like Patreon. Be sure to cover:
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Major components – user management, content delivery, payments processing, data storage etc.
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Technology choices – reasons for choosing tools and frameworks suited to Patreon’s needs
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Scalability and reliability factors – how the system can handle Patreon’s growth and prevent downtime
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Security considerations – especially around payments and user data
Q2: How would you go about debugging a performance issue or outage in Patreon’s distributed systems architecture?
This question tests your understanding of working with complex distributed systems as well as your problem-solving abilities under pressure. Discuss your technical debugging skills and how you would:
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Identify the root cause by reviewing logs and metrics across services
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Prioritize diagnosing critical system components first
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Check for network requests timeouts, data consistency issues etc.
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Collaborate with team members to resolve the issue efficiently
Q3: What strategies would you employ to make sure Patreon’s mobile apps provide a smooth user experience?
For a mobile-heavy platform like Patreon, performance optimization is crucial. Demonstrate your expertise in:
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Minimizing network calls and payloads for efficient data loading
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Caching and pre-fetching techniques to handle latency
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Optimizing battery and memory usage
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Leveraging device capabilities like location, camera etc. appropriately
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Monitoring crash rates, user flows, and adoption
Product Interview Questions
Candidates for product roles at Patreon can expect questions focused on assessing product management skills, strategic thinking, and user empathy. Here are some common examples:
Q1: How would you identify new product opportunities and features to enhance Patreon’s value proposition to creators?
Showcase your understanding of leveraging data and user research to generate product insights. Highlight approaches like:
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Analyzing Creator metrics to identify pain points
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Conducting Creator surveys and interviews to understand needs
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Monitoring industry/competitor trends for new monetization models
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Mapping new features to Creator workflows to ensure seamless integration
Q2: If you were asked to improve patron retention on Patreon’s platform, how would you approach this challenge?
Demonstrate your analytical abilities and problem-solving process here by discussing how you would:
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Analyze data points like patron churn rate, lifetime value cohort analysis etc.
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Identify churn drivers through patron surveys and exit interviews
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Brainstorm features like patron dashboards, loyalty programs, exclusive content access
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Define success metrics and experiment with feature rollouts to test efficacy
Q3: How would you evaluate whether a newly launched feature is successful? What key metrics would you track?
Highlight your understanding of defining and measuring success criteria for new products based on metrics like:
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Adoption rates
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Retention impact e.g. lowered churn
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Engagement metrics like time spent
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Monetization goals e.g. increased patron pledges
Discuss balancing quantitative metrics with qualitative user feedback to get a holistic view. Demonstrate analytical thinking and a data-driven approach.
Marketing Interview Questions
For marketing roles, Patreon interviewers aim to assess creativity, analytical abilities, and leadership potential. Some common marketing interview questions include:
Q1: How would you devise an effective marketing strategy to attract more creators to Patreon’s platform?
Showcase your strategic thinking by covering approaches to:
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Identify creator segments with biggest potential e.g. YouTubers
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Tailor messaging and content to resonate with each segment
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Leverage influencer partnerships and communities to drive awareness
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Develop paid marketing campaigns on relevant channels like Facebook, YouTube etc.
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Track conversion metrics from campaigns to creators successfully onboarding
Q2: What key metrics would you track to measure the effectiveness of Patreon’s creator acquisition programs? How would you use these metrics to iterate on the marketing strategy?
Demonstrate your analytical approach and data-driven mindset by discussing metrics like:
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Click-through-rate from campaigns to signup page
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Conversion rate from clicks to signups
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Cost per acquisition
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Retention after 30/90 days post-acquisition
Highlight how you’d use insights from this data to refine targeting, messaging, channel mix etc. to optimize strategy.
Q3: How would you identify creators with the most potential value for Patreon’s platform and focus marketing efforts on those high-value segments?
Showcase your analytical thinking and creative problem-solving by covering approaches like:
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Analyzing existing creator data to identify creators driving highest patron pledges
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Building lookalike audiences to find similar high-value creators
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Focusing paid ads and custom nurture campaigns on these segments
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Developing VIP onboarding experiences and promotions for targeted creators
Leadership Interview Questions
For leadership roles like product managers or engineering managers, expect questions that evaluate strategic thinking, management style, communication skills and more. Some examples:
Q1: How would you go about building an effective team and fostering collaboration at Patreon?
Showcase your management philosophy by highlighting how you would:
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Hire people with complementary skill sets
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Promote open communication and constructive feedback
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Empower team members and delegate responsibilities
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Build camaraderie through team events/activities
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Inspire through an engaging vision and leading by example
Q2: How would you handle a situation where a team member was not meeting expectations for their role? What steps would you take to address this issue?
Demonstrate your coaching abilities and problem-solving approach by discussing how you would:
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Have a direct but empathetic 1:1 to understand underlying causes
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Establish clear expectations and provide actionable feedback
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Offer additional training/support and check-in regularly
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Develop performance improvement plans with measurable goals
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Manage termination gracefully if expectations remain unmet
Q3: What is your management style? How do you balance enabling your team members with being hands-on when needed?
Showcase your ability to flex between coaching/supporting and getting involved based on the situation. Share how you:
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Set clear direction but give team autonomy in execution
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Empower team members to play to their strengths
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Jump in on critical projects when necessary to maintain momentum
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Solicit feedback from reports on your
Patreon SWE – Panel Interview
For people who want to work as a software engineer at Coinbase, there is an on-site panel interview with two coding rounds focused on standard data structures and system design and a behavioral round with the hiring manager.
Weve discussed these in detail in the sections ahead.
In the first round, candidates are tested on how well they understand data structures and algorithms, including strings, arrays, linked lists, binary trees, and linked lists.
Candidates will be given coding problems to solve on a whiteboard. The questions will mostly be Leetcode problems that are easy to medium hard.
You will need to know how to use Python, R, machine learning, and statistics to answer questions like “How do I implement lodash functions? “, “How do I build a shopping cart data model? “, and “How do I create an LRU cache with TTL?”
Here are a few questions you might encounter:
- Implement a function to reverse a linked list.
- Make a function that can look through an array and find the two numbers that add up to a certain number.
- You should add a function that checks if a binary tree is balanced.
- Design a database schema for a messaging application.
- Implement a function to remove duplicate characters from a string.
Make sure you prepare extensively by reviewing coding concepts and practicing coding challenges on Leetcode.
The goal of system design interviews is to see how well a candidate can create complicated, real-world software systems with many parts.
The round is typically reserved for more experienced candidates with several years of relevant industry experience. System design questions aren’t often given to interns because it’s not reasonable to expect them to have enough experience in the field to answer them well.
System design questions are meant to see how well a candidate can solve problems, how much they know about technology, and how well they can design systems that are scalable, reliable, and meet specific business needs.
Here are the questions you can expect:
- How would you make a social media app that millions of people can use at the same time?
- Could you show me how you would build an e-commerce site that could handle tens of thousands of transactions per second?
- In your opinion, how would you go about making a ride-sharing service that keeps both drivers and passengers safe?
- How would you design an X (Tic-tac-toe, Chess, Minesweeper) game?
- How would you design TinyURL?
There are two points to remember when answering these questions:
- Tell the interviewer how you came up with your ideas and how you plan to solve the problem.
- Asking clarifying questions about the prompts is another way to show that you know about computers and how you use a structured approach. For example, “Are we trying to design a certain feature or make the experience better as a whole?” or “What are the system’s limits?”
In this round, the questions are meant to test the candidates’ ability to work together, solve problems, and have a good work ethic.
So, the questions might be situational (“Tell me about a time when…”) and meant to find out how well you can solve problems and whether you’re a good fit for the job.
Here are a few example questions:
- Tell me about a tough problem you had to solve and how you did it.
- Tell me about a project you finished that you’re really proud of.
- Use an example of feedback that was hard to hear to show what you mean. How did you respond?.
- Tell me about a time when you had to work with someone who was tricky. How did you handle the situation?.
- Describe a time when you made a mistake at work. What did you learn from it?.
Before this round, you should gather a lot of examples from your past that show you have the right skills, such as the ability to communicate, delegate, manage your time well, be a leader, and so on.
Also, go through the Patrons mission and vision to get a sense of its culture. It will help you better optimize your answers and align your goals and vision with theirs.
A good idea is to rehearse your responses to behavioral questions in the presence of a Mock Interviewer.
You can set up a meeting with a Prepfully Patreon hiring manager or software engineer to go over your interview skills and help you feel more confident before your next interview.
Patreon SWE – 1-Hour Coding Challenge
Coinbase conducts a rigorous 1-hour LeetCode-style live coding video call as part of its software engineering interview process. During the call, candidates are presented with an easy to medium-level coding challenge, for e. g implementing CD or a rate limiter.
In this live coding challenge, candidates will be tested on their ability to write clean, efficient code under tight time constraints. The challenge also gives the interviewer a chance to see how well the candidate can solve problems and think critically right then and there.
People who want to apply should have a good understanding of basic computer science and be able to code in at least one language.
How To Stand Out in Ultrasound Interviews (Old Patreon Content)
FAQ
Why should we hire you?
What to expect in a 1 hour coding interview?
What are whiteboard coding questions?
What kind of coding questions are asked in an interview?
