Dropbox thinks that to build for the future of work, it needs to be the future of work itself. Now a virtual-first employer, the company is famous for its empowering and supportive approach to management. Check out Dropboxs Life Inside Dropbox to get a sense of the companys incredible culture.
Are you sure you want to work for Dropbox? If so, keep reading to learn how to ace the engineering management (EM) interview.
A normal Dropbox EM loop has three interviews: a phone interview with the hiring manager and a recruiter, and an in-person interview with the hiring manager.
You’ll go over your resume and be asked a few behavioral questions, like why you want to work at Dropbox and why engineering management should hire you.
You don’t need to study much for this one; the recruiter just wants to be sure you are who you say you are. Go over your resume to make sure you remember everything, and learn more about Dropbox, such as what their company mission is.
Next, the hiring manager will give you a call. Youll start with behavioral questions, but the hiring manager will probe deeper into your experience and technical abilities. To prepare, practice speaking in depth about big projects you worked on, and try to anticipate follow-up questions. What would you ask if you were the hiring manager? This is also a great chance to ask about the role itself, the company’s structure, and its culture.
Tip: Ask your recruiter for the hiring managers name prior to your call. Look him or her up on LinkedIn to get a better sense of who they are. Bonus points if you two share something in common. Connecting personally will make you more memorable.
The on-site at Dropbox typically contains 4 rounds: people, execution, a manager deep-dive, and a technical deep-dive.
The people round is quite broad. You will be asked how you find, keep, and develop top employees, as well as how you deal with people who don’t do their jobs well and how you make teams that work well together.
The manager and technical deep-dives look at how well you can manage people and how good you are at technology by talking to you in depth about a complicated project you’ve worked on. Youll be asked about both people and technical decisions and tradeoffs as well as cross-functional communication.
Find out more about what to expect in each round by reading on. This article includes examples of questions that were recently asked in real Dropbox EM interviews.
People who want to work for Dropbox EM are tested on their technical and people management skills, as well as their ability to hire and manage people and teams. There is a lot of overlap between groups, so when you look at past projects, you should think about how to manage people and how to make things work technically. Both contexts are relevant.
Dropbox is looking for EMs who can create high-performing teams. This starts with hiring people who are good at what they do and giving them the tools they need to reach their own goals. Since hiring people is a big part of your job as an EM, you can expect to be asked a lot of questions about how you hire people.
There is no right or wrong answer, but Dropbox wants you to show that you can spot talent and talk to candidates in a way that helps you understand who they are and what they can offer. If its a good fit, you should be able to “sell” a candidate on joining your team.
Great leaders are highly focused on helping their team members grow in their careers. Professional growth drives company growth. Can you gain your team’s trust? Can you help them make and carry out growth plans that help them reach their goals?
People management rounds will also include questions around performance management. You should get used to summarizing your management philosophy, such as how you set up one-on-one meetings, deal with underperformers, and manage superstars.
Questions like these can be tough as people management situations are nuanced. Ultimately, your interviewers want to see evidence that you can navigate tricky management responsibilities with grace. We suggest that you make your own story bank so that you have clear examples ready to refer to.
Preparing for a Dropbox interview? With their reputation as a top tech company, you can expect thorough, rigorous interviews. Mastering both technical and behavioral questions is key to standing out.
In this comprehensive guide, we provide insider tips and examples of the most common Dropbox interview questions – from initial phone screens to final round onsites.
Dropbox Company Overview
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Founded in 2007, Dropbox pioneered the cloud storage and file sharing space.
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Headquarters are in San Francisco with over 2,800 employees globally
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Well-known for their strong engineering culture and famous candidates days.
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Hiring bar is high, even for early career roles. Expect multiple rounds of interviews.
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Questions focus heavily on data structures, algorithms system design, and behavioral examples.
Common Types of Dropbox Interview Questions
Behavioral & Culture Fit
- “Tell me about yourself”
- “Why Dropbox?”
- Conflict resolution stories
- Times you received feedback
- Diversity and inclusion
Technical Coding
- Data structures like arrays, strings, trees
- Algorithms such as search, sort, dynamic programming
- Object-oriented design and testing
System Design
- Design systems like a URL shortener or social network
- Scaling, caching, databases, and microservices
Role-Specific
- UX portfolio review for designers
- Metrics analysis for data scientists
- Debugging skills for SREs
How to Prepare for Your Dropbox Interview
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Study computer science fundamentals – brush up on data structures, algorithms, design patterns and object-oriented concepts.
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Practice mock interviews – find a friend to whiteboard problems or use platforms like LeetCode. Time yourself.
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Review Dropbox’s technology stack – brush up on Python, React, Golang, Kubernetes, MySQL etc. based on your role.
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Look up common behavioral questions – plan stories about collaboration, conflict, receiving feedback.
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Prepare your own questions to ask about culture, career growth, mentoring.
Dropbox Interview Questions by Role
Here are insider example questions candidates have reported across key roles:
Software Engineering & Backend
Coding:
- Implement a LRU cache in OOP language of your choice.
- Given an unsorted array, find the kth smallest element in it.
- Reverse a linked list iteratively and recursively.
System Design:
- Design a URL shortening service like bit.ly.
- Design a push notification system for a social network app.
- Optimize cache design for a search engine backend.
Object-Oriented Design:
- Design classes for an online shopping system.
- Design and implement an API rate limiter.
Behavioral:
- Tell me about a technical project or algorithm you designed.
- When have you disagreed with coworkers on an approach?
Frontend Engineering
Coding:
- Given a DOM tree, implement a function to find the longest subtree path.
- Reverse a string iteratively and recursively.
- Given an array of meeting times, merge overlapping times.
System Design:
- Design a real-time collaboration service like Google Docs.
- Design Facebook’s Newsfeed system.
- Optimize webpage loading performance.
Behavioral:
- Tell me about a new frontend framework or tool you learned.
- How do you balance new features and technical debt?
- When have you simplified a complex UI for better UX?
Data Science & Analytics
Stats:
- Explain the difference between classification and regression.
- How would you detect outliers in data?
- What is Bayes’ Theorem?
Coding:
- Find the median of two sorted arrays.
- Implement K-means clustering algorithm.
System Design:
- Design a system to detect fraud in ecommerce transactions.
- Design an analytics backend for a social media site.
Behavioral:
- Tell me about a data science project where your analysis influenced decisions.
- How do you handle missing or corrupt data in analyses?
- When have you communicated insights to non-technical audiences?
Product Management
Behavioral:
- How would you design a new product feature end-to-end?
- Tell me about launching a product you owned.
- How do you prioritize new features with engineers?
Estimation:
- How would you estimate market size for a new product?
- How much storage does Dropbox need for 2 million users?
Design:
- Redesign Dropbox mobile app onboarding.
- Suggest ways to improve retention among new users.
Strategy:
- How would you improve monetization of the Dropbox platform?
- What emerging technologies could disrupt Dropbox?
Final Tips for Dropbox Interview Success
With rigorous preparation using insider resources like those above, you can master the core competencies Dropbox looks for and stand out from the competition.
On interview day, remain confident, poised, and enthusiastic. Ask smart questions that show your interest in Dropbox’s mission and culture. With the right combination of coding skills, design intuition, and collaborative mindset, you will be well on your way to joining this top tech company!
People: Teams and Execution
We interviewed a Dropbox engineering manager who told us “people management is a means to execution management. The real goal is getting the most out of your team. “.
At Dropbox, team and execution managent are tightly linked. Interviewers want to see candidates who know that engineers who are both supported and pushed will be the most productive.
Youll be asked questions like:
- Tell me about the skills and levels of experience that you’d like to see on your ideal team.
- How do you prioritize requests?
- Tell me about your best-performing and worst-performing teams, and why.
Surface-level answers are not going to cut it. Be thoughtful and nuanced in your responses. Our Dropbox EM advises “Dont have ready answers to every problem. People are incredible complex! You have to dig into things and really identify the details. “.
When prepping for this round, spend some extra time working on your story bank. Youve probably got succinct stories that convey your contributions. Take a step back and think about all the stakeholders of your project and what their motivations were. Focus in on your team, and how you organized and executed through them to deliver the project. Think through the people issues – confusion, conflict, etc. Make sure you can speak to the more difficult times. And dont forget to summarize what you learned.
Deep-Dives: Management and Technical
Youll go through both management deep-dive and technical deep-dives toward the end of the loop. Deep-dives (sometimes known as project retrospectives) focus on one particular project. The purpose is to get to know you and your capabilities at a very granular level.
The structure will be the same for both deep-dives. Your interviews are exploring your experience. At a high level, these characteristics are assessed:
- Technical understanding of projects you own (technical)
- Technical decision-making (technical and management)
- Working relationships with engineers (management)
- Clarity of communication (technical and management)
As you can see, theres a lot of overlap. You won’t spend as much time coding as an EM, but it’s still important that you know a lot about the technology you own. Dependencies and business objectives are also deeply important.
Here are some questions you might see:
- Describe the architecture of the current system. What are its dependencies?.
- Describe a difficult decision you made. What options were looked at? What were the pros and cons of each? How did you work with your engineering team to find a solution?
- What makes this project complex?
- What outside groups did you work with, and how did you talk to them to make sure you finished the best project possible?
To get ready for these rounds, you should look over our system design course and review any tech basics that are relevant to your field. When you’re ready to talk about specifics, go back to your story bank and pick a project that is hard to understand technically. Add technical detail. Include trade-offs and edge cases, and write down logically sound argments for any tech decisions you made. Then, think through the management aspects. How did you come up with solutions with your group? Who else did you work with from the outside? Did you have to convince others to change their minds? If so, how did that go?
Finally, take this summary and translate details into the STAR Framework. This will help you communicate succinctly during the interview.
Deep Dive Engineering Interview | | Life Inside Dropbox | Dropbox
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