Behavioral · Stories with evidence
What questions do you ask the interviewer?
Short answer
Ask questions whose answers would change your decision: how work is prioritised, what success looks like, how incidents are handled, and why the role is open. Avoid questions answered on the website.
Your questions signal what you care about and how you think. The best ones are specific to the role and produce information you could not get from the job description.
Categories worth asking about
- Success: what does a strong first six months look like, and who judges it
- Work: how priorities are set and what gets cut when time is short
- Team: why the role is open, how the team is structured and how decisions are made
- Health: how incidents are reviewed and how on-call is supported
Ask one or two per interviewer and follow up on their answers. A question that ignores what they just said reads as a script. Listen for whether the answer is specific or evasive; that is data about the team.
Follow-ups you should expect
Interviewers use these to check whether the first answer was understanding or memorisation.
- 1What answer would make you decline an offer?
- 2What have you already learned about the team?
- 3Which question matters most to you?
- 4What would you ask a peer engineer versus a manager?
Say it in the interview
I usually ask what a strong first six months looks like and who decides that, because it tells me whether expectations are concrete. I also ask how the team handles incidents and what changes after them, since that shows whether learning is real. For the manager, I ask why the role is open and what has been tried internally. If the answers are vague, that is useful information, not just a box to tick.
Use this as a model, not a script. Saying it in your own words is what makes it survive follow-up pressure.
Related questions
Reading is step one
Now say it out loud.
Understanding an answer and delivering it under pressure are different skills. Rehearse this topic in a live Behavioral mock interview and get scored feedback on depth, clarity and confidence.