Personas R&D Interview Prep Guide

Ahoy!

We’re thrilled you’re considering joining us. Segment has grown so much since we started and that
growth has really accelerated since the company was acquired by Twilio in November of 2020. That’s why
we’re looking for more people like you - builders, creators, and bright minds - who will help us continue
that momentum.

You are on your way to start the candidate journey with Twilio+Segment, and I wanted to provide you
with some helpful tips that should guide you through the interview process. Please let me know if you
have any questions, I’m always happy to help!

Interview Day

The goal of Twilio+Segment’s interview process is for us to get to know where your technical strengths lie
and determine your fit for the role you are interviewing for and within our culture overall.

The hiring team aims to create a unique, engaging, and challenging experience for you. The interview day
will be packed with interesting problems, and the team will be assessing your technical abilities and
meaningful professional experiences.
Just as we’re interviewing you, you’re interviewing us! Bring your own questions as well – what would you
like to learn about the position, development and engineering at Twilio+Segment, or the company in
general? By the end of the day, we want to make sure that you’ve enjoyed your visit with us and have a
good understanding of the role, the teams who are hiring, and the company itself.

In your interviews, you’ll have the opportunity to meet members of the technical team plus a Bar Raiser,
our Twilio+Segment Magic Values champion. Your interviews will be structured as the four rounds below,
in no particular order:

Hiring Manager Interview (50 minutes)

During this interview, you’ll learn more about what the job entails, hear about the team dynamics, and
have the opportunity to share your expertise with a hiring manager you may report to or work closely
with.

To understand your successes - and when things fell short - we want to hear about the projects you
worked on, solo or as part of a team. Be prepared to talk through your experience with a focus on your
last few roles. Avoid presenting “big picture” answers - focus on the specifics and discuss the situation at
hand, your tasks or goals, the actions you took, and the outcome or results.

Bar Raiser Interview (50 Minutes)

Our Bar Raiser interview is an opportunity for you to learn more about Twilio+Segment life by meeting
with a Twilion or Segmenter outside of the direct team you would be working with. It’s a chance to share
the values that are most important to you and to learn how they align with ours.

Since our Bar Raisers are not part of the technical hiring team, they help bring a critical lens to the hiring
process to ensure interviews are conducted in a thoughtful, objective, and data-driven way. They help
make sure we’re hiring the best person for every position: someone who practices our Twilio+Segment
Magic values in their daily work and can show relevant examples of what that’s looked like in previous
roles.

This is an opportunity for us to ask about specific examples of meaningful and challenging professional
experiences. Examples of topics that may be covered: a previous project that you led, a particular
milestone you achieved at your workplace, or a feature/tool you built that may have been very impactful
to your team or customers. Look through your resume and prepare different examples of your own
experiences. Highlight your expertise and accomplishments, but also your mistakes and lessons learned.
Autocomplete Interview (1 hour, 50 minutes)

Many of our customers want the ability to easily search and navigate throughout their workspace, so we’ll
build this autocomplete functionality during a ~2 hour structured interview. Please bring your dev-ready
laptop - have your favorite editor, programming language environment, and other tools you use regularly
ready to go. You will work through a pair programming exercise to implement a UI from a mock. There is
scaffolding that will be provided to you in the interview - you will be cloning a Segment repository via
GitHub, so make sure you have 2factor authentication enabled and that your CLI is logged in to Github
using a personal access token. There is also data provided coming from a mock backend which you can
access through a hook that will be provided to you during the interview.

What you will be creating searches across a workspace’s different entities, ranks them, and presents
them back to the user in a nicely grouped list. You will be expected to implement the UI with React,
Typescript, and our internal component library, Evergreen (which your interviewer will help guide you on).
Focus on functionality before finessing the details, and always talk through your thought process!
Engineering Architecture Interview (50 minutes)

During your engineering architecture interview, we recommend using the tool you’re most comfortable
with to illustrate and share your solution/s and confirm mutual understanding with your interviewer.
Some examples include: your text editor, a charting/drawing tool like https://www.lucidchart.com/,
https://miro.com/, or https://excalidraw.com/, or even pencil & paper. Zoom also supports free-hand
drawing, which you can access by going to ‘Share Screen’ and selecting ‘Whiteboard’.

The session will require that you share your solutions with your interviewer during the Zoom video call.
While we realize this doesn’t exactly mirror a live white-board experience, we think the dialogue is most
important, and these tools can help drive clarity without introducing too much friction or disruption. We
appreciate your understanding as we navigate virtual onsite interviews and welcome any feedback you
may have that can help us improve the overall experience!

Technical Thought Process

At the beginning of each problem, your first instinct should be gathering information and requirements.
Ask clarifying questions and state your assumptions. You are expected to have follow-up questions in
order to have a clear understanding of the problem.

We encourage you to think out loud because we value the process as much as the correct solution. We
find the most successful interviews occur when engineers explain their high level plan before diving into
the solution. Interviewers often provide hints, so please listen for feedback as you work. Collaboration is
a good thing, and it helps the interview progress in the right direction. Assess all the possible options and
suggestions you have when dealing with an issue. Don’t be afraid to go back and debug or fix mistakes
you may catch later.

Some valuable traits that interviewers like to see are a candidate’s problem solving skills, determination,
collaborative nature, and eagerness to learn. It’s not just about the final solution!

Twilio+Segment Magic Values

Who we are and how we work together, combined with our embedded values and unique team spirit, are
collectively known around here as the Twilio+Segment Magic. Honestly, inclusiveness, earning trust, and
being unafraid to embrace any idea - no matter how wild - are part of the core values that guide us.

We’ve outlined these values and grouped them under three different categories. How we act, how we
make decisions, and how we win. Our Magic Values are pretty simple but really important.
When sharing stories from your work or personal life during your interview, don’t shy away from sharing
your own definition of magic values that you live and breathe.

Wrapping It Up

You will receive a separate email from a Talent Guide detailing the logistics of your interview loop.

We’re committed to building an inclusive, creative, and transformational workplace that equips us all to
do amazing things. If you require any interview accommodations, please don’t hesitate to let the Talent
Guide or your recruiter know.
Additionally, check out these helpful tips for interviewing virtually!

Thank you again for taking the time to prepare and spend your day with Twilio+Segment! We are really
excited to explore this opportunity with you and hope that we have a future where we work together.

Cheers,

The Twilio+Segment R&D Recruiting Team