🎯 8-Stage Interview Process

Comprehensive evaluation designed to assess technical expertise, leadership capability, and cultural alignment

1
Recruiter Screen
30 minutes
2
Technical Phone
45 minutes
3
Coding Challenge
3-6 hours
4
Technical Deep Dive
90 minutes
5
System Design
60 minutes
6
Behavioral
45 minutes
7
Team Fit
30 minutes
8
Executive
30 minutes

Round 1: Recruiter Screen

30 minutes Qualification

Basic qualification check, compensation alignment, and interest validation.

Tell me about your experience with Django and monolith decomposition
Look for: 5+ years Django, specific examples of monolith migrations
What interests you about MyBambu's mission?
Assess mission alignment and passion for financial inclusion
Salary expectations for this role?
Ensure alignment with $150-175K base range

Round 2: Technical Phone Screen

45 minutes Technical

Django deep dive, architecture philosophy, and approach to key challenges.

We have 346 N+1 queries in our codebase. How would you approach fixing them?
Look for: select_related, prefetch_related, database profiling tools, systematic approach
How do you identify service boundaries when decomposing a monolith?
Look for: Domain-driven design, bounded contexts, data coupling analysis
Describe your approach to zero-downtime database migrations
Look for: Blue-green deployments, feature flags, rollback strategies
How would you handle integrating 22 different third-party APIs reliably?
Look for: Circuit breakers, retry patterns, adapter pattern, monitoring

Round 4: Technical Deep Dive

90 minutes Hands-on

Code review of submission, whiteboard exercises, and optimization challenges.

Walk me through your coding challenge solution
Review architecture decisions, trade-offs, and implementation quality
Design the payment service extraction with data separation
Whiteboard exercise - assess API design and migration strategy
This transaction list API takes 15 seconds to load. Optimize it.
Live coding - identify bottlenecks and implement fixes

Round 5: System Design

60 minutes Architecture

Design architecture to scale MyBambu to 30 million users with 99.99% uptime.

Design our architecture for 30M users (10x current scale)
Look for: Load balancing, database sharding, caching strategies
How would you handle $170B in transaction volume reliably?
Look for: Event sourcing, CQRS, transaction consistency patterns
Implement real-time fraud detection across the platform
Look for: Stream processing, ML integration, low-latency patterns

Round 6: Behavioral

45 minutes Leadership

Leadership, mentorship, failures, and cultural fit assessment.

Tell me about leading a major architectural transformation
Look for: Stakeholder management, change management, measurable outcomes
Describe a technical decision you made that failed
Look for: Learning mindset, accountability, how they recovered
How have you developed junior engineers in your career?
Look for: Specific examples, mentorship philosophy, measurable growth
Why is financial inclusion important to you personally?
Assess mission alignment and passion for our user base

📊 Evaluation Scoring Matrix

Candidates must achieve minimum 70/100 total points with specific minimums per category.

Component Weight Points Minimum Required Key Assessment Areas
Coding Challenge 40% 40 28 Architecture, code quality, testing, documentation
Technical Interviews 35% 35 24 Django expertise, system design, problem solving
Behavioral 15% 15 9 Leadership, mentorship, mission alignment
Team Fit 10% 10 6 Communication, collaboration, cultural fit
Total Required 100% 100 70 Pass threshold for hire recommendation

🚩 Red Flags - Automatic Disqualifiers

Only Greenfield Experience
No experience working with legacy systems or technical debt
Advocates Complete Rewrites
Suggests throwing away existing system instead of gradual migration
Cannot Explain Failures
No examples of learning from mistakes or technical failures
No Recent Hands-on Coding
Has been purely managerial with no technical contribution
Poor Communication Skills
Cannot explain technical concepts clearly to various audiences
Not Mission-Aligned
Shows no interest in financial inclusion or serving underbanked communities

✅ Green Flags - Strong Positive Indicators

Specific Transformation Examples
Detailed stories of successful monolith decompositions with metrics
Pragmatic Approach
Balances technical idealism with business constraints and timelines
Clear Technical Communication
Explains complex concepts simply, adapts communication to audience
Concrete Mentorship Examples
Specific stories of developing engineers with measurable outcomes
Passionate About Inclusion
Genuinely excited about serving underbanked communities
Django Community Involvement
Open source contributions, conference talks, or community leadership

💰 Compensation Guidelines

Base salary and signing bonus recommendations based on evaluation scores.

90-100 Points
$170-175K
+ $20K signing bonus
80-89 Points
$160-170K
+ $15K signing bonus
70-79 Points
$150-160K
+ $10K signing bonus

🎯 Quick Reference - Must-Have Skills

Technical Must-Haves

  • Django ORM optimization (N+1 queries)
  • Monolith decomposition (2+ migrations)
  • PostgreSQL performance tuning
  • API design and versioning
  • Integration patterns (circuit breakers)

Leadership Qualities

  • Technical mentorship track record
  • Stakeholder communication
  • Pragmatic decision making
  • Mission alignment
  • Change management experience

Nice-to-Have

  • Financial services experience
  • Spanish language skills
  • AWS/cloud architecture
  • Open source contributions
  • Conference speaking

📚 Complete Interview Guide

Full interview guide with all questions and detailed rubrics: /planning/phase-3-evaluation/interview-guide-complete.md