Product Management interview prep.

Behavioural questions to expect

1. Walk me through your CV.
2. Tell me about your most impactful product launch or feature - ideally something built for developers.
3. Tell me about a weakness, a failure, or feedback you've received and worked on.
4. Why devtools + infra PM - and why this vs consumer / enterprise SaaS?
5. Which product area at the firm would you want to own, and why?
6. Why the firm?
7. How would you describe the firm's product + edge in your own words?
8. How does product management actually drive value at a devtools / infra firm?

Technical concepts to master

• Developer discovery + dogfooding

  Dogfooding · Public issue tracker + community forum · Customer interviews + JTBD · Product analytics + cohort behavior

• PLG + bottom-up adoption

  PLG funnel - sign-up to expansion · Free tier design · Bottom-up to top-down expansion · Activation + TTFC as North Star

• OSS + community + monetization line

  OSS / open-core business models · OSS vs paid decision rubric · Community trust + transparency · Competitor fork risk

• Cross-functional + engineering-led culture

  Eng-PM partnership + RFC discipline · DevRel + docs as product partners · Community-as-PM-channel · Sales + CS partnership for enterprise expansion

Practical drills

• the firm wants to launch a feature aimed at lifting developer adoption + activation in its target segment. Walk me through how you'd approach the V1 design.
• the firm's WAD is at 10K with 25% activation; the strategy calls for 20K WAD + 40% activation in 4 quarters. Walk me through your plan.
• You're prioritizing Q3 for the firm: 3 OSS community feature requests, 2 enterprise-readiness features (SSO, audit logs, RBAC) needed to close 2 enterprise deals, and a major API redesign the eng team thinks the product needs. One squad. Walk me through.

Smart-question anchors

• Product + developer segment - product surface, the engineer the PM would serve, the strategic bets
• OSS posture + community - OSS-led vs open-core vs proprietary, the OSS-vs-paid decision rubric, community engagement model
• PLG + adoption funnel - the firm's WAD / TTFC / activation / free-to-paid metrics, the funnel-improvement focus
• Eng-PM partnership + RFC culture - how major decisions are made, RFC + design-doc discipline, PM authority vs eng authority
• DevRel + docs + cross-functional - DevRel team shape, docs partnership, community ownership

Sourced from

Lenny's Newsletter — Devtools PM essays + interviews · OpenView Partners — PLG Benchmarks + Devtools Index · Heavybit + DevTools Angels — Devtools PM community + interview guides · Postman + Apollo + HashiCorp — public PM blog posts on developer products · GitHub Open Source Guides + Linux Foundation reports — maintainer economics + OSS governance · Product School + BrainStation — base PM interview question banks