Day-Of Tactics

The morning of

• Reread the JD once. Underline the FDE behaviors ("scoping under ambiguity," "drive customer outcomes," "translate platform capabilities into business value").
• Reread 03-fde-archetype — the framing matters more than any single answer.
• Skim 04-customer-embedding for the discovery / scoping vocabulary.
• Skim 14-domain-context — re-anchor the procurement / contracts vocabulary.
• Drill 3–4 questions from Section B and Section D of the practice set — those are most heavily weighted.
• Have 50 lines of representative production code accessible — a feature module, a transformation, a test. The interviewer may ask.
• Walk 15 minutes before the first session. Don't cram.
• Close every unrelated tab. Water, scratch paper, pen.

Structural moves that work across every round

1. Restate before answering

Always. "So you're asking me to walk through how I'd handle X scenario, with the constraint that Y. Is that right?" Buys 20 seconds, confirms scope.

2. State approach before doing the work

"Before I start, my plan is to do A, then B, then C. Sound right?" Lets the interviewer redirect early if your framing is off — much better than 10 minutes of going the wrong direction.

3. Lead with domain questions on customer scenarios

When given a scenario, ask 1–2 customer-facing questions before diving in: "Before I scope this, I'd want to know: who at the customer is asking, what's their fiscal-year context, and is the deadline driven by an external event?" This is the FDE signal.

4. Commit to a recommendation

"My answer would be X. The condition I'd revisit it under is [specific]." Better than "it depends" with five options.

5. Cite specifics when discussing tradeoffs

"I'd pick a dict over a sorted list because we have N lookups against M items where N > M log M." Specific is senior; vague is junior.

6. Narrate when stuck

Silence is the enemy. "I'm thinking about whether to treat this as a fanout problem or a granularity problem; let me work through both." Visible thinking scores more than silent thinking.

The customer-scenario round

This round is the most FDE-specific. The script:

1. Restate the scenario. Include the constraints.
2. Ask 2–3 customer-facing questions. "What's the stakeholder context? Is the deadline external? What's the cheapest useful outcome?"
3. Propose a scope. "Given X, Y, Z, here's what I'd ship in week one: [concrete]. Here's what I'd defer to week two: [concrete]. Here's what I'd kill outright: [concrete]."
4. Sequence the first week. Day-by-day, including who you'd talk to.
5. Name kill criteria. "If by Wednesday we discover X, I'd reshape; here's what would cause me to recommend pausing."
6. Plan the Friday status. Five-line summary of what you'd write.

What to avoid

• Diving into architecture immediately.
• Promising everything by Friday.
• Naming tools before naming outcomes.
• Saying "I need more requirements" — that's a junior reflex.

The coding round

Refer to 10 §tips for the full guide. Round-of moves:

• Clarify input/output before coding.
• Use types and small functions even in 15-minute scope.
• Handle NULLs deliberately and name them out loud.
• Write a tiny example trace before declaring done.
• Anticipate the "at scale" follow-up — have an answer ready.
• For SQL: descriptive CTE names; comment when the join is tricky.

The behavioral round

Heavily weighted in FDE loops. Have a story ready for each of these (90 seconds, STAR):

• Scoping under ambiguity.
• Killing work.
• Pushing back on a stakeholder.
• Recovering from a missed expectation.
• Translating technical work to business stakeholders.
• Leading without authority.
• Being wrong.

Two craft notes:

1. Lead with the decision you owned. Not the framework, not the tool. The decision.
2. Include the alternative you considered. "I picked X. The alternative would have been Y. Here's why X." That sentence signals senior.

Questions to ask them

For the FDE / hiring-manager round

• "Walk me through a recent deployment — what was the customer ask, what was the first thing shipped, what took longest?"
• "What's the difference between a great FDE and a good one in your shop?"
• "How do FDEs hand work back to platform when something is structurally broken?"
• "How is the FDE function sized today, and what's the ratio of FDE-DE to platform engineers?"
• "What's the most common reason a deployment slips, in your experience?"

For technical / peer rounds

• "What's the part of the extraction stack you'd most want to improve?"
• "How do FDEs collaborate with platform engineering on feature requests?"
• "What's a customer-driven feature that became a platform capability?"

For founder / GM rounds

• "What's the analytical problem you've helped a customer solve that surprised you?"
• "What's the SLA you stand behind today, and where does it bend?"
• "What does the trajectory look like for an FDE-DE over 18–24 months?"

Closing statement

When asked "any final questions?" or "anything else?", have a 30-second close ready:

1. One specific thing that confirmed your interest. "What you said about [X] confirmed why this role caught me."
2. One concrete thing you'd bring (not a résumé recap). "If I joined, the first thing I'd want to dig into is [specific]."
3. A clear ask. "What are the next steps and the timeline?"

Don't pad. Brevity here is its own signal.

After the loop

• Thank-you email within 24 hours. One paragraph. Reference one specific thing from one round.
• Self-debrief: which rounds were strong, which were rocky. Add weak rounds to your drill list.
• Don't pester the recruiter. Loops typically resolve in 3–7 business days.
• If no: ask for substantive feedback. Most won't give much; the framing of the rejection sometimes tells you which round.
• If yes: negotiate. Always. Senior roles have substantial room; FDE roles often more than core eng.