Pagerduty engineering interviews reported by candidates center on hands-on work with the PagerDuty API, a manager conversation about past projects, and some Linux, Terraform or systems questions, plus behavioral screens.
$150K
Avg. Base Comp
$186K
Avg. Total Comp
Not reported
Typical Rounds
Not reported
Process Length
The clearest pattern across the three reports is that Pagerduty tests practical work with its own product. The one candidate who interviewed for the Software Engineer role was asked to use the PagerDuty API in a preferred language, parse the response and handle errors. A Site Reliability Engineer candidate implemented a CLI tool against the same API in an open-book coding session. A Technical Support Engineer candidate completed an API-based take-home. These are adjacent roles, so treat them as hints about the company's style rather than a fixed format. Before any interview, read the public API documentation and build a small client that parses responses, handles failures and copes with unexpected payloads.
The Software Engineer candidate went through a recruiter round and then a manager round. The recruiter asked standard behavioral questions. The manager dug into the candidate's experience, asked for detailed project walkthroughs (problems hit, how they were solved, lessons learned) and added system design questions. The same candidate also had to use Terraform to troubleshoot a state issue, so basic infrastructure-as-code debugging is worth rehearsing.
The adjacent-role reports add systems depth. The SRE candidate faced questions on cloud, Linux and networking after the coding half, and the support engineering candidate got a Linux and SSH exercise plus API architecture and system design questions. The support engineering candidate also described behavioral questions about an unhappy customer and a time they were wrong. All three of these candidates were rejected, so there is no evidence here of what a successful loop looks like. Prepare stories about a project that went differently than planned, and be ready to explain your decisions clearly to a manager and peers.
Synthesized from 3 candidate reports by our editorial team.
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Real interview reports from people who went through the Pagerduty process.
Went through recruiter round and then manager round. Recruiter was the usual behavior questions while the manager interview dug deeper into my experience and more system design related questions. Was asked to describe in detail my projects, issues encountered, how i solved them, what i learned
Questions asked: Asked me to use PagerDuty API with my preferred coding language, parsing the response, error handling.
Had to use terraform to troubleshoot state issue
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Synthesized from candidate reports. Individual experiences may vary.
Candidates report an initial recruiter conversation. The Software Engineer candidate describes the usual behavioral questions. An SRE candidate described it as brief, and a support engineering candidate found it more of a role overview than a screen.
The Software Engineer candidate reports a manager round digging into past projects, issues encountered, solutions and lessons learned, with system design questions. The SRE candidate reports a one-hour manager talk about background and goals, and the support engineering candidate reports a manager round with behavioral questions.
The Software Engineer candidate reports using the PagerDuty API in a preferred language, parsing responses and handling errors, and troubleshooting a Terraform state issue. An SRE candidate reports a similar open-book CLI task in a two-hour panel, and exercises may vary by role.
Adjacent-role candidates report questions on cloud, Linux, networking, SSH and API architecture or system design. For software engineering, this may surface in the manager round's system design discussion, so prepare to reason about service design and troubleshooting.
The SRE candidate reports a short follow-up with the hiring manager and feedback about a week later that the team had chosen someone else. All three reported candidates were rejected, and one noted unclear communication about timing between rounds.
