Sales Engineer Interview Questions
1
Tell me about how you were able to translate the needs of multiple stakeholders into a successful program and or partnership?
Behavioral
2
Tell me about a time you were able to reduce the budget for a client/partner and achieve greater results?
Behavioral
3
Tell me about a time when you had to support a business initiative with which you didn�t necessarily agree. How did you handle it?
Behavioral
4
I want to imagine you are the expert on a subject, how do you make sure everyone understands what you need to make the project successful?
Behavioral
5
Tell me about a time when you failed to meet a deadline. Describe the course of events and how you handled it.
Behavioral
6
Tell me about a time when an internal team was not meeting your standards and how you were able to coach them to improve/up their standards? How did you go about it?
Behavioral
7
Tell me about a time when you had to communicate a major project change to your group? How did you go about it, how did your team respond?
Behavioral
8
Tell me about a project you were managing where a dispute between stakeholders threatened the success of the project, and what did you do?
Behavioral
9
Tell me about a decision that you have made in the past that you would change today and why
Behavioral
10
Tell me about a time when you were pressured to break the rules
Behavioral
11
What would you do to improve inclusion in the workplace?
Behavioral
12
Tell me about a time when you took on something significant outside your area of responsibility. Why was it important? What was the outcome?
Behavioral
13
How do you deal with someone who does not finish what they promised?
Behavioral
14
Imagine you worked in a place with a negative culture, what would you do about it? How would you improve it?
Behavioral
15
Tell me about a time when you went above and beyond the call of duty for a key stakeholder and or client. Why did you take the action you did? What was the outcome?
Behavioral
16
Tell me about a time when you had to move forward with a decision that you weren�t in agreement with and the decision ended having a positive outcome
Behavioral
17
Tell me about a time that you were not satisfied with the status quo, what you did to change it and were you successful in that process.
Behavioral
18
Give an example of a time you requested additional funding/budget to complete a project. Why was it needed? Did you try to figure out another approach? Did you get the additional resources? Why or why not?
Behavioral
19
Give an example of when you saw a peer struggling and decided to step in and help. What was the situation and what actions did you take? What was the outcome?
Behavioral
20
Think about your current job and walk me through the areas of your role that you think are the most challenging.
Behavioral
21
Tell me about a time you built trust with an upset external stakeholder?
Behavioral
22
Tell me about a time you've noticed that a company's core principles or ethics collided with black letter law. What was the cause of the misalignment?
Behavioral
23
You start working in a new company, you realized there is a dashboard showing the business metrics no one use it, how will you convince your colleagues to use the dashboard, which communication tools will you use?
Open-ended
24
How do you balance the needs of the customer vs. the needs of the business?
Open-ended
25
Help a customer grow and evolve their business utilizing GCP?
Open-ended
26
Walk me through a time when you positioned a premium product against a more economical alternative and won?
Behavioral
27
Walk me through your process of qualifying a prospect's technical needs.
Open-ended
28
How would you sell potential prospects on the value of GCP?
Open-ended
29
How would you prioritize the accounts in your pipeline?
Open-ended
30
How do you make sure you are advocating for the right technologies?
Open-ended
31
How do you work with stakeholders that monopolize your time?
Open-ended
32
How do you establish effective partnerships? And how do you align incentives in a partnership relationship so they are mutually beneficial?
Open-ended
33
How would you deal with a stakeholder who continually disregarded your requests for key information? What would you do to remedy the situation?
Open-ended
34
What is the difference between IaaS and PaaS? Can you give me an example of IaaS? And PaaS?
Open-ended
35
What is a Lift and Shift Cloud Migration?
Open-ended
36
How would you determine whether to opt for cloud native Deployment Manager or third-party Terraform for infrastructure as code on Google Cloud?
Open-ended
37
What are the types of NoSQL databases?
Open-ended
38
How do you manage large-scale data migrations using a phased approach?
Open-ended
39
What is the difference between virtualization and containerization? Can you give me an example of each?
Open-ended
40
How would you architect the data storage for a SaaS reporting dashboard for an IOT device that stores the real-time geo-location of physical assets across the globe?
Open-ended
41
What is the difference between High Availability vs. Fault Tolerance vs. Disaster Recovery?
Open-ended
42
Imagine you are working with the IRS to migrate their internal call center application from an on prem data center to the cloud. The IRS is also looking for ways to update it�s outdated call center application and data warehouse with GCP.
Open-ended
43
Imagine you have a university campus that is currently using an on prem data center. They are looking to migrate their internal custom built administrative apps and infrastructure to the cloud. Walk me through how you help this university accomplish this objective using GCP.
Open-ended
44
How would you design infrastructure and APIs for the shopping cart of an e-commerce website like Amazon in a way that allows you to get real-time analytics?
Open-ended
45
There is a TV show with 5 million viewers at prime time viewing hours. How would you design the architecture of the reporting dashboard for this TV Show?
Open-ended
46
What does the GCP ecosystem look like today and in order to be successful 5 years from now, how will the ecosystem change?
Open-ended
47
Imagine GCP�s sales team is trying to double the revenue over the next 24-months in the US market. Walk me through the steps you would take to support the sales team's efforts with partnership programs?
Open-ended
48
How would you characterize Google's approach to partnerships? How would you improve it?
Open-ended
49
You were given the task of improving client satisfaction from 75% to 85%. Describe your strategy for approaching this task.
Open-ended
50
You need to prepare for a meeting with Goldman Sachs [*insert relevant company*] to convince them to double their investment in GCP. How would you approach this task?
Open-ended
51
Imagine you just joined Google and you are given the task to assess why an operational dashboard built for a partner a few months ago is not being used. You learn that no one trusts the data displayed on this dashboard. What steps do you take moving forward?
Open-ended
52
Walk me through a potential partnership you think GCP could leverage to grow awareness in the US region. How would you qualify those partnerships?
Open-ended
53
Walk me through a past deal or partnership that you created in which you needed to garner executive support as well as work across multiple functional teams at your company?
Open-ended
54
Imagine your manager has asked you to prepare a GTM strategy on partnerships that would enhance GCPs relationships with the financial services industry. Walk me through the steps you would take to accomplish this objective.
Open-ended
55
How do you manage frequently changing stakeholder requirements while developing a new partnership program?
Open-ended
56
Management has asked you to design a dashboard to report on the status partnership effort that Google has for the US. Walk me through how you would design this dashboard and the decision support systems this would drive.
Open-ended
57
How would you build a GCP technology practice within a partner's organization? What metrics would you track to show the success of the partnership?
Open-ended
58
When working on a POC with a partner, how do you know when you�ve gathered all the necessary requirements to move onto the solution design?
Open-ended
59
You�ve been assigned a major project and are halfway through when you realize that you�ve made a mistake that requires you to go back to the beginning to fix it. How would you handle that while still trying to make your deadline?
Open-ended
60
AWS has successfully partnered with startup accelerators and VCs and seen great adoption because of these partnerships. How would you convince 1000 startups in the US to adopt GCP over AWS?
Open-ended
61
Tell me about a time the testing a new partnership did not turn out as planned and what you did to fix the original plan?
Behavioral
62
Tell me about a time when you linked two or more problems together and identified an underlying issue? Were you able to build a scalable solution to the issue?
Behavioral
63
Tell me about the most successful partnership you have developed and what made the partnership so successful?
Behavioral
64
Tell me about a time when you came across a violation of a data access policy in a previous position. How did you handle this situation?
Behavioral
65
Tell me about a situation where you achieved a satisfactory outcome to a problem that others thought couldn�t be solved.
Behavioral
66
Tell me about a time you have had to coordinate the efforts of multiple departments to successfully launch a new partnership.
Behavioral
67
Tell me about a time you were working on a project that ran the risk of not meeting its goals. What was your objective and why was it in jeopardy?
Behavioral
68
Tell me about a time when you had to work with 2+ influential stakeholders (equally powerful) who had 2 completely different agendas. How did you handle the situation?
Behavioral
69
Tell me about a time when you were responsible for partnering across business functions to implement a work process innovation.
Behavioral
70
What has been your toughest Architecture implementation in Cloud and why??Tell me about a situation where you faced resistance and pushback during the development of a new partnership.
Behavioral
71
Tell me about a time you implemented a successful partnership involving several cross-functional stakeholders?
Behavioral
72
Most of us at one time or another have felt frustrated or impatient when dealing with a customer and or key stakeholder. Can you tell us about a time when you felt this way and how you dealt with it? When do you think it�s appropriate to push back or say no to an unreasonable customer request?
Behavioral
73
Tell me about your hiring process when you are hiring key positions such as direct reports. Where do you go for talent? What resources do you employ? What are the steps in the process?
Behavioral
74
Tell me about your most successful cloud integration strategy
Behavioral
75
The TPM�s that you manage will all be working on complex programs, how do you make sure you understand the programs well enough to guide them?
Behavioral
76
What are the three most important components of mentorship and why?
Open-ended
77
You are tasked with creating a new program only knowing the desired result and given no additional information, how do you make sure the program is successful?
Open-ended
78
Tell me about a time a technical counterpart on the customer side did not agree with your assessment and how you won them over?
Behavioral
79
Tell me about a time you had challenges with regulators and how you overcame them?
Behavioral
80
What items would you focus on when talking to a CISO about security and compliance risks?
Behavioral
81
Tell me about a time you recognized an opportunity to improve an internal process and how you went about it?
Behavioral
82
Create a new Google product from scratch.
Open-ended
83
How do you make a client more productive?
Open-ended
84
Tell me about a challenging diversity situation that has occurred in your career?
Behavioral
85
Tell me about a conflict with an internal stakeholder and how you resolved it?
Behavioral
86
Tell me about a time you recognized a technical opportunity for a client that meant purchasing additional services?
Behavioral
87
Troubleshoot a roadblock for me.
Open-ended
88
What do you think is the most interesting trend in ML right now and why?
Open-ended
89
How do you keep up with ML trends?
Open-ended
90
How do you overcome technical objections with your ML knowledge?
Open-ended
91
How would you help a customer create better cloud architecture by utilizing ML?
Open-ended
92
What are the different steps you would take to guide your customer if she wants to develop an app using GCP products?
Open-ended
93
A friend wants to open a bakery. How would you help them?
Open-ended
94
Establish a customer advisory board.
Open-ended
95
Explain GCP to a client that knows very little about the cloud?
Open-ended
96
Explain GCP to a customer that does not know a lot about the cloud?
Open-ended
97
How do you make a clients more productive?
Open-ended
98
How do you make sure cloud processes align with more centralized processes?
Open-ended
99
How do you present?
Open-ended
100
How do you prioritize two urgent deadlines? -
Open-ended