Assess a leader’s current technical judgment by asking how they evaluate important engineering decisions, challenge assumptions, and involve the right experts. Daily coding frequency is relevant only if the role requires daily coding.
A leader who no longer writes production code still needs a credible way to understand technical risk and make decisions.
Use a recent decision discussion
Ask the candidate to describe a technical decision they can discuss without confidential details. Focus on their role, the alternatives, the evidence available, and what happened after the decision.
Explore how they knew enough to decide and which questions they delegated to specialists.
Review a fictional architecture proposal
Provide a short fictional proposal with an attractive benefit and an underexplained migration risk. Ask the candidate to review it as the accountable leader.
| Dimension | Evidence to seek |
|---|---|
| Problem framing | Establishes what the change is intended to improve |
| Assumptions | Identifies claims that need verification |
| Tradeoffs | Compares alternatives, including a smaller change |
| Risk | Considers failure, migration, operation, and reversibility |
| Expertise | Knows when deeper specialist review is needed |
| Decision | States what can be approved now and what remains open |
The candidate does not need to produce the same architecture as the interviewer. They need a sound decision process.
Probe technical currency
Ask how they keep their mental models current and how they discover when an old assumption no longer holds.
A useful answer connects learning to actual decisions. A list of newsletters or conference appearances is weaker evidence than explaining a recent change in judgment.
Avoid two extremes
Do not equate confidence with depth. Ask for the reasoning behind a challenge.
Also avoid turning the interview into obscure implementation trivia if the leader’s work is reviewing systems and developing technical leaders. Use a coding assessment only when hands-on implementation is an essential responsibility.
Connect judgment to follow-through
Ask what the leader would monitor after approval and what evidence would trigger reconsideration. Technical judgment includes learning from implementation, not only choosing a direction in a meeting.
Use the manager-of-managers interview and hands-on leadership mandate. Discuss an engineering leadership search with Refery.