What is an Engineering Manager at Akido?

As an Engineering Manager at Akido, you are at the forefront of building technology that addresses massive challenges in public health, social services, and healthcare data interoperability. This role is not just about managing tickets; it is about driving the technical vision and empowering a team of engineers to build robust, scalable systems that directly impact vulnerable populations and community health networks.

Your impact spans across product delivery, architectural strategy, and team culture. You will guide engineers through complex technical trade-offs while ensuring that Akido maintains high standards for data security, compliance, and system reliability. Because our platforms handle sensitive, high-volume healthcare data, the technical decisions you oversee carry significant weight.

Expect to operate in a highly dynamic environment where ambiguity is common and strategic execution is critical. You will partner closely with product managers, operations, and cross-functional leaders to translate high-level business requirements into actionable engineering roadmaps. At Akido, this role is designed for leaders who are as passionate about mentoring people as they are about elegant system design.

Common Interview Questions

The following questions represent the types of inquiries candidates frequently encounter during the Akido interview process. While you should not memorize answers, use these to identify patterns in what the hiring team values and how they evaluate your experience.

Technical Strategy & System Design

This category tests your ability to guide technical direction and architect robust systems.

• How would you design a highly available API that interfaces with legacy healthcare systems?
• Tell me about a time you had to advocate for paying down technical debt over building new features.
• How do you ensure your team maintains high standards for code quality and testing?
• Walk me through a complex technical migration you led. What were the risks, and how did you mitigate them?

People Management & Leadership

These questions focus on your emotional intelligence, coaching ability, and team-building strategies.

• Describe a time you inherited a team with low morale. What steps did you take to turn it around?
• How do you handle a situation where a product manager is pushing for unrealistic deadlines?
• Tell me about the most successful hire you ever made and why they were successful.
• Explain your framework for delivering difficult constructive feedback to a senior engineer.

Take-Home Defense & Execution

Expect these questions during your panel round after submitting the homework assignment.

• Why did you choose this specific framework/database for the take-home project?
• What is the biggest flaw in the code you just submitted, and how would you refactor it given more time?
• Walk us through the testing strategy you implemented for this assignment.
• How would you deploy and monitor this application in a production environment?

Getting Ready for Your Interviews

Preparing for the Engineering Manager interview requires a balanced focus on technical aptitude, leadership philosophy, and execution capability. Your interviewers want to see how you think, how you lead, and how you deliver.

Technical Leadership – You must demonstrate a strong foundation in software engineering and system design. Interviewers will evaluate your ability to guide architectural discussions, review code patterns, and ensure technical excellence without necessarily writing the code yourself.

People Management – We look for managers who can build, scale, and mentor high-performing teams. You will be evaluated on your approach to conflict resolution, performance management, and career development for your direct reports.

Execution and Delivery – This measures your ability to turn strategy into shipped software. You can demonstrate strength here by discussing how you manage agile processes, handle shifting priorities, and balance technical debt with feature delivery.

Culture and Values – Akido values transparency, resilience, and mission-driven focus. Interviewers will assess your ability to navigate ambiguity, communicate openly, and foster an inclusive, collaborative team environment.

Interview Process Overview

The interview process for an Engineering Manager at Akido is designed to be thorough and typically takes about one month from the initial screen to the final decision. Our recruiting team prides itself on high communication, clearly outlining next steps, and working with your schedule—especially if you are balancing competing offers.

You will begin with a recruiter screen to align on experience and expectations, followed by a deeper conversation with a hiring manager. A defining feature of the Akido process is the technical take-home assignment. This "homework" is known to be rigorous and comprehensive, designed to simulate the actual technical and architectural challenges you will face on the job.

Following the take-home assignment, you will participate in a virtual or onsite panel loop. This final stage involves defending your take-home project, participating in system design discussions, and answering deep-dive behavioral questions with cross-functional leaders and engineering peers.

This visual timeline breaks down the typical stages of your interview journey, highlighting the progression from initial screening to the take-home project and final panel. Use this to pace your preparation, ensuring you allocate sufficient time and energy for the intensive take-home assignment, which is a major gating factor in the process.

Deep Dive into Evaluation Areas

System Design and Architecture

As an Engineering Manager, you are expected to be the technical backstop for your team. This area evaluates your ability to design scalable, secure, and highly available systems, which is critical given the healthcare data Akido processes. You will need to demonstrate that you can weigh trade-offs between different architectural approaches.

Be ready to go over:

• Data processing pipelines – Designing systems that securely ingest, transform, and route large volumes of sensitive data.
• Microservices vs. Monoliths – Knowing when to decouple services and how to manage inter-service communication and eventual consistency.
• Database selection – Choosing the right storage solutions (SQL vs. NoSQL) based on read/write patterns and compliance requirements.
• Advanced concepts (less common) –
  • Real-time stream processing architectures.
  • Advanced caching strategies for high-latency third-party APIs.
  • HIPAA-compliant infrastructure design.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Design a system to securely ingest and standardize patient records from multiple disparate hospital networks."
• "How would you architect a notification service that alerts healthcare providers of critical patient events in real-time?"
• "Walk me through a time you had to pivot your team's architectural strategy due to scaling bottlenecks."

People Management and Team Building

Your ability to grow and support engineers is just as important as your technical acumen. Akido looks for leaders who lead with empathy, set clear expectations, and actively manage both high and low performers.

Be ready to go over:

• Performance management – Identifying underperformance early and structuring actionable improvement plans.
• Career development – Helping engineers level up from junior to mid-level, or mid-level to senior, through deliberate project assignment.
• Hiring and onboarding – Strategies for identifying top talent and getting them productive quickly in a complex domain.
• Advanced concepts (less common) –
  • Managing out toxic high-performers.
  • Rebuilding morale in a team that has experienced high turnover.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Tell me about a time you had to manage out an underperforming engineer. How did you handle the process?"
• "How do you align an engineer's personal career goals with the immediate delivery needs of the business?"
• "Describe your process for resolving a deep technical disagreement between two senior engineers on your team."

Project Execution and The Take-Home Assignment

Because Akido utilizes a comprehensive take-home assignment, your ability to execute, document, and defend your work is heavily scrutinized. This area tests your hands-on technical baseline and your ability to communicate complex ideas clearly.

Be ready to go over:

• Code quality and structure – Writing clean, maintainable, and well-tested code for your assignment.
• Technical documentation – Explaining your design decisions, assumptions, and future scaling considerations in a clear README.
• Project defense – Confidently answering questions about why you chose specific libraries, patterns, or data models during the panel review.
• Advanced concepts (less common) –
  • Identifying the specific security vulnerabilities in your own take-home submission.
  • Proposing a CI/CD pipeline for the project you built.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Walk us through the architecture of your take-home submission. What trade-offs did you make to complete it within the timeframe?"
• "If we needed to scale your submitted project to handle 100x the traffic, what components would break first, and how would you fix them?"
• "How do you balance the need for technical excellence with the reality of tight product deadlines?"

Key Responsibilities

As an Engineering Manager at Akido, your day-to-day involves a seamless blend of strategic planning, team mentorship, and cross-functional collaboration. You will lead a squad of engineers, taking ownership of their delivery pipeline, code quality, and overall well-being. This requires daily check-ins, weekly 1-on-1s, and active participation in agile ceremonies to ensure blockers are removed swiftly.

You will collaborate heavily with Product Managers to define roadmaps, estimate engineering effort, and push back when technical debt needs to be addressed. Rather than taking top-down orders, you are expected to be a strategic partner who helps shape what is built and how it is built. You will also interface with operations and compliance teams to ensure all features meet stringent data security standards.

Additionally, you will spend a significant portion of your time recruiting, interviewing, and refining the hiring process. Building the team is a continuous responsibility. You will drive initiatives that improve engineering culture, such as implementing new CI/CD practices, establishing better incident response protocols, and fostering an environment of continuous learning.

Role Requirements & Qualifications

To be competitive for the Engineering Manager role at Akido, you need a solid foundation in both software engineering and people leadership. We look for candidates who have transitioned from strong individual contributors into capable managers.

• Must-have skills –
  • 5+ years of software engineering experience building complex, data-heavy applications.
  • 2+ years of direct engineering management experience, including conducting 1-on-1s and performance reviews.
  • Deep understanding of modern cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP), API design, and scalable system architecture.
  • Strong stakeholder management and cross-functional communication skills.
• Nice-to-have skills –
  • Previous experience in health tech, public health data, or highly regulated environments (HIPAA compliance).
  • Experience scaling engineering teams at a fast-growing startup.
  • Familiarity with the specific tech stack currently utilized by Akido (e.g., Node.js, React, PostgreSQL).

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How long does the entire interview process usually take? The process typically takes about one month from the initial recruiter screen to the final offer. However, Akido recruiters are known to be highly communicative and can expedite the timeline if you are managing competing offers.

Q: What should I expect from the take-home assignment? The take-home project is rigorous and will require a significant time investment. It is designed to test your architectural thinking, coding standards, and documentation skills. Treat it as a real-world project, as it forms the foundation of your final panel interview.

Q: Is the interview process considered difficult? Yes, candidates consistently rate the Engineering Manager process as difficult. The combination of a heavy technical assignment and deep-dive behavioral interviews requires thorough preparation and a strong grasp of both leadership and system design.

Q: How does Akido view remote work and location? While Akido has roots in Los Angeles, CA, expectations around hybrid or remote work depend heavily on the specific team and current company policies. Clarify your location preferences and requirements with your recruiter during the initial screen.

Q: What happens if I have a competing offer? Akido values transparency. If you receive another offer during the process, communicate this immediately to your recruiter. Past candidates have successfully had their decision timelines accelerated to accommodate competing deadlines.

Other General Tips

• Timebox the take-home project: The assignment can feel extensive. Focus on core functionality, clean architecture, and exceptional documentation. If you run out of time, use the README to explain what you would have done next.
• Over-communicate your thought process: During system design and project defense, do not build in silence. Your interviewers are evaluating how you collaborate and reason through problems, not just the final diagram.

• Balance the "I" and the "We": When discussing past projects, clearly delineate what the team achieved versus your specific impact as a manager. Take ownership of failures but share the credit for successes.
• Ask probing questions: Akido is tackling complex problems in the health data space. Ask your interviewers about their biggest technical bottlenecks and how engineering culture is evolving; this shows strategic thinking.

Summary & Next Steps

Stepping into the Engineering Manager role at Akido is a unique opportunity to blend high-level technical architecture with mission-driven impact. You will be challenged to build resilient systems and lead teams that handle critical data, ultimately improving public health outcomes. The work is demanding, but the ability to shape both technology and team culture makes it deeply rewarding.

This compensation data provides a baseline for what you can expect as an Engineering Manager. Keep in mind that total compensation packages often include equity and benefits, and the exact base salary will scale with your specific years of experience, technical depth, and location.

To succeed in this process, focus your preparation on mastering system design trade-offs, refining your leadership narratives, and allocating dedicated time to excel on the take-home assignment. Approach the interviews with confidence and transparency. For more tailored insights, peer experiences, and mock interview practice, continue exploring resources on Dataford. You have the foundational experience required to excel—now it is time to showcase your leadership and technical vision.