Preparing for the UX/UI Designer interview requires a strategic balance between showcasing your visual craft and articulating your underlying thought process. We want to see not just what you design, but how you think.

Your interviewers will evaluate you against several core criteria:

• Design Process & Methodology – We assess how you approach problems from initial discovery through execution. You can demonstrate strength here by showing a clear, logical progression in your portfolio case studies, highlighting research, iterations, and measurable outcomes.
• Problem-Solving & Adaptability – Enterprise UX is inherently complex. Interviewers evaluate your ability to navigate ambiguity, digest dense technical constraints, and pivot your approach when presented with new information during whiteboarding sessions.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration – You will not work in a silo. We look for evidence that you can effectively partner with product managers, researchers, and frontend engineers to balance user needs with business goals and technical feasibility.
• Communication & Presentation – As a designer at Automation Anywhere, you must continually advocate for the user. We evaluate your ability to present your work confidently to diverse groups, read the room, and defend your design decisions without becoming defensive.

The interview process for a UX/UI Designer at Automation Anywhere is rigorous but highly collaborative, designed to simulate the actual working environment. Your journey typically begins with an initial phone screen with a recruiter, followed closely by a one-hour deep-dive conversation with a design leader, such as the VP of Design or a Hiring Manager. This stage focuses heavily on your background, high-level design philosophy, and alignment with our company culture.

If successful, you will be invited to an extensive onsite interview phase, which may be consolidated into a single four-hour block or split across two days. The onsite experience is highly interactive. You will present your portfolio to a broader audience from the UX department, participate in a collaborative design exercise with UX managers and researchers, and hold 1:1 sessions with cross-functional partners like product managers and frontend engineers.

Our interviewing philosophy heavily favors practical application over theoretical knowledge. We want to see how you collaborate in real-time. The atmosphere in our San Jose office is secure, clean, professional, and welcoming, and you will find that our teams treat the evaluation process more like a peer brainstorming session than a rigid interrogation.

This visual timeline outlines the typical progression from the initial recruiter screen through the final onsite presentation and cross-functional interviews. You should use this to pace your preparation, ensuring your portfolio presentation is polished early on while reserving mental energy for the collaborative whiteboarding exercises later in the loop. Note that exact interview structures may vary slightly depending on team availability, but the core components of presentation, whiteboarding, and cross-functional alignment remain consistent.

Portfolio Presentation & Case Studies

Your portfolio presentation is arguably the most critical component of the onsite loop. You will typically present to a mixed group from the UX department, sometimes involving up to 10 designers and researchers. This session evaluates your ability to tell a compelling story about your work, demonstrating your end-to-end design process rather than just showing polished final screens. Strong performance means you can confidently guide the audience through your online portfolio, providing deep dives into specific case studies while clearly explaining the "why" behind your decisions.

Be ready to go over:

• Problem Definition – How you identified the core user problem and aligned it with business objectives.
• Iteration and Trade-offs – Examples of designs that failed or were discarded, and why you pivoted.
• Measuring Success – The metrics or qualitative feedback you used to validate your final design.
• Audience Engagement – Reading the room and adjusting your presentation pace if the audience seems disengaged or needs more context.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Walk us through a project where you had to balance strict technical constraints with an optimal user experience."
• "Why did you choose this specific interaction pattern over other available alternatives?"
• "How did you validate that this design actually solved the underlying user problem?"

The Collaborative Design Challenge

Unlike companies that use take-home assignments to extract free work, Automation Anywhere uses an in-person, hypothetical design exercise based on generic situations related to our actual products. This usually lasts an hour and involves whiteboarding alongside UX managers and researchers. We are evaluating how you attack a problem, structure your thoughts, and collaborate. Strong candidates treat this as a team brainstorm, actively asking questions to narrow the scope and inviting input from the interviewers.

Be ready to go over:

• Clarifying the Prompt – Asking targeted questions to define user personas, constraints, and the primary goal before drawing any UI.
• Workflow Mapping – Sketching out user flows and system architecture before jumping into screen-level details.
• Iterative Ideation – Rapidly sketching multiple concepts and discussing the pros and cons of each out loud.
• Handling Feedback – Incorporating real-time suggestions or new constraints introduced by the UX managers during the exercise.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Design a dashboard that allows a system administrator to monitor the health and efficiency of 500 automated bots."
• "How would you simplify a complex data-entry process for a user who is not technically savvy?"
• "Walk us through your thought process as you map out the user journey for this hypothetical feature."

Cross-Functional Alignment

Because our platform is highly technical, UX/UI Designers must work seamlessly with Product Management and Engineering. You will have dedicated 45-minute interviews with PM managers and frontend engineers. These sessions evaluate your ability to communicate across disciplines, understand technical limitations, and negotiate product scope. A strong performance demonstrates empathy for your partners' goals and a track record of successfully shipping products in a complex environment.

Be ready to go over:

• Developer Handoff – How you document your designs and ensure frontend engineers can execute them accurately.
• Product Strategy – How you align your design goals with the PM's roadmap and business KPIs.
• Conflict Resolution – Examples of how you handle disagreements regarding feature scope or design feasibility.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Tell me about a time you disagreed with a Product Manager on the direction of a feature. How did you resolve it?"
• "How do you ensure your designs are technically feasible before handing them off to the engineering team?"
• "Describe a situation where you had to compromise on a design due to strict engineering timelines."

As a UX/UI Designer at Automation Anywhere, your day-to-day work revolves around deeply understanding our users and translating their needs into elegant, scalable interfaces. You will spend a significant portion of your time conducting user discovery, mapping out complex workflows, and creating wireframes and high-fidelity prototypes. Because our products deal with automation logic, data pipelines, and enterprise administration, you will frequently distill highly dense information into digestible, actionable dashboards.

Collaboration is central to your daily routine. You will partner closely with UX researchers to validate your assumptions through usability testing. You will also maintain a constant dialogue with product managers to ensure your designs align with the strategic roadmap, and with frontend engineers to guarantee that your intended interactions are technically viable and built to spec.

You will be expected to drive end-to-end design initiatives independently. This means taking ownership of a feature from the initial kickoff meeting all the way through to post-launch iteration. You will also contribute to and help evolve our internal design system, ensuring visual consistency and accessibility standards are maintained across all Automation Anywhere product suites.

To be competitive for the UX/UI Designer role, you must bring a blend of strong visual craft, systematic thinking, and enterprise-level experience. We look for candidates who can navigate the complexities of B2B software while advocating for a B2C-quality user experience.

• Must-have skills – Deep proficiency in modern design and prototyping tools (like Figma or Sketch). A strong portfolio demonstrating end-to-end product design, specifically showcasing complex problem-solving. Excellent verbal and visual communication skills.
• Experience level – Typically, candidates have 3 to 5+ years of experience in UX/UI design, preferably with a background in enterprise software, SaaS, or complex data visualization platforms.
• Soft skills – High emotional intelligence, the ability to accept and integrate constructive feedback, and a collaborative mindset. You must be comfortable presenting to leadership and defending your design rationale logically.
• Nice-to-have skills – Basic understanding of frontend frameworks (HTML/CSS/React) to facilitate better engineering handoffs. Experience designing for AI, machine learning, or automation products is a significant plus.