As an Engineering Manager at Fivetran, you occupy a critical leadership role at the intersection of high-scale data infrastructure and people development. Fivetran is the industry leader in automated data movement, helping thousands of companies centralize data from disparate sources into modern cloud warehouses. In this position, you do not simply oversee tasks; you lead the teams responsible for building and scaling the robust, zero-maintenance data pipelines that power modern business intelligence.

The impact of this role is immense. Your team’s code will handle petabytes of data, navigate complex API rate limits, manage schema drift dynamically, and ensure near-perfect uptime for enterprise customers. You will be tasked with balancing technical debt against product delivery, scaling your engineering organization, and fostering a culture of high ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

What makes this role uniquely challenging and rewarding is the sheer scale and variety of the technical ecosystem. You will guide engineers through intricate problems in database replication, change data capture (CDC), and cloud-native architecture. Succeeding as an Engineering Manager here requires a rare blend of deep technical curiosity, sharp product instincts, and an empathetic, growth-oriented leadership style.

To help you prepare effectively, we have categorized representative questions based on real interview experiences at Fivetran. These questions cover the diverse technical, leadership, and behavioral expectations of the Engineering Manager role. Use these examples to identify patterns in how the hiring team evaluates candidate competence.

Technical & Architecture (Modern Data Stack)

These questions assess your understanding of data integration, pipeline reliability, and the broader data ecosystem.

• How would you design a scalable data ingestion system that handles schema drift dynamically without breaking downstream models?
• What are the technical and business advantages of an ELT (Extract, Load, Transform) architecture compared to traditional ETL?

Preparing for an Engineering Manager interview at Fivetran requires a balanced approach. You cannot rely solely on your people management skills or your past coding expertise; you must demonstrate excellence across both domains while showing a deep alignment with the company's customer-centric mission.

Role-Related Knowledge – You must demonstrate a strong grasp of data infrastructure, cloud architectures, and the modern data stack. Interviewers will evaluate your understanding of data pipelines, database internals, and how Fivetran fits into the broader data ecosystem.

Problem-Solving & System Design – You will be assessed on your ability to design robust, scalable, and fault-tolerant systems. Focus on explaining the trade-offs of your architectural decisions, prioritizing simplicity, reliability, and security.

Leadership & Team Dynamics – Strong candidates show a proven track record of coaching engineers, managing performance, and scaling teams. You should be prepared to discuss your management philosophy, how you build trust, and how you foster a healthy engineering culture.

Cross-Functional Collaboration – At Fivetran, engineering managers do not work in a vacuum. You will be evaluated on your ability to partner effectively with Product Management, Customer Success, Pre-sales, and Support to deliver value to customers.

The interview process at Fivetran is thorough, highly collaborative, and designed to evaluate your capabilities across multiple dimensions over a 4 to 6 week period. The company places a strong emphasis on practical execution, cross-functional alignment, and cultural fit. You will interact with a diverse group of stakeholders, reflecting the collaborative nature of the Engineering Manager role.

The journey begins with a standard recruiter screen to assess your background and high-level fit, followed by a deeper conversation with the hiring manager or a Director of Engineering. Depending on the team and location, you may complete a technical assessment or a HackerRank test to verify your engineering fundamentals. The process culminates in a comprehensive virtual onsite panel where you will dive into system design, leadership competencies, and cross-functional collaboration.

This visual timeline illustrates the typical stages you will navigate during your candidacy. While there may be slight variations depending on your target team or region, you should expect a structured progression that balances deep technical evaluation with leadership and behavioral assessments. Use this timeline to pace your preparation and ensure you are ready for each distinct stage.

To succeed in the Fivetran interview process, you must understand the key areas where you will be evaluated and what "strong performance" looks like in each.

System Design & The Modern Data Stack (MDS)

This evaluation area focuses on your ability to architect reliable data systems and your understanding of the modern data ecosystem. Because Fivetran is a cornerstone of the modern data stack, you must demonstrate a deep understanding of how data flows from source to destination.

Be ready to go over:

• Change Data Capture (CDC) – Database replication techniques, log-based vs. query-based extraction, and performance impacts on source databases.
• Idempotency & Retries – Ensuring data pipelines can recover from failures gracefully without duplicating or corrupting data.
• Schema Evolution – Handling schema drift, column additions, data type changes, and dynamic mapping in destination warehouses.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Zero-downtime migrations, multi-tenant resource isolation, and optimizing query performance in cloud data warehouses like Snowflake or BigQuery.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Design a system that ingests webhook events from thousands of concurrent sources, ensuring order-of-delivery and zero data loss."
• "How would you design a connector that replicates a highly active PostgreSQL database to a Snowflake warehouse with minimal latency?"

People Leadership & Team Dynamics

This area evaluates your management philosophy, coaching abilities, and how you scale engineering teams. Fivetran looks for managers who can build autonomous, high-performing teams while supporting individual career growth.

Be ready to go over:

• Performance Management – Identifying underperformance early, setting clear expectations, and delivering constructive feedback.
• Hiring & Onboarding – Building structured interview loops, assessing talent objectively, and onboarding new engineers efficiently.
• Career Growth – Helping engineers transition to senior or staff roles, aligning personal goals with business needs.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Reorganizing teams to match shifting product domains, managing high-conflict situations, and building cohesive cultures across distributed teams.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Tell me about a time you had to deliver difficult, critical feedback to a senior engineer on your team. How did they receive it, and what was the outcome?"
• "How do you structure your one-on-one meetings to ensure they are valuable for your engineers and not just status updates?"

Product & Cross-Functional Collaboration

As an Engineering Manager, you must bridge the gap between technical execution and business value. You will be evaluated on how you partner with product managers and customer-facing teams to deliver high-quality features and maintain system reliability.

Be ready to go over:

• Prioritization & Roadmapping – Balancing feature development, technical debt, and customer bug fixes.
• SLA & Incident Management – Defining service level agreements for pipelines and managing high-priority production incidents.
• Stakeholder Communication – Managing expectations with Customer Success, Support, and Pre-sales during complex feature rollouts or system outages.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Defining team topologies, establishing engineering-to-product feedback loops, and cost-optimization of cloud infrastructure.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Describe a situation where a critical customer connector was failing repeatedly. How did you coordinate the response between your engineering team, Support, and the customer?"
• "How do you ensure your engineering team has enough heads-down time for deep technical work while remaining responsive to urgent business needs?"