"Tell me about a time you had to improve code quality and maintainability across your team or across multiple teams. Please use a specific example and walk me through the standards you set, how you got buy-in, how you handled resistance, and what outcomes you saw."
At HERE Technologies, engineering managers often need to raise quality bars across services that support products like the HERE Platform, HERE SDK, or location data pipelines without slowing delivery unreasonably. This question tests whether you can lead through influence, set clear expectations, balance short-term roadmap pressure with long-term maintainability, and create mechanisms that scale beyond individual heroics.
Interviewers are looking for more than “we added code reviews” or “I told the team to write tests.” They want to understand how you diagnosed the problem, prioritized the highest-leverage changes, coached engineers with different skill levels, and handled disagreement when quality work competed with feature deadlines.
A strong answer uses one concrete example with real stakes, explains the operating mechanisms you introduced, and shows measurable improvement in quality, delivery, or team health. The best answers also include a trade-off you had to make, how you adapted your approach based on feedback or data, and what you learned as a leader.