People Management & Team Leadership

This area focuses on your ability to build, scale, and nurture high-performing engineering teams. Because Synthesia employs a high percentage of Senior and Staff Engineers, your ability to lead through influence and collaboration is critical.

Be ready to go over:

• Coaching and career development – Motivating highly experienced engineers and helping them progress along the individual contributor (IC) track.
• Performance management – Identifying underperformance early, delivering constructive feedback, and supporting improvement.
• Team health and psychological safety – Creating an inclusive environment where engineers feel empowered to take calculated risks and voice diverse opinions.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Managing distributed/remote teams across multiple time zones, and navigating organizational restructuring or rapid scaling.

Example scenarios:

• "How would you handle a situation where a Staff Engineer strongly disagrees with the product direction and refuses to work on a priority feature?"
• "Describe how you successfully coached a Mid-level Engineer to step up and take ownership of a major system redesign."

Execution & Product Sense

This area measures your ability to deliver high-quality software predictably while keeping the team aligned with broader business objectives. You will need to show how you manage the product-engineering interface.

Be ready to go over:

• Roadmap execution – Translating high-level product strategy into actionable engineering milestones and sprints.
• Risk mitigation – Identifying project risks early and implementing mitigation strategies to prevent delivery delays.
• Stakeholder communication – Managing expectations with product managers, designers, and executive leadership regarding timelines and scope.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Managing legacy system migration while maintaining feature delivery velocity, and establishing team metrics that measure outcomes rather than output.

Example scenarios:

• "How do you handle a sudden change in product priorities mid-sprint without demotivating your engineering team?"
• "Describe a time when you had to negotiate the scope of a feature with a Product Manager to meet an aggressive launch date."

As an Engineering Manager at Synthesia, your day-to-day activities will span across people leadership, technical oversight, and product delivery. You will operate as the operational core of your engineering team, ensuring that your engineers are motivated, aligned, and unblocked.

Your primary responsibilities will include:

• Leading and mentoring a team of software engineers, conducting regular one-on-ones, and supporting their professional growth and career progression.
• Partnering closely with Product Managers and product designers to define the team's roadmap, prioritize tasks, and translate user needs into technical requirements.
• Guiding technical architecture and system design by reviewing technical RFCs, facilitating design discussions, and ensuring high engineering standards.
• Driving execution and delivery using agile methodologies, tracking progress, managing dependencies, and unblocking team members to ensure timely releases.
• Fostering a collaborative, high-ownership team culture that values engineering excellence, continuous learning, and open communication.
• Collaborating with engineering leadership to contribute to broader organizational initiatives, hiring strategies, and the continuous improvement of engineering processes.

To be competitive for the Engineering Manager position at Synthesia, you must demonstrate a strong blend of technical credibility and proven leadership experience in fast-paced software organizations.

• Must-have skills & experience:
  • Proven track record of managing and leading high-performing software engineering teams.
  • Strong technical background with prior experience as a Senior Software Engineer or Technical Lead.
  • Deep understanding of modern system design, web technologies, and cloud infrastructure.
  • Exceptional communication and writing skills, with experience writing or reviewing technical design documents (RFCs).
  • Experience partnering with product management to deliver user-facing software products.
• Nice-to-have skills & experience:
  • Experience working in a fast-growing scale-up environment.
  • Familiarity with video processing, computer graphics, or machine learning infrastructure.
  • Experience managing remote or hybrid teams across multiple geographic locations.

Q: How technical is the Engineering Manager interview process at Synthesia? A: The process is highly technical. While you will not be asked to write code on a whiteboard, you will complete a take-home technical RFC or system design exercise. You must be comfortable discussing system architecture, scalability, and technical trade-offs in detail with senior engineers.

Q: What is the engineering culture like at Synthesia? A: The culture is highly collaborative, autonomous, and technically rigorous. With a large percentage of Senior and Staff Engineers, there is a strong emphasis on high ownership, documentation-first decision making (via RFCs), and continuous learning.

Q: How long does the entire interview process take? A: The process typically takes between three to four weeks from the initial recruiter screen to the final offer, depending on your availability for the take-home exercise and interview scheduling.

Q: How does Synthesia evaluate the take-home assignment? A: Your take-home RFC or system design proposal is evaluated on clarity of thought, technical feasibility, structured trade-off analysis, and communication style. The subsequent debrief session is a collaborative discussion where you will walk through your choices and respond to feedback.

To maximize your chances of success during the Synthesia interview process, keep these practical tips in mind:

• Emphasize your written communication: Since Synthesia values written RFCs for technical decision-making, ensure your take-home assignment is exceptionally clear, structured, and easy to read.
• Highlight experience with senior talent: Be ready to share specific examples of how you have successfully managed, motivated, and aligned highly autonomous Senior and Staff Engineers.
• Be pragmatic about trade-offs: In system design discussions, avoid dogmatic answers. Focus on pragmatism, explaining the pros and cons of different architectural choices in relation to business constraints.
• Understand the product: Familiarize yourself with Synthesia's core product offerings and technology domain before your interviews. Showing genuine interest in generative AI and video creation tools goes a long way.

The Engineering Manager role at Synthesia offers an incredible opportunity to lead talented engineering teams at the cutting edge of generative AI technology. By guiding teams of highly skilled Senior and Staff Engineers, you will play a direct role in shaping the future of synthetic media and video generation.

To succeed in this process, focus your preparation on demonstrating strong architectural thinking, empathetic leadership, and a proven ability to execute on complex product roadmaps. Approach the take-home RFC with the same rigor you would apply to a critical project in your current role, and prepare behavioral stories that showcase your collaborative, high-ownership leadership style.

The compensation details above reflect the typical base salary range for this role. When preparing your final salary expectations, consider how your specific experience, technical depth, and leadership background align with the high engineering standards expected at Synthesia.

With focused preparation, clear communication, and a strong display of your technical and leadership capabilities, you are well-positioned to excel in this interview process. For additional preparation resources, practice questions, and peer insights, explore the tools available on Dataford. Good luck!