What is a UX/UI Designer at Tessian?
As a UX/UI Designer at Tessian, you are at the forefront of human-centric cybersecurity. Tessian builds intelligent cloud email security platforms that protect organizations from threats like phishing, accidental data loss, and ransomware. Your role is to take highly complex, data-heavy security workflows and transform them into intuitive, frictionless experiences for both end-users and IT administrators.
The impact of this position is immense. You are not just designing interfaces; you are shaping how employees interact with security protocols daily. A successful design at Tessian means a user is protected without feeling interrupted, and a security administrator can instantly understand their organization's risk posture through clear, actionable dashboards. You will work closely with product managers and engineers to balance robust technical requirements with elegant user experiences.
Candidates can expect a fast-paced, highly collaborative environment where design is treated as a critical business pillar. You will tackle ambiguous problem spaces, requiring a strategic mindset and a deep empathy for users who need security to be invisible yet effective.
Common Interview Questions
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Curated questions for Tessian from real interviews. Click any question to practice and review the answer.
Design a product experience that helps analytics users create visualizations with clear takeaways, not just charts.
Assess the effectiveness of product development success metrics at TechCorp following a new feature launch.
Plan a 10-week Databricks Assistant redesign launch after engineering rejects part of the UX due to technical constraints.
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Sign up freeAlready have an account? Sign inGetting Ready for Your Interviews
Thorough preparation requires understanding exactly what the hiring team values. At Tessian, the interview process is highly organized and heavily indexed on practical application, storytelling, and cross-functional collaboration.
Design Craft & Execution – You must demonstrate a high bar for visual design and interaction design. Interviewers will look at how you structure information, your attention to typography and spacing, and your ability to build scalable design systems within complex B2B or SaaS environments.
Problem-Solving & User-Centricity – Tessian evaluates how you navigate ambiguity. You can demonstrate strength here by clearly explaining your research methods, how you validate assumptions, and how you pivot when user data contradicts your initial hypotheses.
Cross-Functional Collaboration – Security products require tight alignment across disciplines. Interviewers will assess how you communicate your design rationale to non-designers, how you handle pushback from engineering, and how you partner with product management to define scope.
Culture Fit & Adaptability – The team looks for humility, a growth mindset, and a proactive approach to feedback. You will be evaluated on your ability to thrive in a structured yet evolving environment, demonstrating that you can take ownership of your work while lifting the team around you.
Interview Process Overview
The interview process for a UX/UI Designer at Tessian typically takes about a month from start to finish. Candidates consistently report a highly organized, transparent, and positive experience. The progression is designed to evaluate not just your final design outputs, but the journey you take to get there and how you interact with the broader team.
You will begin with an initial screening call with an in-house recruiter, followed by a deeper conversational interview with the hiring manager to align on your background and the role's expectations. The core of the evaluation then shifts to a rigorous portfolio presentation where you will walk through one or two select projects with a couple of team members. If successful, you will be given a take-home design exercise to complete, culminating in a final round of interviews that includes a presentation of your exercise and behavioral chats with other disciplines on the team, such as engineering and product management.
This visual timeline outlines the distinct stages of your interview journey, from initial screening through the final cross-functional loops. Use this to pace your preparation, ensuring you have your portfolio narrative locked in early, while saving energy for the deep-dive take-home exercise and final stakeholder presentations.
Deep Dive into Evaluation Areas
To succeed, you must understand the specific competencies Tessian targets during each phase of the interview loop.
Portfolio & Case Study Walkthrough
Your portfolio presentation is arguably the most critical live stage. Interviewers do not want a superficial tour of your website; they want a deep, narrative-driven walkthrough of one or two highly relevant projects. They are looking for your ability to articulate the "why" behind your design decisions.
Be ready to go over:
- Problem Definition – How you identified the core user problem and aligned it with business goals.
- Iteration and Trade-offs – The variations you explored, why certain paths were discarded, and how technical constraints shaped the final outcome.
- Impact and Metrics – How you measured the success of the design post-launch using qualitative and quantitative data.
- Advanced concepts (less common) – Integrating machine learning insights into UI, designing for edge cases in data-heavy enterprise dashboards.
Example questions or scenarios:
- "Walk us through a time you had to compromise on a design due to engineering constraints. How did you handle it?"
- "Explain the rationale behind this specific user flow. What alternative flows did you consider?"
- "How did you validate that this design actually solved the underlying user problem?"
