Preparing for a Project Manager interview at Viasat requires a structured approach that balances your technical capabilities with your leadership philosophy. You should not treat these interviews as a test of memorized terms; instead, focus on demonstrating how you apply your skills to solve complex organizational challenges.

Role-Related Knowledge – You must demonstrate a deep understanding of the specific domain you are interviewing for, whether it is satellite communications, defense systems, or commercial aviation. Be prepared to discuss industry-specific standards, regulatory frameworks, and the hardware-software integration challenges common to aerospace technology.

Problem-Solving & Risk Management – Viasat interviewers place a high value on your ability to anticipate risks before they derail a program. You should be ready to walk through your framework for risk identification, mitigation planning, and crisis management, using concrete examples from your past projects.

Influence & Stakeholder Management – Because you will often lead cross-functional teams without direct organizational authority, you must show how you build consensus, resolve conflicts, and motivate engineers. Your ability to translate technical issues into business impacts for executive leadership is highly prioritized.

Cultural Alignment – Viasat looks for collaborative, low-ego leaders who are resilient in the face of long timelines and shifting requirements. You should highlight your adaptability, your commitment to continuous learning, and your ability to maintain a positive, professional team environment under pressure.

The interview process at Viasat is thorough and designed to evaluate your capabilities from multiple perspectives. It typically spans several weeks and involves interactions with a broad cross-section of the organization, including peers, direct managers, senior leadership, and internal stakeholders.

The process begins with an initial phone screening with a Talent Acquisition Specialist, focusing on your background, career goals, and alignment with Viasat's culture. This is followed by a more technical or domain-specific phone interview with the Hiring Manager. This second conversation digs deeper into your project management methodology, past program successes, and technical familiarity with the business unit's focus area.

If you pass these initial screens, you will move to the final stage, which is typically a highly structured 360-degree panel interview. This stage can be conducted virtually or on-site at one of Viasat's campuses, such as Carlsbad or London. The panel is highly collaborative and consists of consecutive or group sessions with future colleagues, engineering leads, and department heads. The goal is to simulate how you will interact with the diverse stakeholders you will support on a daily basis.

The timeline above illustrates the typical progression from your initial application to the final hiring decision. Candidates should interpret this as a multi-week journey that transitions from broad fit assessments to highly specific technical and behavioral evaluations. Use this timeline to pace your preparation, ensuring you are fully ready for the intensive, multi-hour panel stage.

To succeed at Viasat, you must understand the specific competencies that interviewers are trained to evaluate. Your performance in these core areas will determine your fit for the role.

Program Controls & Cost Forecasting

This evaluation area focuses on your fiscal responsibility and your ability to keep large-scale programs financially viable. Viasat operates on complex budgets that require precise forecasting and strict adherence to contract guidelines, particularly in their defense and government-facing business units.

Be ready to go over:

• Earned Value Management (EVM) – How you use EVM metrics to track schedule and cost performance.
• Cost Variance Analysis – Your process for identifying budget overruns and implementing recovery plans.
• Resource Capacity Planning – How you forecast engineering hours and balance resource constraints across competing projects.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Subcontractor financial integration, fixed-price vs. cost-reimbursable contract management, and capital expenditure (CapEx) tracking.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Walk me through how you would set up a cost-forecasting model for a brand-new, high-priority spacecraft development program."
• "Describe a scenario where a critical supplier increased their costs by 15% mid-project. How would you adjust your budget and manage the variance?"

Cross-Functional Engineering Alignment

At Viasat, project managers do not work in isolation; they are embedded with highly technical engineering teams. You must prove that you can bridge the gap between business objectives and technical execution without getting lost in the details or losing the respect of your technical leads.

Be ready to go over:

• Systems Engineering Integration – How you coordinate with systems engineers to ensure requirements are met.
• Hardware Development Lifecycles – Your understanding of the stages of hardware design, prototyping, testing, and production.
• Technical Risk Mitigation – How you translate technical hurdles into program risks and communicate them to non-technical stakeholders.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Radio frequency (RF) testing phases, payload integration milestones, and regulatory compliance (e.g., FAA, FCC, or military standards).

Example questions or scenarios:

• "How do you manage a project timeline when the software development team is ready to deploy, but the hardware team is delayed by a supply chain bottleneck?"
• "Explain a highly technical engineering challenge you managed in a past role, and how you communicated its impact to executive leadership."

Agile & Hybrid Delivery Lifecycles

Many teams at Viasat utilize a hybrid project management approach. They leverage Agile methodologies for software development while maintaining traditional, milestone-driven waterfall frameworks for hardware production and satellite launches.

Be ready to go over:

• Hybrid Lifecycle Management – How you align two-week software sprints with multi-month hardware manufacturing milestones.
• Dependency Mapping – Your strategy for tracking and resolving dependencies across different teams and frameworks.
• Agile Ceremonies – Your experience facilitating sprint planning, standups, and retrospectives in a complex environment.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) implementation, product backlog grooming for multi-tenant platforms, and release train coordination.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "How do you handle a situation where a Scrum team's output does not align with a critical, hard-deadline hardware integration milestone?"
• "Describe your approach to managing scope creep within an Agile environment while keeping the program on schedule."