At Windfall, data is the core of everything we build. As a Customer Success Engineer, you sit at the critical intersection of data science, customer success, and business strategy. Your primary mission is to help our customers—ranging from enterprise brands and financial institutions to major non-profit organizations—unlock the full potential of Windfall's high-fidelity wealth intelligence and consumer datasets. You are not just a support contact; you are a trusted technical advisor who translates complex data structures into actionable business strategies.

This role is highly impactful because Windfall's customers rely on our precise, deterministic net worth and wealth modeling to drive their marketing, fundraising, and customer acquisition campaigns. When a customer struggles to integrate our data or understand our methodology, it directly impacts their return on investment. By designing elegant data delivery pipelines, conducting deep-dive analyses, and presenting complex data concepts clearly, you directly influence customer retention, satisfaction, and overall company growth.

To succeed in this position, you must possess a unique blend of technical acumen and exceptional communication skills. You will regularly collaborate with our product, data science, and engineering teams to relay customer feedback, troubleshoot data discrepancies, and help shape the product roadmap. It is a challenging, fast-paced role that requires deep analytical thinking, but it offers a front-row seat to how modern businesses leverage big data to drive real-world outcomes.

The questions you will face during the Windfall interview process are designed to evaluate your technical data skills, your client-facing communication style, and your understanding of our business model. While these questions are representative of real candidate experiences, expect your interviewers to tailor their questions to your specific background and the needs of the team.

Data Analysis & Excel

This category evaluates your ability to manipulate, clean, and interpret complex datasets. You will need to demonstrate that you can work efficiently with data tools to extract meaningful insights for clients.

• How would you handle a dataset where 20% of the customer records have missing or malformed postal codes?
• Walk me through how you would use Excel to merge two disparate customer lists with different unique identifiers.

Preparing for an interview at Windfall requires a dual focus on your technical analytical capabilities and your communication skills. You should not only be comfortable manipulating data but also passionate about telling a story with that data.

Technical Data Manipulation – You must demonstrate a high level of comfort with Excel and general data concepts. Interviewers will look at how cleanly you organize your spreadsheets, how accurately you write formulas, and how quickly you can spot patterns or errors in a dataset.

Consultative Communication – A key part of the role is presenting your findings to clients. You will be evaluated on your ability to speak confidently, handle unexpected questions without getting defensive, and translate complex technical jargon into simple, business-oriented insights.

Domain Curiosity – Windfall values candidates who take the initiative to understand our business before day one. Spend time researching how wealth intelligence works, what datasets are publicly available, and how modern organizations use wealth data to drive their marketing and fundraising strategies.

Resilience & Adaptability – The interview process is rigorous and mimics the fast-paced nature of our daily work. Show that you can handle constructive feedback during your presentation, adapt to changing scenarios, and maintain a positive, solution-oriented attitude throughout.

The interview process for the Customer Success Engineer role at Windfall is thorough, comprehensive, and designed to give both you and our team a clear picture of what it is like to work together. Because this role requires a high degree of trust and technical competence, you will interact with team members across multiple levels of the organization, including senior executives.

The process typically begins with an initial recruiter screening to discuss your background and interest in the company. From there, you will move to a hiring manager interview, followed by conversations with key cross-functional leaders, such as the VP of Customer Success or the Head of Sales. A central element of the process is a take-home technical project where you will analyze a dataset and present your findings to a panel. This simulates a real client engagement and helps us evaluate your hands-on skills.

This timeline outlines the typical path a candidate takes from the initial touchpoint to the final decision. Candidates should interpret this as a guide to help pace their preparation, ensuring they allocate ample time to study our product and polish their presentation skills prior to the take-home project phase. While the exact order of executive conversations may vary slightly based on scheduling, the core technical and presentation evaluations remain consistent.

To succeed in the Windfall interview process, you must excel in three core areas that directly mirror the daily responsibilities of a Customer Success Engineer.

The Take-Home Project & Presentation

The take-home project is the most critical component of the evaluation process. You will be provided with a dataset and asked to perform an analysis, package your insights into a clean presentation (using Google Slides or PowerPoint), and present your findings to a panel of four to five team members acting as a mock client.

Be ready to go over:

• Data Cleaning and Preparation – How you handle duplicate records, missing values, and formatting inconsistencies in the source files.
• Strategic Segmentation – Grouping the mock client's customers into actionable tiers based on Windfall's wealth and net worth metrics.
• Executive Summary Design – Creating a visually professional deck that highlights key takeaways upfront, rather than burying them under technical details.

Example scenarios:

• "Presenting a cohort analysis to a mock university fundraising team, showing them which alumni have the highest propensity to give based on their updated net worth profiles."
• "Handling a tough question from a panelist playing a skeptical client who asks why a specific high-profile individual in the dataset is modeled with a lower net worth than expected."

Windfall Product & Data Methodology

We expect our Customer Success Engineers to be experts on our data. You must understand how Windfall builds its database, how our proprietary machine learning models estimate net worth, and how we differ from other data providers in the market.

Be ready to go over:

• Data Sourcing – Understanding the types of data inputs (e.g., real estate, business ownership, consumer demographics) that contribute to wealth modeling.
• Integration Ecosystems – How Windfall's data integrates into common client systems like Salesforce, HubSpot, or various donor management platforms.
• Data Privacy & Compliance – A basic understanding of how consumer privacy regulations impact the use of wealth intelligence data.

Example scenarios:

• "Explaining to a client how Windfall updates its datasets weekly to ensure they are targeting prospects based on the most current financial indicators."
• "Answering a panelist's question regarding how we calculate consumer debt and how that factor influences the final net worth calculation."

Consultative Problem Solving

Clients will often come to you with vague goals or technical roadblocks. You need to demonstrate that you can ask the right clarifying questions, diagnose the root cause of an issue, and guide the client toward a successful resolution.

Be ready to go over:

• Requirement Gathering – How you extract the actual business goals from a client who simply asks for "all of your data."
• Objection Handling – Techniques for de-escalating tense client situations when data matches do not perfectly align with their expectations.
• Value Realization – Helping clients define key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of their Windfall integration.

Example scenarios:

• "Walk us through how you would assist a client who claims that our data match rate for their customer list is lower than they anticipated."
• "How would you guide a client who is unsure whether to prioritize high-net-worth individuals or individuals with high discretionary income for their next campaign?"