Welcome to your interview for the Engineering Manager role at Attentive.
The question is on your right: Prioritize Technical Debt Under Pressure. Take a moment with it first.
Talk your thinking through with me if you like - when you're confident, submit your answer and I'll grade it like a real screen. You have three graded attempts to score 7/10 or better.
You are the Engineering Manager for a B2B SaaS platform. Your team keeps shipping customer-facing features, but the service is now showing rising incident rates, slower release cycles, and a growing backlog of technical debt across the API layer, test coverage, and deployment pipeline. Product wants to keep the roadmap moving, Support wants fewer escalations, and the CTO is asking for a clear plan before the next planning cycle.
How do you prioritize technical debt in your projects?