Welcome to your interview.
The question is on your right: Ship FNOL Intake Before Renewal. 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 (7/10 or better passes). Discussion and graded submissions share your five interviewer interactions, so spend them well.
You are the engineering manager responsible for launching a redesigned digital first-notice-of-loss intake flow for an insurance product before peak renewal season. The current flow in the customer portal has a 14% drop-off rate on mobile, and leadership wants the new experience live in 10 weeks because call center volume is rising and the claims team expects a seasonal spike. Your staff engineer is pushing to first rebuild the intake orchestration into a cleaner event-driven service that would reduce future maintenance and support multiple lines of business, but that work would consume most of the timeline and depends on a platform team that is already committed elsewhere. Product and operations are asking for a simpler version now in the existing architecture, while security and compliance are warning that any rushed launch cannot weaken auditability or consent capture.
| Detail | Value |
|---|---|
| Deadline | 10 weeks |
| Engineering team | 4 backend, 2 frontend, 1 QA |
| Shared dependencies | 1 platform team, 1 security engineer |
| Current monthly FNOL sessions | 180,000 |
| Mobile traffic share | 68% |
| Target lines of business | Auto and Renters |
| Budget for contractors/tools | $60,000 |
| Compliance requirement | Full audit trail and consent logging at launch |
How would you decide whether to push for the technical improvement or ship the simpler solution, and how would you plan the execution so you can meet the deadline without creating unacceptable delivery, operational, or compliance risk?