Comprehensive Interview Preparation Guide for Staff-Level Site Reliability Engineer (FAANG Standards)
Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)
Staff
8 rounds
Updated 11/23/2025
This guide is based on general FAANG interview practices and may not reflect specific company procedures.
Staff-level SRE interviews at FAANG companies follow a rigorous multi-stage process designed to assess deep technical expertise, system design mastery, leadership capability, and strategic thinking. The process evaluates your ability to architect highly reliable systems, lead incident response, mentor engineers, and influence cross-functional technical decisions. Expect 8 interview rounds over 4-6 weeks, combining technical assessments, complex system design challenges, behavioral evaluation, and bar-raiser calibration.
Interview Rounds
1
Recruiter Screening
20 min4 focus topicsbehavioral
2
Technical Phone Screen: Infrastructure, Automation & Scripting
60 min6 focus topicstechnical
3
System Design Round 1: Scalable and Reliable System Architecture
75 min7 focus topicssystem design
4
System Design Round 2: Resilience, Multi-Region Architecture, and Disaster Recovery
75 min6 focus topicssystem design
5
Incident Management, Response, and Post-Mortem Practices
60 min6 focus topicsbehavioral
6
Monitoring, Observability, SLOs, Error Budgets, and Performance Optimization
60 min6 focus topicstechnical
7
Leadership, Mentorship, and Cross-Functional Influence
60 min5 focus topicsbehavioral
8
Bar Raiser / Hiring Manager Round: Deep Technical + Organizational Fit
60 min5 focus topicsbehavioral
Additional Information