Meta Production Engineer Interview (questions, prep, process)

“This role bridges infrastructure and software. In a nutshell, one could say, PEs “keep the lights on”—heroes when things go wrong and unsung heroes when things are going really well.”

To succeed as a production engineer, you’ll need strong coding skills and a deep understanding of computer systems, including operating systems, networking, and distributed infrastructure. You’ll also need to stay calm under pressure, especially when fixing critical issues that impact millions of users in real time.

Meta production engineers enjoy one of the highest compensation packages in the tech industry, especially at senior levels. According to Levels.fyi, total compensation includes base salary, annual bonus, and Meta’s stock grants (RSUs). This is typically what’s offered for most tech roles.

Compared to software engineers, production engineers at the same level receive very similar and sometimes even slightly higher total compensation. This makes sense when you consider the responsibilities specific to Meta production engineers, as they often juggle hybrid systems, coding responsibilities, and incident response expectations.

Among Big Tech companies, Meta’s PE compensation is considered top-tier. For example, an E5 PE earns an average of $458K per year, which outpaces similar roles at Amazon and Microsoft, and is comparable to compensation at Google.

It’s also worth noting that Meta’s leveling structure and promotion cadence tend to be faster than average. Many engineers move from E4 to E5 within two years, which is great for long-term career growth and financial benefits.

Remember, compensation packages are always negotiable, even at Meta. So, if you do get an offer, don’t be afraid to ask for more. If you need help negotiating, consider booking one of our salary negotiation coaches to get expert advice.

For more guidance on system design and product architecture, read our guides on the Meta system design interview and Meta product architecture interview.

3.5 Career interview

As mentioned above, you can expect one non-technical interview as part of the onsite interview (if you’re applying for a management role, you may get two). We think Meta calls this a "career interview," but it’s not entirely clear, so check with your recruiter. 

You can expect behavioral questions that test whether you have the soft skills needed to make a positive impact on Meta’s working culture, as well as questions about your resume and your motivation for joining the company. You may also be tested on your project management skills and your incident response skills.

Incident response skills are especially crucial for production engineers, who often need to quickly solve technical problems when Meta’s systems are down. This includes addressing security breaches, system outages, and other issues that can impact the availability, performance, and security of the products they develop. 

Below, we've listed the questions that production engineer candidates have reported being asked at Meta.

To dig deeper into these, check out our article on how to ace Meta behavioral interview questions.

4. Meta production engineer interviewing tips ↑

There are plenty of candidates who are excellent at their jobs, but still end up failing their Meta interview. Why? Their interview skills are simply not up to par.

Here are some tips to keep in mind when preparing for your Meta interview:

4.1 Be honest about your knowledge gaps

Your interviewer does not expect you to know everything. If you’re unsure about how to proceed, be honest and let them know.

Be transparent with the interviewer about this (they'll be able to tell anyway), but try and make a decision. Say something like: "I don't know that much about X, but I think I would do Y here, correct me if I'm wrong.”

“Don’t panic if you don’t have all the information — show how you make rational, defensible decisions anyway,” Halim (ex-Meta senior product manager) says.

The same goes for behavioral questions. If you faced challenges or setbacks, be honest and own up to your mistakes and failures. But most importantly, discuss how you improved and learned from them.

4.2 Don’t jump straight to answering 

For many interviewers, your collaboration and communication skills are just as important as your technical capabilities. Jumping to an answer immediately after you receive a question is a huge red flag.

You will probably get questions you haven’t encountered before or haven’t prepared for. Don’t panic! It’s okay to take a moment of silence to think and jot down some notes, just let the interviewer know that’s what you’re doing.

For example: 

• Question: “Can you tell me about a time you had to disappoint your supervisor?” 
• Response: “That’s a great question - give me just a minute to collect my thoughts.”

This helps because it:

• Gives you time to consider and structure your response 
• Signals that you are thoughtful in your communication, even in an interview setting 

When you don’t ask clarifying questions or discuss possible approaches with your interviewer first, it signals that 1) you haven’t thoughtfully processed the question, and 2) you won’t collaborate with your interviewer. Both are bad signs for how you may work within a team.

In a coding interview, start by discussing your approach before coding. Writing pseudocode is an excellent way to outline your plan and show your work to the interviewer.

This tip is relevant for technical questions, like coding and system design, but also applicable to behavioral questions. For example, if you have several relevant experiences to share, you could ask your interviewer which story they prefer to hear.

4.3 Talk through your answer

Interviewers are often more interested in understanding how you work and think, rather than whether or not you find the right answer. Aside from technical knowledge, they’re also assessing your problem-solving skills and your ability to work in a team.

Treat the interviewer as a collaborator. Walk them through the steps you’re taking and clarify any assumptions you’re making. If you need to concentrate on a tricky part, take a minute or two to work in silence, but don’t forget to explain what you’ve done before moving on. Of course, be careful not to use any inappropriate language or swear words.

4.4 Break the problem into smaller tasks

The types of coding questions that are asked in tech interviews can typically be broken down into 2-5 tasks, with each taking a few minutes to complete. While you’re making your plan, list out the steps and explain them to your interviewer.

As you work, cross out each of the steps one by one and tell your interviewer (e.g., “I have completed task X, and will now work on Y, then Z.”). It will give the interviewer a sense of your ability to tackle long-term, difficult projects on the job.

Plus, acknowledging each finished step will help boost your confidence throughout the process.

4.5 Use pseudocode to explain your thinking

Interviewers want to understand how you think. When you’re explaining how you’re going to approach a technical problem, writing pseudocode is an excellent way to outline your plan and show your work to the interviewer.

Of course, by the end of the session, you’ll want to have written actual code that implements what you’d planned out in the first few minutes. Pseudocode is a helpful intermediary step, but don’t forget to check in with your interviewer before using it. 

4.6 Acknowledge trade-offs

Any decision you make when problem-solving will have a trade-off. So, call them out in real-time. Use it as an opportunity to discuss different options with your interviewer and explain why your choice is the best one. 

If you don’t bring up trade-offs, your interviewer will almost certainly ask about them, so it’s better to beat them to it.

4.7 Adapt to follow-up questions

Interviewers will ask follow-up questions, whether it’s a coding, system design, or behavioral interview. 

Listen carefully to the way your interviewer is asking these questions. Sometimes, follow-up questions are a way for your interviewer to steer you in a particular direction, so don’t hesitate to follow.

Listen actively for hints, as most interviewers have good intentions and are trying to help you.

4.8 Answer in a clear and structured manner

Practicing with an answer framework helps you give clear, structured answers. This applies to coding, system design, behavioral, and other types of questions.

For behavioral questions, make sure your answer only includes necessary information. Practice setting up your answer in 30 seconds or less, cutting down unnecessary or vague details.

Additionally, wherever possible, quantify your achievements. 

“Use metrics and data to demonstrate the impact of your contributions,” Bilwasiva (Amazon applied scientist) says.

4.9 Brute force, then iterate

When coding, don’t necessarily go for the perfect solution straight away. Meta recommends that you first try and find a solution that works, then iterate to refine your answer.

Once you’ve implemented something that works, clearly explain how you plan to optimize it. You can also use this as a stepping stone to discuss trade-offs, edge cases, and how you might improve performance by using more advanced algorithms or data structures.

This step-by-step approach signals two things:

1. You can think independently and structure your problem-solving.
2. You understand real-world software development, where correctness often comes before optimization.

In short: Start simple, get it working, then make it better.

4.10 Demonstrate a growth mindset and confidence

FAANG+ companies like Meta want candidates who are confident in their skills, but who are still looking for ways to grow. Interviewers will usually assess this capacity through behavioral questions.

Mark (ex-Google engineering manager) suggests that when preparing your stories, ask yourself: "Do the stories and experiences I’m giving show that I’m always looking to grow and learn, rather than having a fixed mindset?"

Interviewers will also evaluate these qualities during your technical interview. How do you demonstrate them? By asking questions, listening to and applying feedback, owning up to gaps in your knowledge while still pushing through, and showing a growth mindset (i.e., that you can adapt and learn fast).

However, be careful about asking too many questions and needing confirmation for every decision you make during your interview. This shows a lack of confidence in your skills, not a growth mindset. Only ask for confirmation at certain points when talking through your solution.

5. Preparation plan ↑

Now that you know what questions to expect, let's focus on how to prepare. It's no secret that the performance bar at Meta is high. Some people even go as far as quitting their job to prepare for interviews full-time.

This is obviously extreme and not what we recommend doing, but it shows how much effort some candidates are ready to put in. We've listed the four steps we recommend taking to prepare as efficiently as possible below.

5.1 Learn about Meta's culture

Most candidates fail to do this. But before investing tens of hours preparing for an interview at Meta, you should take some time to make sure it's actually the right company for you.

Meta is prestigious and it's therefore tempting to ignore that step completely. But in our experience, the prestige in itself won't make you happy day-to-day. It's the type of work and the people you work with that will.

If you know engineers who currently work at Meta or used to work there, it's a good idea to talk to them to understand what the culture is like.

In addition, we would recommend reading the following sources to familiarize yourself with Meta’s way of working and the context you’d be entering into:

• Meta's 6 core values 
• Facebook's hacker culture
• Meta's engineering page 
• Meta’s production engineering blog archive
• Glassdoor’s page on Meta production engineering reviews
• How Meta production engineers solve the problem of scale
• Inside Meta's Engineering Culture by The Pragmatic Engineer

5.2 Practice by yourself

As mentioned above, you'll have five types of interviews at Meta: coding, systems, networking, design and architecture, and career (behavioral). The first step of your preparation should be to brush up on these different types of questions and to practice answering them by yourself. 

For coding questions, we recommend using our Meta coding interview prep article as your one-stop guide. It has a 7-step preparation plan and links to the best resources.

For the systems interviews, you can refresh your knowledge on Linux with this tutorial, and look at some common Linux questions and their answers. We also recommend reading around Meta’s engineering page, where you’ll find lots of interesting and relevant posts such as this one.

For networking questions, we recommend this video that answers 50 typical networking interview questions. In the comments, you can find the timeline and go straight to the most relevant answers. In addition, this presentation by Facebook’s director of engineering gives an interesting overview of some of the new networking challenges the company is facing.  

For design and architecture interviews, we recommend studying our Meta system design interview guide. The guide covers a step-by-step method for answering system design questions, which you can apply to design and architecture questions.

For career interviews, we recommend learning our step-by-step method to answer behavioral questions. In addition, you'll want to write down your answers to the behavioral questions we listed in the previous section.

Once you’re in command of the subject matter, you’ll want to practice answering questions. But by yourself, you can’t simulate thinking on your feet or the pressure of performing in front of a stranger. Plus, there are no unexpected follow-up questions and no feedback.

That’s why many candidates try to practice with friends or peers.

5.3 Practice with peers

If you have friends or peers who can do mock interviews with you, that's an option worth trying. It’s free, but be warned, you may come up against the following problems:

• It’s hard to know if the feedback you get is accurate
• They’re unlikely to have insider knowledge of interviews at your target company
• On peer platforms, people often waste your time by not showing up

For those reasons, many candidates skip peer mock interviews and go straight to mock interviews with an expert. 

5.4 Practice with experienced Meta interviewers

In our experience, practicing real interviews with experts who can give you company-specific feedback makes a huge difference.

Find a Meta interview coach so you can:

• Test yourself under real interview conditions
• Get accurate feedback from a real expert
• Build your confidence
• Get company-specific insights
• Learn how to tell the right stories, better.
• Save time by focusing your preparation

Landing a job at a big tech company often results in a $50,000 per year or more increase in total compensation. In our experience, three or four coaching sessions worth ~$500 make a significant difference in your ability to land the job. That’s an ROI of 100x!