The search team uses the completed brief to separate adjacent familiarity from work the candidate owned. Each interviewer should use the same scenario, record the evidence provided, and score the answer against the responsibilities agreed during intake.
Site Reliability Engineer: Role-specific scope
Screened for service objectives, observability, incident response, automation, capacity, resilience, change safety, and production reliability, with the boundary set by the employer's systems, delivery stage, and operating model.
Interview prompt: Ask for one decision involving SLOs, Error Budgets, Observability. Record the constraint, what the candidate owned, and the evidence used to evaluate the result.
Brief alignment: Define the systems, delivery stage, operating boundary, and ownership expected from the Site Reliability Engineer
Senior Site Reliability Engineer: Ownership checkpoints
Screened for service objectives, observability, incident response, automation, capacity, resilience, change safety, and production reliability, with the boundary set by the employer's systems, delivery stage, and operating model.
Interview prompt: Ask for one decision involving service objectives, observability, incident response. Record the constraint, what the candidate owned, and the evidence used to evaluate the result.
Brief alignment: Screen candidates for evidence of service objectives, observability, incident response, automation, capacity, resilience, change safety, and production reliability
Production Engineer: Adjacent role boundaries
Screened for service objectives, observability, incident response, automation, capacity, resilience, change safety, and production reliability, with the boundary set by the employer's systems, delivery stage, and operating model.
Interview prompt: Ask for one decision involving Site Reliability Engineer, Senior Site Reliability Engineer, Production Engineer. Record the constraint, what the candidate owned, and the evidence used to evaluate the result.
Brief alignment: Separate direct delivery experience from adjacent product, project, or consulting exposure