I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at PayPay (Tokyo) in Sept 2022
Interview
Screening round - General discussion on roles and responsibilities
Coding round - coding problems in fintech, discussion on design and best practices
Product round- product perspective evaluation
Division Head round - general discussion on previous experience
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Around the roles and responsibilities. How you will help with your role.
First round was a System Design Round , It was fair and good.
The second round was Product Thinking Round with one Rude PM,
I didint understand what she wanted to ask, she was not polite and don't know what she wanted to know .
I didn't understand why Engineering Managers have Product Rounds, do they have a System Design Round of Product Managers, It is not fair.
Hats off to the person who designs the Interview process.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at PayPay (Tokyo) in Jan 2022
Interview
I was approached by their recruiter through LinkedIn. The process took around 1.5 months.
TL;DR:
The whole process is CV screening and 5 interviews. Everything was very fast because the feedback could be given in a day or two after each interview, after which you scheduled your next interview. I did my interview once a week, but probably you can squeeze two interviews in a week for faster process.
Overall the experience was positive, all of the interviewers were very nice and accommodating, we even had a few good laugh during the interviews.
Detailed process:
The process started with standard CV screening, which everyone probably passes easily.
First interview was with HR where they introduced whole interview process.
Second was leadership & management behavioral interview where the interviewer checked your experience in team and people management, experience in going through difficult situations and how to overcome them, and your vision when joining PayPay. I was interviewed by 2 people, both are Senior Engineering Manager in the company. One of them cannot speak English well so they brought interpreter/translator to the interview.
Third was technical background check. Interviewer asked your experience in handling difficult technical challenges such as scalability and reliability issues, as well as problem solving skills, and how to prevent the issues from happening again as an engineering manager. They then proceed to have system design discussion based on real life scenario and asked what are my approaches and thoughts on designing a system such that it can handle PayPay size of throughput. The interviewer was with another Senior Engineering Manager.
Fourth interview was product/business interview with one of their Senior Product Manager. The interview was pretty much real life case study where they told me if we were to build a product, how I would describe to them how the system would look like, how it interacts with existing modules, what metrics are important and how to prioritize them, how I would assess the effort, what if the effort needs to be cut down, so forth. It is pretty much an illustration on what our interaction in the company would look like.
Last interview was culture fit interview with HR and the Head of Product. HR was 15 minutes and the Head of Product was 45 minutes. HR interview basically ice breaking discussion, where they shared my whole interview feedbacks and discussion about salary. Last interview with Head of Product was pretty much Q&A behavioral interviews, where they asked me question, I answer them, and then they move to the next question (most of the time the question is unrelated to the previous), which I answer them again, and it repeated until 45 minutes time is over. Pretty rigid interview unlike previous three.
Finally, they sent me email stating I was accepted and offered me the position, after which they sent the offer letter and had meeting to discuss the offer.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1) Leadership & Management Interview
Experience in managing team, project, people, how to handle tough situations and overcome them. Vision when joining PayPay and what would you try to achieve in the first 6 months.
2) Engineering Interview
Experience in handling difficult technical challenges and how to overcome it. Real life scenario system design discussion on how to tackle scalability and reliability aspects of a high throughput system based on certain requirements.
3) Product Interview
Experience in managing and delivering highly impactful product/feature and collaborating with multiple stakeholders. Real life scenario product design discussion on how to explain to product people how the system would look like, metrics to look into, and managing the timeline.
4) Culture Fit Interview
Mostly behavioral question on leadership experience as well as thoughts on the role of Engineering Manager.