i've now done the EM loop at CrowdStrike twice. once as a candidate in 2024 (got the offer, took it), and recently sat on a panel as an interviewer. both perspectives.
as a candidate, the loop had 6 sessions. i'll give you the honest breakdown.
leadership and vision round was basically: what's your philosophy on building security-focused engineering teams. they're not asking you to know Falcon's architecture. they're asking whether you can articulate a coherent point of view on quality, velocity tradeoffs, and psychological safety. come with a specific story about a time you had to slow down to ship something correctly.
technical depth round. EMs at CrowdStrike need real technical credibility. i got asked to walk through a recent architectural decision i made as the DRI, what the options were, who i involved. they pushed on specifics. if your instinct is to say 'i trusted my engineers to figure it out' they'll notice.
cross-functional round. they wanted to know how i work with product, with security researchers, with legal (export control comes up in security tooling, apparently). one question: describe a time a stakeholder pushed back on a technical call you made and you stood your ground. the answer should include how you communicated, not just that you won.
people management scenarios. situational stuff: engineer on your team is a strong IC but keeps missing commitments, how do you handle it. engineer wants a promotion you don't think they're ready for. these are well-worn but they're listening for emotional intelligence, not a script.
bar raiser equivalent. they call it something else but there's a round with someone outside the hiring org. this person is looking for culture fit and checking for patterns that might be red flags across other signals.
hiring manager conversation. usually last. more strategic, about the role itself.
as an interviewer now: what kills candidates is being too high-level. this is a real engineering org, not a strategy team. managers who can't get concrete about technical decisions don't do well. also, candidates who can't give a clear answer to 'tell me about a time you had to let someone go' make the panel nervous, even if they've never had to do it yet.
leveling: director-level conversations are longer with more skip-level stakeholder rounds. senior EM is what i described above.