just finished the GitHub product designer loop last month. applying for a mid-level PD role on one of their developer experience teams. wanted to write this up because design interview info for developer-tool companies tends to be sparse and GitHub's process has some quirks.
the portfolio review round is the one that matters most. plan accordingly.
recruiter screen (25 min): pretty normal. asked about my background, current role, what kind of product work i gravitate toward. there was a specific question about 'how comfortable are you designing for highly technical users' which makes sense given their user base is primarily developers.
portfolio presentation (60 min, 2 interviewers): i presented 2 case studies. this is where they spend most of their evaluation energy. a few things i noticed they cared about: your design process, not just the output. they asked follow-up questions like 'how did you decide to go this direction over the alternative' and 'what user research informed that call.' technical constraints. they wanted to know if i understood the engineering tradeoffs behind my designs. one interviewer was an engineer, not a designer, which was intentional. developer empathy. i lead with a case where i redesigned a developer-facing CLI onboarding flow. that resonated.
design exercise (take-home, 3 days): design an improved experience for a specific GitHub feature (they gave me a real one). brief was clear. i treated it like a real project: user problem, constraints, 3 directions explored, rationale for the direction i went, what i'd test next. do not just make it pretty. explain your thinking.
cross-functional behavioral (45 min): mix of standard behavioral and product thinking. 'how do you handle disagreement with a PM about scope,' 'walk me through how you've collaborated with engineers on a tight timeline,' 'what's a design decision you made that you'd do differently now.'
what's different about GitHub: the user (developers) is also largely the internal audience. expect people to push back on your assumptions about what's easy or hard to build. bring actual opinions about developer experience. 'i've thought a lot about how to reduce friction in code review workflows' is better than 'i love GitHub's products' which is worse than useless.