i'm a product/brand designer, 8 years, mostly B2C with some dev-tool experience. went through the replit design interview loop this spring. made it to final round, didn't get the offer (they went internal), but the process was thorough enough to be worth sharing.
the job was listed as product designer, mid-to-senior, focusing on the core editor and workspace experience.
what the process looked like:
recruiter call was short, 20 min. they asked specifically about experience designing for developers or technical users. if you've only done consumer apps, i'd think hard about how you'd frame your work in terms of power users, efficiency, and low-distraction interfaces. replit's users are developers, many of them students, and the product is a tool not an app.
portfolio review (45 min, with a senior designer and the design manager): this is the core of it. they picked 2-3 projects from my portfolio and went very deep. not just 'walk me through this' but: what was the original problem statement, how did you test your assumptions before designing, what did you cut and why, what did you ship vs what you wanted to ship.
they cared a lot about the gap between the ideal solution and what actually shipped. 'we had to ship in 3 weeks so we cut X because Y' is more interesting to them than a perfect polished case study.
design challenge: i got a prompt to redesign part of the replit onboarding experience for a specific persona (first-time coder, age 14). 5 days, asked to produce a short loom walkthrough + key screens. not pixel-perfect production, more about your thinking and priorities.
values round + design critique: they walked me through a current replit feature and asked what i'd improve. casual, like a design review you'd have internally. i pushed back on some information hierarchy choices and they seemed to like that.
what i'd prep: if you don't use replit yourself, use it for a week first. understand the experience from the inside. know how they think about the developer learning journey. figma proficiency is assumed. be ready to talk about designing for low-ink, high-utility interfaces.
no offer, but i left thinking they have a solid design culture. they actually argue about the right things.