Went through the Twilio product designer interview loop about six weeks ago for a mid-level product design role on their developer experience team. I have eight years in the field with a consulting background before going in-house, so I was expecting a fairly rigorous process.
Here's how it went.
Recruiter screen: Straightforward. They asked about my portfolio focus (B2B, developer tools, enterprise), timeline, and salary expectations. I gave a range honestly.
Portfolio presentation (45 min). I presented two case studies. They wanted one product design project and one project where I had to simplify something complex for a non-expert user. I chose a dashboard redesign and an onboarding flow for a developer tool. The questions were sharp: why did you make that information hierarchy choice, what did you cut and why, how did you validate before shipping. They pushed on the "cut" question a lot. Designers who can explain what they said no to are rare apparently.
Design exercise (take-home, 48 hours). The prompt was something along the lines of: redesign a part of the Twilio console experience to make a specific task less error-prone for developers. I was given a scenario with a specific user persona. I spent about six hours on it. They told me not to spend more than three but I'm bad at stopping.
Design critique round. One of their senior designers showed me an existing Twilio UI and asked for my honest feedback. This is a trap only if you're too polite. Be specific. I pointed out specific inconsistencies in the information architecture and one interaction that I thought would confuse new users. They responded well to directness.
Hiring manager conversation: More about how I work with engineers and PMs, how I handle feedback, how I've advocated for the user when business pressure pushed in a different direction.
Overall a thorough process. The take-home was the heaviest lift but the quality bar felt real. They genuinely care about developer experience as a design problem, which is a specific niche. If you don't find developer tooling interesting, it'll show.
No offer yet, still in final stages as I'm writing this.