Did the Uber TPM interview loop last month. Sharing because TPM interviews are weirdly underrepresented in public write-ups, everyone documents SWE loops but not this role.
Background: I've been a PM for 6 years, pivoting toward TPM because I want to stay closer to engineering execution. Uber's TPM role sits in engineering, not product. Important distinction.
Recruiter screen: they were very clear that Uber TPMs are expected to read code, understand architecture, and run technical project plans. Not just slide decks. If you're a PM who's drifted away from technical depth, this role will expose you.
Hiring manager screen (45 min): he walked me through what the role actually does day-to-day: cross-team dependency management, technical risk surface in large programs, partner with 4-6 engineering teams at once. Then he asked me to describe the most technically complex project I'd driven. I walked through a database migration I managed at my last job. He asked good questions about how I identified risk, how I communicated status to non-technical stakeholders, and how I handled slippage.
Technical round (60 min): system design lite. Not a full FAANG-style distributed systems design, but they wanted to see that I understand what engineers are talking about when they describe their work. We designed a simplified version of surge pricing at a system level. I wasn't expected to design the ML model but I was expected to understand the data flow, latency constraints, and where the hard integration problems would be.
Program management round (60 min): here's where I expected to shine and also where I got pushed hardest. They want to see specific methodologies. How do you track dependencies across teams? What does your weekly status artifact look like? How do you handle a team that's consistently underdelivering without throwing them under the bus upward? Real scenarios, wanted real answers.
Behavioral: standard STAR. Focus on influence without authority and handling ambiguity. TPM is basically a role where you have responsibility but no direct authority, so they probe this hard.
Timeline: 3 weeks start to finish. Offer was around $290k TC for a senior TPM role, SF-based.