Answer senior-level behavioral questions
Overview
This question evaluates leadership and behavioral competencies for a Machine Learning Engineer, including influence and stakeholder management, raising the technical bar through mentorship and process improvements, and ownership of failures and incident response.
Amazon
Jul 17, 2025, 12:00 AM
Machine Learning Engineer
Onsite
Behavioral & Leadership
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Behavioral & Leadership (Machine Learning Engineer — Onsite)
Context: Prepare three concise STAR stories (Situation, Task, Actions, Results) with measurable impact. Aim for 1–2 minutes per story. Use data where possible.
1) Disagree-and-Commit
Describe a time you strongly disagreed with a senior decision.
- How did you influence using data and viable alternatives?
- How did you escalate appropriately (only after direct alignment attempts)?
- How did you ultimately disagree-and-commit, and what was the outcome?
2) Raising the Technical Bar
Give an example of raising the technical bar on your team (e.g., mentoring, hiring, design quality).
- What specific actions did you take (mechanisms, reviews, standards, training)?
- What was the measurable impact?
3) Ownership of Failure/Incident
Tell me about a failure or production incident you owned.
- How did you recover quickly (containment, rollback, communication)?
- What mechanisms did you introduce to prevent recurrence, and how did you verify they worked?
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