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Decagon forward deployed engineer interview

How forward deployed interviews work at each company, the questions candidates and employers have published, and practice questions with response guides.

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Decagon interview

Agent Product Manager · Senior Agent Product Manager · Agent Deployment Engineer · Agent Strategy Manager · Engineering Lead, Strategic Deployments · Forward Deployed Engineer, Agent Builder (older listing)

7 stages and 6 questions from 7 sources, newest 2026-11.

Process

  1. Recruiter screen

    ~30 min. Assesses: Background, motivation for conversational AI, comfort with in-office pace. [4]

  2. Hiring manager

    ~45 min. Assesses: Product sense and technical depth; take-home usually introduced here. [4]

  3. Take-home PRD

    ~3 to 5 hours, PRD for a new platform feature. Assesses: Problem framing, metrics, technical dependencies, MVP scope. [4]

  4. Leadership / CEO conversation

    ~30 to 45 min. Assesses: Values alignment, a defended product opinion. [4]

  5. Technical phone screen (Software Engineer loop, adjacent role)

    Live coding call. Assesses: Practical state-management coding. [7]

  6. System design phone screen (Software Engineer loop, adjacent role)

    Design call. Assesses: Designing security for an LLM chatbot product. [7]

  7. Onsite culture screen (Software Engineer loop, adjacent role)

    Behavioral interview. Assesses: Project stories, a failed project, and how the candidate uses AI. [7]

Questions

System design 1

  • Design the security architecture for Decagon's LLM customer-support chatbot.

    System designCandidate reportSoftware Engineer (not deployment role)2026[7]

    Curated by PracHub; adjacent role

Coding 1

  • Implement a shopping cart supporting add and remove, with undo and redo.

    CodingCandidate reportSoftware Engineer (not deployment role)2026[7]

    Curated by PracHub; adjacent role

Customer scenario 1

  • Design an AI feature that turns raw conversation data into actionable insights.

    Customer scenarioThird-party guideProduct Manager2026[4]

    From a generic PM guide; not confirmed for Agent PM

Domain 1

  • How would you talk through a data model or API design with an engineer?

    DomainThird-party guideProduct Manager2026[4]

    Generic PM guide

Behavioral 2

  • How would you define success and adoption for a feature you shipped?

    BehavioralThird-party guideProduct Manager2026[4]

    Generic PM guide

  • Walk through a project, a project that went wrong, and how you use AI in your work.

    BehavioralCandidate reportSoftware Engineer (not deployment role)2026[7]

    Candidate was rejected after this round

Tips from the sources

  • Decagon's Agent PM lead says there is no single background; they hire for traits and look for a 'spike' in product thinking, customer strategy, systems design, or technical implementation. [1]
  • Agent PM work spans writing requirements with customers, designing prompt logic, testing tone and correctness, and measuring rollouts; prepare examples across those areas. [1]
  • Company values listed on the careers page include speed of execution, inventing what customers want, and a 'polymath' cross-functional bent. [2]
  • Decagon's ADE manager says people who thrive trace production failures to their root cause, tolerate ambiguity, and can explain tradeoffs directly to customers; bring debugging stories. [6]
  • Agent Deployment Engineers turn customer goals and policies into agent instructions and tools, then test against real conversations; prepare an example of iterating an agent after launch. [6]
  • In one 2026 software engineer loop the behavioral culture screen ended the process; prepare a failure story and a concrete account of how you use AI. [7]

Not found in public sources: No public first-hand account of the Agent Deployment Engineer, Agent PM or Agent Strategy Manager loops outside Glassdoor (excluded); Glassdoor reports of a case study/presentation for Agent PM and a screen, technical, case study and 4-interview onsite for Customer Engineer, Agent Builder were seen but not used. Engineering questions added here come from a single 2026 software engineer account (PracHub) and an uncited third-party guide; label as adjacent-role evidence. No AI-use policy published.

Sources

  1. Agent Product Manager. Decagon (Max Lowenthal, Director, Agent PM), 2025-04. Employer-published
  2. Careers. Decagon, 2026. Employer-published
  3. Decagon jobs (Ashby). Decagon, 2026-11. Employer-published
  4. Decagon Product Manager interview guide 2026. Nora AI, 2026-06. Third-party guide
  5. Joining Decagon. Matt Savage (Agent PM), 2025-04. Employee account
  6. Agent Deployment Engineering. Decagon (Alex Lewis, Manager, Agent Deployment Engineering), 2026-08. Employer-published
  7. Decagon Software Engineer interview experience, rejected after the onsite culture screen. PracHub (first-person account, curated and edited by PracHub), 2026-09. Candidate report