Product Design

Interview
Preparation Guide

Congratulations on making it this far. Our team put this guide together so you know exactly what to expect and how to put your best foot forward.

What to Expect

In an initial screening, you'll meet with a hiring manager to determine mutual fit and discuss your design philosophy, process, and experience building user-centered products. If we decide to move forward, your availability will be requested to meet with additional members of our team.

Your interview loop covers a portfolio review and a career deep dive. Each session is designed to understand how you approach design problems — not to evaluate your pixel perfection on the spot.

Your Path Forward

Three focused conversations designed to understand your craft, your thinking, and your potential as a teammate.

1

Initial Screening

30 min

Get to know us while we get to know you. We'll talk shop, answer your questions, and explore your capabilities and interests to ensure the role is the right fit.

2

Portfolio Review

60 min

You'll walk us through 2–3 projects from your portfolio — your design process, user research, key decisions, and outcomes. We'll have a conversation about the tradeoffs you navigated. More detail below.

3

Career Deep Dive & Values

30 min

We'll cover how you budget your time, manage conflict, work with others, and navigate the balance between time, scope, and quality. Come prepared with real examples.

Offer

If our team is aligned that you'd be a great addition, an offer is extended. We move quickly.

Deep Dive

The Portfolio Review

This session evaluates your design thinking, process rigor, and ability to articulate the reasoning behind your work. Walk us through projects that showcase your range — we want to see how you think, not just what you shipped.

  • Design Process — How you move from research through ideation, prototyping, testing, and iteration — and how you adapt your process to different constraints
  • User Research & Empathy — How you understand user needs, conduct research, and translate insights into design decisions
  • Visual & Interaction Craft — The quality of your design execution — typography, layout, hierarchy, motion, and attention to detail
  • Systems Thinking — How you think about design at scale: component libraries, design tokens, consistency across products
  • Decision Articulation — How you explain why you made specific choices, what alternatives you considered, and what you'd do differently

Curate your strongest work. We'd rather see 2 projects in depth than 5 at surface level. Process artifacts (sketches, flows, research findings) are just as valuable as final designs.

How to Prepare

01

Show Up Ready

Find a quiet environment with a strong internet connection. Keep your phone on do not disturb. A clear mind is your most valuable tool.

02

Curate Your Portfolio

Select 2–3 projects that showcase different strengths. Prepare to discuss the full arc: problem discovery, research, exploration, decisions, outcomes, and what you'd change in hindsight.

03

Show Your Process

We value process as much as output. Bring sketches, wireframes, research artifacts, and iteration history. Show us how you think, not just what you shipped.

04

Why Altium?

You have a lot of companies to choose from. Think about what you're looking for and why our team resonates with you.

Tips & Best Practices

1

Think Out Loud

Don't solve problems in your head. Walking us through your reasoning lets us help if you're headed off-track — and you might find it's easier than you think.

2

Tell the Story

Structure each project as a narrative: the problem, the constraints, your approach, the outcome. Great designers are great storytellers.

3

Show the Messy Middle

Don't just show polished finals. The iterations, dead ends, and pivots reveal more about your thinking than the shipped product.

4

Ask for Clarity

Getting stuck is perfectly fine. Step back, walk through what you have, and ask questions. Interviewers respect clarity-seeking.

5

Quantify Where Possible

If your design improved a metric — conversion, task completion, satisfaction — say so. Connecting design to outcomes is a strength.

6

Discuss Collaboration

Show how you work with engineering, product, and research. Design doesn't happen in isolation, and we want to see how you navigate cross-functional work.

7

Interview Us Too

This is a two-way street. Prepare different questions for each interviewer — variety shows genuine curiosity. You might consider writing them down ahead of time.

Further Reading

Design is a vast field — don't feel you need to know everything. These resources cover the fundamentals.

Our Values

1.

Trust

The central foundation of our culture. We perform best in a high trust, low blame environment — and that's exactly what we build.

2.

Autonomy & Agility

We hire incredibly talented people and give them autonomy in how teams organize and make decisions.

3.

Coordinate, Communicate, Collaborate with Clarity

Despite being a distributed team, we believe the largest challenges ahead involve working closely together.

4.

Team over Ego

We are not family, but we only win when the team wins.

5.

Innovation & Experimentation

Altium prides itself in being a leader in innovation — pushing the boundaries of what's possible for electronics design teams.

6.

Empathy

We are all humans just typing on computers. Let's be real with each other.

You've Got This

There's a universe of things you could know — don't sweat it. Bring the best version of yourself forward, think clearly, communicate openly, and you'll be fine. We're rooting for you.