What to expect when interviewing at Rootly.

Interviewing is already a job on top of your job. Our goal at Rootly is to run a process that’s clear, respectful of your time, and genuinely predictive of what it’s like to work together—for both you and us.

Below is what our hiring process looks like, what we’re evaluating at each step, and why we believe work trials are one of the fairest ways to make a great hiring decision.

Our hiring process, step by step

1. Screening

This is the initial conversation to make sure we’re aligned on the basics: role fit, experience, interests, and logistics.

Why we do it: It’s a fast way to confirm we’re not wasting your time (or ours) before asking for deeper investment.

What helps you succeed: Come ready to share what you’ve been building lately, what kind of environment helps you thrive, and what you’re looking for next.

2. Conversation with the hiring manager

This is where we go deeper on scope, expectations, and what success looks like in the role. We’ll talk through real examples from your background and how you approach problems.

Why we do it: A manager relationship shapes your day-to-day more than almost anything else. We want to make sure there’s mutual clarity and trust early.

What helps you succeed: Bring examples of tradeoffs you’ve made, how you collaborate, and how you handle ambiguity. We’re not looking for “perfect” stories—we’re looking for honest signals of how you work.

3. Take-home (updated for the AI era)

We use a take-home to give you space to think, explore, and build without the pressure of a stopwatch. But we’ve modernized what we ask for to reflect reality in 2026: AI is part of the workflow.

In Rootly’s take-home, you’ll build something representative of the kind of product work we do, and you’ll submit:

• your code
• a short Loom walkthrough
• and AI transcripts (if you used AI tools), because the transcript is often the most informative artifact of how you work

Our CTO describes the shift simply: when AI can help many candidates produce clean output, the differentiator becomes decision-making—tradeoffs, taste, systems thinking, and how you steer or correct AI output . We explicitly tell candidates that using AI is expected and encouraged, because we’re not testing “coding without AI”—we’re testing building great software with it .

Why we do it: Take-homes can be fair when they’re realistic and open-ended: they let deep thinkers show their best work, and they reduce the randomness of high-pressure interview performance. And AI transcripts help us see your approach—problem decomposition, iteration quality, and course-correction—more directly  .

What helps you succeed:

• Be explicit about tradeoffs (“I chose X because…” and “I didn’t do Y because…”)
• Show how you validate AI output instead of accepting it blindly
• Keep it clean, but don’t chase perfection—clarity beats polish

4. Interviews with potential teammates

You’ll meet a couple people you might work closely with. Expect a mix of role-relevant depth and collaboration-focused conversation.

Why we do it: We want multiple perspectives, not a single “gatekeeper” decision. Coinbase articulates this well: interviewing with multiple people creates multiple points of view and avoids hiring decisions being made unilaterally . We agree with that philosophy.

What helps you succeed: Treat this as a two-way interview. Ask what the team optimizes for, how decisions get made, and what the pace feels like.

5. Work trial

This is the part we’re most excited about—and the one candidates often tell us they appreciate most once they’ve done it.

A work trial is a time-boxed step where you do a project that’s representative of the role. Done well, it’s not hypothetical; it’s “real work” that mirrors what you’d actually do, with enough scope to show your judgment and execution .

Work trials are a “preview of your potential future,”— the project should be real, manageable within the trial period, and supported by the team . That support matters: you’re joining with near-zero context, so having teammates available to answer questions is part of making the signal fair .

Depending on the role, a work trial might include a short presentation or walkthrough of your approach—similar to how Coinbase uses a scenario-based work trial to understand how candidates apply their thinking to real business challenges .

Why we love work trials (and why they’re good for you, too)

Work trials are one of the highest-signal, lowest-theatre parts of hiring because they show:

• How you work, not just what you say.
• Communication, prioritization, and judgment show up naturally.
• How we work, not just how we interview.
• You get to see our pace, how we collaborate, and what “good” looks like here.
• Mutual confidence.
• A great interview can still hide mismatch. A work trial makes fit clearer on both sides—sometimes candidates decide not to proceed because it’s not the right fit, and that’s a good outcome too .

Our promise to candidates

We can’t make interviewing effortless, but we can make it transparent and humane.

So here’s what you can expect from us throughout the process:

• clarity on steps and what we’re assessing
• thoughtful, structured conversations (no “gotcha” vibes)
• respect for your time and context
• a process designed to help both of us make a confident decision

If Rootly feels like a place where you’d do your best work, we’d love to meet you—and if at any point it doesn’t feel like the right fit, we’ll treat that outcome with respect as well.

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