Interview Playbook / High-Growth Tech & AI

How ElevenLabs Interviews in 2026: Process, Questions & What They Score

HOW TO READ THIS PLAYBOOK

Compiled from 15 public sources: candidate interview reports, coaching guides, and ElevenLabs's own hiring pages. Interview processes change and vary by role, team, level, and region. This is one well-documented shape of ElevenLabs's interviews to prepare against, not a script of what your interview will be. Confirm specifics with your recruiter. SupaCV is not affiliated with or endorsed by ElevenLabs.

Medium confidenceLast verified SEP 202615 sourcesSources

ElevenLabs is a voice and audio AI company (text to speech, dubbing, conversational agents) with hubs in London, New York, San Francisco and Warsaw. This dossier covers the engineering track, which is what the company is best known for hiring: product-minded full stack and backend engineers, plus the closely related forward deployed engineer (FDE) roles. Go-to-market, research and design tracks are not covered here because no fetchable first-hand reports exist for them. The official careers page describes the process only in outline: a pre-screen, virtual interviews (sometimes with a skills assessment like a take-home or case study), a hiring manager conversation, and a final round with a founder or Bar Raiser, with the note that steps vary by role. Coaching guides and first-hand candidate reports converge on a five to six stage engineering loop: recruiter screen, timed asynchronous coding screen on CoderPad, a project-focused behavioral round, a live practical coding round built on a real customer workflow, and a product decomposition round that replaces the classic system design interview. Reported end-to-end timelines run from about two weeks to about six weeks, with three to five weeks most commonly cited. The distinctive stage is product decomposition. Two independent candidate reports describe it as a product design conversation with no code: you are handed an ordinary customer problem (a dubbing review workflow, an internal support tool) and asked to design the whole thing from the interface down to the data model, including feature prioritisation. Both candidates said they expected a technical decomposition and were caught off guard. One noted the company runs without dedicated product managers, which is the stated reason engineers are expected to cover product thinking. On evaluation framework: ElevenLabs publishes three principles under the heading "How we build" on its careers page. Those are included below, but they are published company principles rather than a published interview rubric, and no scoring guide or per-round rubric is public.

The Process

  1. 1

    Application, AI agent pre-screen and recruiter outreach · varies

    The careers page lists a pre-screen as the first step and says steps vary by role. ElevenLabs also runs two of its own conversational AI agents, AI Becky and AI Oscar, voice-cloned from its real recruiters, to answer common candidate questions about the interview process, benefits, remote policy and culture before the first live recruiter conversation. One coaching guide describes candidates interacting with one of these agents ahead of the 30 minute recruiter call. Varies by role, team and region.

  2. 2

    Recruiter screen · 30 to 45 minutes

    Background, motivation, role fit and logistics. Multiple sources report the screen is unusually focused on separating your individual contribution from your team's, and on real projects you shipped end to end. One first-hand report describes it as a casual conversation with the head of recruiting; another calls the tone clinical and centred on what you personally built. Compensation was not discussed in one reported case.

  3. 3

    Asynchronous timed coding screen · 60 to 90 minutes

    Most sources describe a timed CoderPad set of two medium and one medium-hard problems in roughly 90 minutes, language of your choice. One first-hand SWE report had two LeetCode-medium problems in a 90 minute window; one FDE report had three problems in about an hour on a CodeSignal-style platform and called it a sanity check rather than brutal. One candidate reports LLM use was not permitted. Front-end tracks may get a live React exercise or a multi-day take-home instead, so the length varies by track. One guide lists this screen before the recruiter call rather than after.

  4. 4

    Behavioral round (project deep dive) · 45 to 60 minutes

    Not a generic culture screen. Sources describe a deep dive into projects you led or created, with pressure on decisions, unglamorous execution detail and why things did or did not ship. One candidate reports being pressed specifically on why side projects never reached production. Sources agree behavioral assessment also runs through the other rounds rather than sitting only here.

  5. 5

    Practical coding round (live) · 45 to 60 minutes

    A live build shaped like a real customer problem rather than an algorithm puzzle: dubbing review workflows, batch audio or video file handling, permission resolution, or debugging inside a small unfamiliar React codebase. Reported evaluation points are working readable code, speed, reading unfamiliar code, and discussing trade-offs rather than over-engineering. One FDE candidate did this in a plain Google Doc in Python with no IDE.

  6. 6

    Product decomposition round · 45 to 60 minutes

    The signature round and the one candidates report being least prepared for. You design a tool for a customer problem end to end, from the interface down to the data model, usually verbally or in a shared doc with no code and sometimes no whiteboard. Expect feature ideation, prioritisation and roadmap reasoning alongside schema and system questions. One candidate received feedback to move from a document-centric design toward a video player paradigm; another was asked about task list views, transcription views, authentication and roles as follow-ups. Some guides label the equivalent slot system design, which is how it is framed for more infrastructure-leaning roles.

  7. 7

    Customer case study (forward deployed engineer track only) · varies

    On the FDE track this conversational round replaces or accompanies product decomposition. It is a role-play in which the interviewer plays a customer executive with an operational problem, and the evaluation is on customer discovery, scoping questions and practical trade-offs before you propose any solution. Neither source states a length; varies by team.

  8. 8

    Final round with a founder or Bar Raiser · varies

    The careers page states most processes end with a hiring manager conversation and a final round with a founder or Bar Raiser. The FDE guide and one first-hand FDE report both describe a closing founder or CTO conversation covering motivation, the customer-facing side of the role and what the role actually owns; that candidate found the role definition left vague. One coaching guide puts this at roughly 30 minutes, but no first-hand source confirms a duration, and it varies by role and seniority.

Evaluation Framework

How we build

First principlesExcellence everywhereOwning outcomes

These three items appear verbatim under the heading "How we build" on the official ElevenLabs careers page (independently re-fetched and confirmed twice now, across two separate fact-check passes: exactly three items, no fourth), the same page that describes the hiring process. The full text of each, also re-confirmed verbatim: "First principles: Approach the problem without bias; start with the first principles and find the best solution." "Excellence everywhere: We lead in everything we do. From the way we build our models to how we engage with our community, we always go the extra mile." "Owning outcomes: We take responsibility for our individual work to function well as a team and we develop our technology mindful of its impact." They are published company principles, not a published interview rubric: ElevenLabs releases no scoring guide, no per-round criteria and no interviewer instructions. Treat them as themes to speak to, not as a checklist interviewers score against. Only questions that plainly probe one of the three carry a frameworkRef below; most reported questions are role-specific and carry none. Two prior mappings to "First principles" (a voice-API creativity prompt and a "keep the design simple and scalable" prompt) were removed on an earlier re-check and stay removed: neither clearly probes "approach the problem without bias, start with first principles," so no question in this set is mapped to that item. Separately, ElevenLabs job postings syndicated to job boards carry a different list ("High-velocity", "Impact not job titles", "AI first", "Excellence everywhere", "Global team"), re-confirmed present verbatim under a "How we work" heading on a builtin.com posting, which is a working-culture description rather than the careers page hiring section, so it is not used as the framework here.

Sample Interview Questions

Recruiter screen and motivation9 questions
  • Can you walk me through your background and what you're looking for?
  • Why do you want to work at ElevenLabs?
  • What's your motivation for working at ElevenLabs?
  • Why ElevenLabs specifically? What do you know about our product?
  • Tell me about your past experience and recent projects.
  • Tell me about a project you worked on.
  • Tell me about the biggest project you're proud of, and be specific about what you built yourself
  • What have you built that you're most proud of, and why?
  • What's your experience with ML systems in production?Tests hands-on production ML deployment and monitoring experience, not theory.

Reported problems, listed so you know what to expect. Practice them in your own editor or on the platform you prefer; SupaCV's practice mode coaches how you talk through them.

Behavioral and ownership14 questions
  • Tell me about a product you built and shipped end to end
  • What was the hardest technical tradeoff you made, and how did you decide?
  • Why did a project you started ship, or why didn't it?
  • What product experience do you have, why did you build these products?
  • Tell me about a project where you were the sole decision-maker. What did you ship and what was the outcome?
  • Describe a time you disagreed with your team's technical direction. What did you do?
  • Tell me about a time you disagreed with a technical decision. How did you handle it?
  • Tell me about a time you shipped something without being asked to.
  • What's the fastest you've ever gone from idea to production?
  • Tell me about a time something broke in production on your watch. How did you handle it?
  • What would you build if you had a week, a small team, and access to our voice API?
  • Tell me about the most complex project you've led.
  • Tell me about the accomplishment you're most proud of.
  • Describe a time you improved a system or process others relied on.
Practical coding10 questions
  • Build a tool that processes and organizes a batch of audio or video filesTests batch file handling and building a working processing pipeline end to end.
  • Given a manual review workflow, implement the backend logic that automates itTests translating a manual review process into automated backend logic.
  • Take a spreadsheet-driven process and turn it into structured, maintainable codeTests turning ad hoc spreadsheet logic into structured, maintainable code.
  • Instead of tracking dubbing work in a giant spreadsheet, write functions handling edits and review propagationTests designing rollup and propagation logic across editors and reviewers, e.g. hash maps.
  • Here's a small React web app. Figure out why the text highlighting isn't doing what we want, then design and implement a fix.Tests debugging unfamiliar React code and timer-driven UI state logic.
  • Given a file system with folders and files where each folder can allow or disallow users or groups, write functions to check whether a given user ID has access to a fileTests recursive permission inheritance and resolving conflicting access rules over time.
  • Implement a hierarchical permission system.Tests hierarchical access-control design, including inheritance and conflict resolution.
  • Merging sorted lists while dropping duplicates.Tests merge algorithm design and duplicate detection across sorted lists.
  • Solve an algorithmic challenge, then handle new constraints added mid-problem.Tests adapting a working algorithm on the fly to new requirements mid-solve.
  • Async database processing.Tests asynchronous I/O and concurrency handling for database processing tasks.

Reported problems, listed so you know what to expect. Practice them in your own editor or on the platform you prefer; SupaCV's practice mode coaches how you talk through them.

Product decomposition and system design9 questions
  • Design a tool that lets customers review and correct AI-dubbed video
  • Design a system for managing and versioning generated audio files
  • Walk through the UI and data model for a self-service voice-cloning feature
  • Design an internal tool that lets support agents find and re-run failed overnight dubbing jobs
  • How would you redesign dubbing workflow into a real product interface?
  • Imagine you're an engineer working on our audio transcription studio for teams dubbing content from one language into another. Walk us through feature ideas, how you'd prioritize them, and how you'd turn that into a roadmap.
  • Design voice chat for retail product search.
  • Walk through how you would keep your system design simple and scalable.
  • Deep dive into one of your past projects and its architecture.Tests depth of architectural reasoning and trade-off recall for a real past project.

Reported problems, listed so you know what to expect. Practice them in your own editor or on the platform you prefer; SupaCV's practice mode coaches how you talk through them.

Customer case study (forward deployed track)4 questions
  • Imagine I'm the CTO of an airline. When planes break or schedules change, our operators reschedule everything manually and we don't like that. We want to hire you to help us. What would you do?
  • How does forward deployed engineering differ from solution architect roles?
  • What exactly does a forward deployed engineer own?
  • How do you think about the customer-facing side?

Coach's Tips

Prepare the product decomposition round as a product interview, not a system design interview. Two independent first-hand reports describe candidates who prepared for technical decomposition, got a product problem instead, and ad libbed for 45 to 60 minutes. Practise taking a vague customer workflow to a full answer: users and jobs, feature list, prioritisation, screen-by-screen interface, then entities and schema, then failure and edge cases. One candidate reported ElevenLabs has no dedicated product managers, which is why engineers are asked to carry this.

Rebuild every story around what you personally owned. The recruiter screen and behavioral round both reportedly push past 'we' to what you built, decided and shipped alone, and press on projects that never made it to production. Have at least one story where you shipped something nobody asked for, and one honest account of something you started that did not ship, with the reason.

Expect the live coding round to be a customer workflow, not an algorithm puzzle. Reported prompts cluster on dubbing and audio review pipelines, batch media file handling, hierarchical permission checks, and debugging inside a small unfamiliar React codebase. Practise reading someone else's code fast and getting to a working, readable implementation inside an hour rather than an elegant abstraction.

Use the product before you interview. 'Why ElevenLabs' and product-motivation questions appear in the recruiter screen, the behavioral round and the founder round across sources. Spend an evening in the dubbing studio, voice cloning and the agents platform so your decomposition answers use the real product's nouns instead of generic ones.

Settle location, visa and role scope with the recruiter before the loop. One candidate passed every FDE round with a verbal confirmation and was then rejected because the team wanted San Francisco only, and separately reported that the founder round left the role's actual ownership unclear. Ask both questions early and in writing.

Treat the async coding screen as a speed and cleanliness test. It is commonly a timed CoderPad set of two medium and one medium-hard problems in about 90 minutes, in the language of your choice, and at least one candidate was told not to use an LLM. A reported pass profile is finishing well inside the window with correct, readable code rather than exhaustive edge-case handling.

Common questions

How many stages are in ElevenLabs's interview process?+

ElevenLabs's process has 8 stages, in order: Application, AI agent pre-screen and recruiter outreach, Recruiter screen, Asynchronous timed coding screen, Behavioral round (project deep dive), Practical coding round (live), Product decomposition round, Customer case study (forward deployed engineer track only), Final round with a founder or Bar Raiser.

What framework does ElevenLabs use to evaluate candidates?+

ElevenLabs evaluates candidates against How we build: First principles, Excellence everywhere, Owning outcomes.

What kinds of questions does ElevenLabs ask?+

ElevenLabs's question bank spans 5 categories: Recruiter screen and motivation; Behavioral and ownership; Practical coding; Product decomposition and system design; Customer case study (forward deployed track).

How reliable is this ElevenLabs interview playbook?+

This playbook is medium confidence, compiled from 15 public sources, and last verified September 6, 2026. It describes one well-documented shape of ElevenLabs's interviews, not a guarantee of what any individual loop will look like.

Sources

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