Applied online via the ExpediaJobs website. Received an automated response and a personal follow-up one week later. It took another week to set up a phone screen with the Dev Manager.

The phone screen went very smoothly. The manager seemed very knowledgeable about testing and open about the team's current needs.

Ten days later, I had a full day of interviews. I am local to their HQ, so no travel arrangements were needed. Every person I spoke with had 'Senior,' 'Director,' or 'Architect' in their title. They asked a lot of probing questions around people management style, fit for the team, and Agile experience. Only one person asked a technical question.

The Test Architect drew a block diagram of a system on the board and had me describe my approach to testing it. The system was fairly simple but interacted with many third-party back-end services. The intent of the question seemed to be to see if I could identify the system's complexity and where I would focus my testing efforts.

Two weeks later, I found out that this position was filled internally. However, that transition had opened up another Test Manager position. They asked if I could come in again for another, shorter round of interviews. The hiring manager took me to lunch, and two other testers asked technical questions similar to the first round. Be prepared to think on your feet and ask many clarifying questions.

Perceptions of the place:

Beautiful building and surroundings!

The people are very dedicated to Agile methods and are moving quickly on short development cycles.

Given the system diagram, where would you focus your testing?

It's a standard 3-tier system with a backend job that pulls from multiple partners on the web. The system's purpose was to identify changed flight statuses and notify the user.