I Interviewed to Lead Engineering. What Would I Actually Be Responsible For?

I went into an interview for a lead software engineer position expecting to talk about building a mobile app. Then the interviewer asked what we could do with the movement data it would capture.

Could I come up with ideas for identifying users’ health issues from it?

That is my paraphrase, not a word-for-word quote. But the question surprised me enough that it became the part of the interview I kept thinking about.

What I expected from the role

I understood the role as leading development of a mobile app and the platform behind it, with the possibility of connecting health devices later. I expected a discussion about building that foundation and implementing a defined product feature. An app might use a camera to track how someone’s hand, arm, or shoulder moves. I assumed there would already be a particular problem the company wanted that information to help solve.

The engineering questions would follow: what could the camera reliably capture, what would the app need to do, and where might the approach fail? Whether movement data could actually identify a health condition would need evidence of its own. I was not assuming that part would be easy.

Instead, I heard a question that seemed to come a step earlier: what useful product could we make from this data?

The job description and the interview did not seem to describe the same role.

Ideas were not the part that worried me

I don’t think a lead engineer should sit quietly until someone hands over a finished specification. Engineers can help decide what is worth trying. Sometimes a technical limitation changes the whole idea.

There is room for that collaboration. Silicon Valley Product Group’s description of product teams, for example, includes engineers in figuring out the product, not just delivering it. That is one way of organizing the work, not a rule every company follows.

What bothered me was not being asked for an idea. It was wondering how much responsibility might come attached to the answer.

Helping explore a possible feature is different from being expected to find a product people will pay for. I would want to know who makes that decision, who tests whether there is a real need, and what part belongs to the engineering lead.

One question cannot tell me all of that. The interviewer may have been testing how I think. There may have been plans I had not heard. I cannot fairly turn that moment into a verdict on the company.

The concern was what came afterward

Still, unclear responsibilities would not become less important after joining. That was my worry: I could take a job expecting to lead the engineering work, then find myself judged on whether I had found the business direction too.

I am not saying that happened. I am saying the interview left me unsure where the job ended.

I wanted to understand the work before agreeing to carry it. What would I be responsible for—and what would count as doing it well?