Interview Guide: Solutions Engineer / Forward-Deployed Engineer

Benchmark: Healthie Solutions Engineer ($130-150K, remote, 4+ years full-stack) DaisyAI Context: First technical hire. Needs to do FDE work at health plans (embed in their environment, integrate our product), handle technical customer conversations, and contribute to product development. Healthcare domain knowledge is critical.

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Role at DaisyAI vs. Healthie

Key difference: Healthie's role is advisory ("guide customers through integrations"). DaisyAI's role is execution ("build the integration yourself, in their environment, with their constraints"). We need someone comfortable being uncomfortable.

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Interview Structure (3 rounds)

Round 1: Technical Screen (45 min) — Thomas

Round 2: Healthcare Domain + Customer Simulation (45 min) — Michael + Thomas

Round 3: Take-Home Assessment + Debrief (30 min) — Both

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Round 1: Technical Screen

Questions

1. "Walk me through a system you built that integrated with a third-party API that was poorly documented or unreliable. What went wrong and how did you handle it?"

What you're testing: Resilience, debugging instinct, integration experience.

Good answer:

• Names a specific system and API, not hypothetical
• Describes the failure mode concretely (rate limits, inconsistent responses, missing fields, auth issues)
• Shows they built defensive patterns (retries, circuit breakers, fallback behavior, logging)
• Demonstrates they communicated the constraints upstream (to product, to customer) rather than just hacking around them
• Bonus: mentions monitoring/alerting they added to detect future issues

Red flags: Only talks about greenfield work. Blames the API vendor without showing adaptation. Can't explain the actual technical approach.

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2. "You need to automate a workflow on a healthcare payer portal that was built in the early 2000s. It has no API. How would you approach this?"

What you're testing: Creative problem-solving, browser automation awareness, understanding of healthcare IT reality.

Good answer:

• Immediately recognizes this is a browser automation / RPA problem
• Mentions tools: Playwright, Puppeteer, Selenium, or commercial RPA (UiPath, Automation Anywhere)
• Discusses the challenges: session management, MFA, changing UIs, iframe hell, slow page loads
• Talks about reliability: retry logic, screenshot evidence, error recovery
• Raises the compliance question: "Is the portal's ToS okay with automation? Do we need the payer's permission?"
• Bonus: mentions AI-assisted element finding for when selectors break

Red flags: Suggests "just build an API" (that's not an option). Doesn't consider failure modes. No awareness of compliance implications.

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3. "Explain how you'd design a job queue for browser automation tasks that need to run one-at-a-time per portal but handle multiple portals concurrently."

What you're testing: Systems thinking, concurrency models, practical architecture.

Good answer:

• Describes per-portal concurrency with a global concurrency limit
• Mentions database-level locking (SELECT FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED, or advisory locks)
• Or: separate queue per portal with a worker pool
• Discusses failure handling: what happens when a job crashes mid-execution?
• Mentions idempotency: can you safely retry a portal submission?
• Talks about observability: how do you know a job is stuck?

Red flags: Over-engineers it (Kafka, event sourcing for 10 jobs/day). Can't reason about concurrency at all. Doesn't consider the "what if it crashes" scenario.

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4. "We use TypeScript, Next.js, and Playwright. Tell me about a time you had to learn a new framework or tool quickly for a project. How do you ramp up?"

What you're testing: Learning velocity, self-direction, intellectual curiosity.

Good answer:

• Concrete example with a timeline ("I had 2 weeks to ship X in a framework I'd never used")
• Shows a learning method: docs → small prototype → build real thing → refine
• Mentions reading source code, not just tutorials
• Shows they know when to ask for help vs. figure it out alone
• Bonus: references something they learned recently that's relevant to this role

Red flags: "I've always used the same stack." Can't articulate a learning process. Only mentions tutorials/courses, never docs or source code.

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5. "A health plan client's IT security team pushes back on our deployment approach. They want us to use their VPN, their CI/CD pipeline, their approved libraries — none of which we've used before. How do you handle this?"

What you're testing: FDE mindset. Can they operate in someone else's environment?

Good answer:

• Starts with empathy: "Their security concerns are valid, especially in healthcare"
• Shows willingness to adapt: "I'd learn their tools, not fight them"
• But also sets boundaries: "I'd need to understand what's negotiable vs. mandatory"
• Discusses practical approach: "Set up a dev environment matching their constraints, validate our product works within them, document everything"
• Mentions HIPAA/compliance as a reason their constraints exist
• Bonus: "I'd build a relationship with their security team, not treat them as blockers"

Red flags: Ego. "Our way is better." Doesn't understand why healthcare IT is conservative. Can't distinguish between reasonable security requirements and bureaucratic overhead.

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Scoring

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Round 2: Healthcare Domain + Customer Simulation

Domain Questions

6. "What is utilization review? How does prior authorization fit into it?"

Good answer: Utilization review = health plans evaluating whether a requested medical service is medically necessary. Prior auth = prospective UR — getting approval BEFORE the service happens. Concurrent = during a hospital stay. Retrospective = after the fact. PA is the most contentious because it delays care.

Bonus: Mentions InterQual or MCG (clinical criteria sets), or names specific frustrations clinicians have with PA.

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7. "A nurse reviewer needs to evaluate a prior authorization request for a lumbar spinal fusion. What information would she need, and where would she look for it?"

Good answer:

• Clinical documentation: letter of medical necessity, imaging reports (MRI/CT), conservative treatment history
• Patient info: diagnosis codes (ICD-10), procedure codes (CPT), member eligibility
• Coverage policy: the health plan's NCD/LCD, or clinical criteria (InterQual/MCG)
• She'd check: Has the patient tried conservative treatment first? Do imaging findings match the symptoms? Does it meet the criteria threshold?

This question directly maps to our product. A great candidate will describe the nurse's workflow in detail.

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Customer Simulation (15 min roleplay)

Scenario: "I'm the IT Director at a mid-size health plan (500K members). My UR nurses spend 40% of their time on portal data entry. I'm interested in automation but skeptical about AI. My CTO is worried about HIPAA. Walk me through what DaisyAI does and how we'd deploy it."

Thomas plays the IT Director. Michael observes and scores.

Scoring:

• Did they ask discovery questions first, or jump to pitching?
• Did they explain technical concepts without jargon?
• Did they address the HIPAA concern head-on?
• Did they propose a phased approach (pilot → expand)?
• Did they listen or just talk?
• Did they build trust or just sell?

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Round 3: Take-Home Assessment

The Assignment

"Build a browser automation skill that navigates a mock healthcare portal, checks clinical documentation, and submits a prior authorization decision."

Time: 3-4 hours (send Friday, due Monday)

Provide:

• Access to our mock portal (give them the URL + mock credentials)
• A brief spec: "The portal has a case queue, case detail pages with clinical documentation, and a decision form. Build a script that: (1) logs in, (2) finds case PA-2026-00147, (3) checks if clinical docs are attached, (4) submits an 'approved' decision, (5) captures the confirmation number."
• Let them use whatever tools they want (Playwright, Puppeteer, Selenium, etc.)
• Ask them to include: error handling, at least one screenshot capture, and a brief README explaining their approach

What to Evaluate

What NOT to evaluate

• Perfect code style (they're writing in a few hours, not shipping to prod)
• Framework choice (Playwright vs Puppeteer doesn't matter)
• Whether they found our exact patterns (they haven't seen our codebase)

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Preparing for This Interview (If You Were the Candidate)

Study Plan (1 week)

Day 1-2: Healthcare domain

• Read CMS.gov prior authorization overview
• Understand UR workflow: who does what, when, why
• Learn InterQual/MCG at a high level (what are clinical criteria?)
• Read 2-3 articles about PA reform (Gold Card laws, CMS Interoperability Rule)

Day 3-4: Technical

• Build something with Playwright (if unfamiliar): automate a login + form submission
• Read about browser automation challenges: anti-bot detection, session management, dynamic content
• Understand basic RPA architecture: job queues, worker pools, evidence capture
• Brush up on TypeScript, Next.js App Router, API routes

Day 5: Company research

• Understand FDE model (Palantir pioneered it — read about their FDE program)
• Research the UR/PA market: who are the incumbents? (EviCore, Cohere Health, Olive AI's failure)
• Understand health plan IT: legacy systems, compliance requirements, change management

Day 6-7: Practice

• Do the take-home in advance (build a Playwright automation against any portal-like site)
• Practice explaining technical concepts to a non-technical person
• Prepare 3-4 questions that show you understand the FDE model and healthcare market

What Would Make You Stand Out

1. Show domain intuition. Don't just know what PA is — have an opinion on why it's broken and what's fixable.
2. Demonstrate FDE mindset. Talk about a time you worked in someone else's environment with their constraints.
3. Ask hard questions. "How do you handle credential management when deployed in a payer's environment?" shows you've thought about real deployment.
4. Be honest about gaps. "I haven't worked in healthcare before, but here's how I'd ramp up" is better than faking domain knowledge.

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Red Flags (Instant Disqualifiers)

• Can't write working code in a live or take-home context
• Zero healthcare awareness and no curiosity to learn
• Needs heavy management / can't self-direct
• Treats customer environments as inferior ("why don't they just use X?")
• Can't explain technical concepts to non-technical people
• Only wants to write code, doesn't want to be on customer calls

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Compensation Benchmark

For DaisyAI's stage, competitive base is $100-130K + meaningful equity (0.5-1.5%). The pitch is: you're employee #1 at a company with a paying client, real traction, and a huge market. The equity is worth something.