Tell me about a time you disagreed with engineering and what the outcome was.

Situation- We had an issue where new customers who bought content over a streaming services had a lag when trying to access it. This was due to the session cache over memcached not being updated after content purchase. The engineering team felt that updating it each time content was purchases would load the entitlements server and would result in performance issues

Task- Create a balance between limitations of technical implementation and customer experience requirements

Action- We looked at metrics, peak content usage was between 6 pm-9 pm in all timezones. However only 40% of content was purchased during this time. Hence we reached a win-win situation. The entitlement service would update the cache during the non-peak times while it would not do it during the peak time. Thus the latency would be limited to only 40% of my customer transactions. This was the short term fix while the development team got time to create a long term fix to update cache during peal hours

Result- This as a win-win for both parties. We were able to address pain points for a segment of customers within the short term while giving time to the development team to create a long term fix.

Situation - I was given a CEO directive to work with engineering on useing a data scraping tool we had explored in the past prior to me joining. I reached out to our Sr Architect to discuss and flat out said no stating the tool was not a good fit for us. I sensed there was a deeper issue so I chatted with the VP of Engineering and he said the architecture team had accrued alot of tech debt from that tool due to an ill rationalized use case from a previous PM.

Action - I created a product memo clearly stateing the problem we were solving for, how it was a strategic fit (supported by data), the primary use case we were exploring, and how we were measuring sucess. I also outlined the Clarifiers/What We're Not Doing to assuage any concern this would be another task opposed onto the already over stretched team

Result - He kindly agreed the tool would be useful to explore in this new context, and even utilized my memo as a template for Architecture Review Request for other teams to fill out to get contextual insight on any new tools or vendors we wanted to explore.

This question is a perfect candidate for STAR apporach like other answers showcased which I wont repeat

 However, the key points interviewer is looking in our answer are:

1.  if I have a  effective conflict resolution strategy.
   1. I should properly understand why the other side is saying NO, i could do this by having a 1:1 meetings with them if multiple parties are involved so as to avoid any biases
2. Am I conflict averse? do i not stand up/lead when needed due to fear of conflict?