| Interview rounds | Portfolio, app critique, craft or collaboration exercise, manager and values. | Portfolio, design exercise or critique, cross-functional interviews and hiring manager. |
| Design craft | Realtime collaboration, canvas interactions, systems thinking and product taste. | Creative workflows, visual craft, enterprise usability and multi-product design systems. |
| Portfolio signal | Depth on shipped product decisions and collaboration with engineering. | Breadth across creative, marketing, enterprise or AI-assisted workflows. |
| Product thinking | Strong focus on designers and developers as users. | Multiple user segments across creators, marketers, teams and enterprises. |
| Research depth | Often pragmatic, product-led and tied to workflow friction. | More room for formal research, enterprise personas and longitudinal product work. |
| Take-home | Possible design exercise, usually scoped tightly. | Possible design exercise or critique depending on team. |
| Offer typical TC | High private-company package with equity context to inspect. | High public-company package with clearer valuation. |
| Decision speed | Selective and craft-sensitive. | Structured and team-dependent. |