Leidos behavioral interview template for Engineering Product Designer

This behavioral interview assesses how a Product Designer operates within Leidos’s mission-driven, government-focused programs across Defense, Civil, and Health. Expect a structured, STAR-oriented conversation emphasizing: (1) mission orientation and customer empathy for federal stakeholders (program offices, contracting officers, operators/SMEs); (2) working in regulated or secure environments, including designing under security, export-control, and compliance constraints (e.g., Section 508 accessibility, HIPAA/FISMA where applicable); (3) collaboration in a matrixed organization with systems engineers, human factors engineers, software leads, and test teams; (4) integration of design into the systems engineering lifecycle (V-model) and Agile/SAFe delivery, including requirement traceability, change control boards, and readiness/milestone gates; (5) communication clarity—translating operator needs into actionable requirements, documenting decisions for audits, and defending trade-offs among cost/schedule/performance, safety, and cybersecurity; (6) usability research with hard-to-reach users (classified or specialized environments), synthesizing findings into artifacts suitable for distributed teams and limited-network toolsets (e.g., Figma or on-prem alternatives, Jira/Confluence, DOORS/Jama); (7) ownership, ethics, and resilience—handling scope shifts, ambiguous requirements, incident retrospectives, and lessons learned. Interviewers typically probe for concrete outcomes and metrics (e.g., reduced operator workload, error rates, mission throughput), influence without authority, negotiation with government customers around MVP scope, accessibility in legacy systems, and contributions to proposals/IRAD. The tone is pragmatic and delivery-focused, with follow-ups to verify depth of impact and what you would do differently.