How do you communicate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders?
Why This Is Asked
Interviewers want to see that you can bridge the gap between engineering and business—explaining complex ideas in accessible terms without condescending. They're assessing your ability to focus on outcomes, risks, and trade-offs rather than implementation details.
Key Points to Cover
- Using analogies, visuals, or simple language instead of jargon
- Leading with "why" and impact rather than "how"
- Checking for understanding and inviting questions
- Adapting based on the audience (executives vs. product vs. support)
STAR Method Answer Template
Describe the context - what was happening, what team/company, what was at stake
What was your specific responsibility or challenge?
What specific steps did you take? Be detailed about YOUR actions
What was the outcome? Use metrics where possible. What did you learn?
đź’ˇ Tips
- Give a concrete example: "When explaining our migration to microservices, I compared it to..."
- Avoid saying "I dumb it down"—instead, "I translate to business impact and outcomes"
✍️ Example Response
STAR formatSituation: At a healthcare tech company, our engineering team needed to migrate our core platform from a monolith to microservices. The CFO and board were skeptical—they saw it as a costly rewrite with no immediate customer benefit. I was the engineering manager presenting the case to the executive team.
Task: I had to explain the technical rationale and business value in terms that non-technical leaders could understand and act on.
Action: I led with outcomes, not architecture. Instead of discussing service boundaries or event-driven design, I framed it as: "Today, a single bug can take down our entire platform. After this migration, we isolate failures—one service can have issues without affecting the rest. That means fewer outages and faster recovery." I used an analogy: "Think of it like a restaurant. Right now we have one kitchen that does everything—if the grill breaks, we're closed. We're moving to separate stations—if the grill breaks, we can still serve salads and desserts." I prepared a one-pager with three bullets: risk reduction, deployment speed, and cost of delay. I invited questions and checked for understanding: "Does that make sense, or should I go deeper on any part?"
Result: We got approval for the migration. The CFO later said it was the first time he'd understood why we needed a technical investment. I learned that the key is to lead with impact and risk, use analogies that resonate, and always verify that the message landed.
🏢 Companies Known to Ask This
| Company | Variation / Focus |
|---|---|
| Amazon | Customer Obsession — "How do you explain technical decisions to non-technical stakeholders?" |
| Collaboration | |
| Meta | Cross-functional alignment |
| Microsoft | Customer focus |
| Apple | Customer delight, cross-functional depth |
| Salesforce | Customer success |