A practice prompt we wrote. No company or candidate report names it, so it carries no company tag.
How to answer
This is a commitment test. A staffing level for a year is a commercial term: it sets price, margin and who carries the risk if scope grows. An engineer doesn’t own it, and a signed email from you can be quoted back in a dispute. A strong answer declines the commitment without stonewalling procurement.
Your reply, in order:
- Tell the owner before you reply. Commercial terms belong to whoever owns the contract on your side, such as an account executive or engagement lead. They may be negotiating this very term, so message them with what was asked and what you plan to say. Procurement asking the engineer instead of the account executive may be deliberate: an engineer can look like an easier door to a softer answer. Don’t be that door.
- Acknowledge the reason for the ask. Procurement is trying to cap cost and avoid a surprise invoice. Say that back: “You want to know the cost won’t grow without warning. That’s fair.”
- Say plainly what you can’t sign, and why. “I can’t commit staffing in writing. It’s a contract term, and it depends on scope and on your team’s availability, neither of which I control.”
- Name the owner and a time you agreed with them. Agree the date with the owner before you say it, or you have made a commitment for someone else, the very mistake you are refusing to make. Then: “Dana, our account executive, owns this, and you’ll hear from her by Thursday.”
- Offer what you can put in writing. The assumptions the current plan rests on, the events that would change it, and the change-control step already in the contract. The plan itself, headcount included, comes from the person who owns it.
- Close with the next step.
At a startup with no account executive, the owner is whoever signs contracts: a founder or the head of sales. The rule doesn’t change. Tell them first, agree who replies and when, and put only the assumptions in writing yourself.
Say the boundary once and move straight to what you can give. Procurement needs something for its file, so a refusal with nothing attached just sends the question to your executive sponsor. These are the moves the lesson on hard conversations teaches: acknowledge the valid point, own only what is yours with a date, and offer something real.
Two traps. The first is signing because “it’s a formality”: nothing in a contract file is a formality. The second is hedging with “probably two, maybe three”, which procurement will write down as a quote.
Follow-ups
What the interviewer may ask next, once your first answer is on the table.
- Procurement says it is a formality. What do you say?
- What can you truthfully commit to in writing?
- Who in your company owns this answer?
Where answers go wrong
- Signs a staffing guarantee an engineer cannot make.
- Refuses with “that’s not my job” and gives procurement nothing for its file, so the question goes over your head to your executive sponsor.
Answer this in two minutes
Write the answer you would say out loud. The clock starts with your first word.
Compare with the model answer
Model answer
The setting: I’m the engineer on a claims-automation deployment for a regional health insurer, a month into the first phase. Their procurement lead, Alan, emails asking me to confirm in writing that the deployment will need no more than two of our engineers for a year.
Before I reply at all, I message Dana, our account executive, and Priya, our engagement lead: “Alan asked me to confirm two engineers for a year in writing. I’ll tell him it’s yours and offer the phase-one assumptions. OK for me to send, or do you want to? Dana, can you reply to him on the staffing question by Thursday? His worry reads as runaway cost, not headcount, so a fixed-fee phase or a not-to-exceed amount with conditions may be what he’s after. Price and terms are yours, the staffing plan is Priya’s, and legal owns the wording; I’ll own the technical assumptions under whatever we sign.” Dana replies that I should send it, that she’ll answer Alan by Thursday, and to copy her. Priya adds that she’ll send the phase-one staffing plan with Dana’s reply.
Then I call Alan, because a refusal lands better spoken than sent cold.
On the call. “Thanks for asking me directly. I understand what you need: confidence that the cost won’t grow without warning. I can’t confirm staffing for a year in writing. That’s a contract term, and it depends on scope decisions your team hasn’t made yet, like whether the appeals workflow is in phase two. Dana, our account executive, owns commercial terms, and she’ll come back to you by Thursday. What I can put in writing now is what our phase-one plan assumes.”
If he says it’s a formality. “Then the assumptions should cover it for your file. If the contract needs a cap, Dana can write one with the right conditions attached. An email from me isn’t the place for it.”
Then the email, copying Dana and Priya:
Subject: Phase one assumptions, and who owns the staffing question
Alan, as discussed, here is what I can confirm, and where the rest will come from.
Phase one is scoped to the claims-intake workflow. Priya, our engagement lead, will send the staffing plan for it with Dana’s reply.
It assumes: your claims data stays in the current export format; your integration engineer is available about half-time; appeals and prior authorization stay out of scope.
What would change it: adding a workflow, a new data source, or a delay on your side’s environment access. As in the statement of work, any of these goes through change control with a cost estimate before work starts.
The year-long staffing question is a contract term. Dana owns it and will reply by Thursday.
Every line in that email is something I can make true, including Dana’s date and Priya’s plan, because each agreed to it before I wrote it. The headcount and the cap come from the people who own them, in a document they sign.
Next, in Pro
In Pro, saying no, and holding scope teaches the no that offers a path, how to trade scope for a date, and when to escalate a no instead of holding it yourself.