New Relic is one of the historical leaders in APM (application performance monitoring). Used by 15K+ companies, taken private in 2023 by Francisco Partners and TPG. The interview emphasizes data engineering, distributed tracing, and the realities of running a global telemetry pipeline.
Process
Recruiter screen → 60-minute coding phone (DSA medium) → onsite virtual: 2 coding, 1 system design, 1 craft deep-dive, 1 behavioral. Cycle: 3–4 weeks.
What they actually ask
- Design a metrics ingestion pipeline at 1B events/sec
- Design distributed tracing across thousands of services
- Design alerting that respects user thresholds and cardinality limits
- Coding: medium DSA, often with stream processing flavor
- Behavioral: customer focus, ownership, technical communication
Levels and comp (2026)
- SE II: $140K–$170K total
- Senior SE: $200K–$270K
- Staff: $280K–$380K
- Principal: $400K–$530K
Prep priorities
- Be fluent in Java (legacy) or Go/Rust (newer services)
- Understand observability fundamentals: metrics, logs, traces, OpenTelemetry
- Read about NRDB (New Relic’s columnar storage) and the engineering blog
Frequently Asked Questions
Is New Relic remote-friendly?
Hybrid in Portland (HQ), Atlanta, Dublin, Barcelona. Many engineering roles fully remote within US/EU.
How does New Relic compare to Datadog or Honeycomb?
New Relic is older and more enterprise; Datadog leads on platform breadth; Honeycomb wins on developer experience for distributed systems. New Relic pays below Datadog by 15–25%.
What is the engineering culture under private ownership?
Stable but less expansive than peak-era. Focus has shifted to profitability and core APM excellence.