How to Answer: Why Do You Want to Work at Spotify?

The strongest answer to "Why do you want to work at Spotify?" has three parts. Name one real Spotify product or engineering practice you can describe in detail, state the skill you would bring to it, and name one thing you want to learn there. Keep it under 90 seconds. An answer built on loving music scores as generic, because every candidate says it.

Spotify asks this question in the recruiter call and again in the values interview. The interviewer is checking whether you researched the company as an engineer would, and whether your reasons match what the job actually involves.

The three-part structure

Part one: something specific about Spotify. Name a product feature, an engineering practice, or a piece of open-source work, and say what you know about how it is built or why it matters.

Part two: what you bring to it. Connect the thing you named to work you have done. One sentence with a result is enough.

Part three: what you want to learn. Spotify values curiosity and states it in its hiring materials. Naming a skill you would gain shows you expect to grow rather than only to contribute.

Real things at Spotify you can name

Pick one. Two at most. The table shows what each is and who it suits.

Spotify's engineering blog documents all of these, so you can read the primary source before the interview.

A full sample answer

Here is a first-person answer for a backend engineer with four years of experience. Adjust the details to your own history.

I want to work at Spotify for two reasons that come from the engineering work itself. The first is Backstage. I set up Backstage for my current team last year to catalog our 40 services, and reading its plugin code changed how I think about developer tooling. Spotify built it because autonomous squads were each writing their own deployment and monitoring setups. The Golden Paths idea, one supported way to do the common thing, solved a problem I had watched my own company struggle with. I would like to work at the company that built that tool, rather than only use it.

The second reason is the squad model itself. My best work has happened in teams of six to eight people that owned a feature completely, and I understand the cost of that autonomy as well as the benefit. I bring experience running Java services on Kubernetes and a habit of measuring before I change anything. What I want to learn is how Spotify keeps hundreds of squads consistent without slowing them down, because that is the problem my own company has not solved.

The answer names two real practices, shows evidence with the number 40, states a skill, and ends with something to learn. It runs about 200 words, which is about 80 seconds aloud.

Answers that score as generic

• I love music. So does everyone in the room. If music matters to you, say what you built with the Spotify API or what playlist feature you would improve.
• Spotify is innovative. Name the innovation. Backstage, the event delivery pipeline, or the recommendation system are all fine; the word on its own is not.
• The culture and the perks. Work From Anywhere and a good culture are reasons to accept an offer, not reasons an interviewer can score.
• Anything you could also say about Apple Music or YouTube. Read your answer back and check that it only fits Spotify.

Follow-up questions to expect

After this answer, interviewers usually ask one of three things. What would you change about the product you named? What did you dislike about the way your last team worked? Which of Spotify's values do you find hardest? Prepare one honest answer to each, with a real example.

For the round-by-round shape of the loop, read what the Spotify interview process is like. For the other values questions, read the top Spotify behavioral interview questions.