FOR TEAMS HIRING BACKEND · INFRA · SECURITY ENGINEERS

Stop Hiring Engineers
Who Can't Debug

Drop candidates into a real, broken production environment and watch what they actually do. No quiz. No take-home. A live system on fire.

Book a Demo How it works

scenrio-prod-env

LIVE SESSION · 00:00

INC-9482: DB Migration CrashLoopBackOff

TRIGGERED · P1 CRITICAL

Service

payment-api-prod

Assigned to

Primary On-Call

Impact

Customer checkouts failing

Environment

prod-us-east-1

Triggered by

Datadog Monitor

Incident Description

Since 04:30 UTC, the items API's readiness checks have been failing across all regions. The database migration Job is stuck in CrashLoopBackOff.

Context: The platform team shipped a Terraform refactor yesterday that touched the VPC and security groups. The app pods aren't crashing, so high-level dashboards are quiet, but every DB call times out.

ACTION REQUIRED: Reproduce the timeout, find the misconfiguration, and fix it via IaC.

Emergency Access

Connect via production bastion to investigate:

>_Open Bastion Terminal

TERMINAL SESSIONUBUNTU@13.233.238.117

ubuntu@ip-172-31-45-19 ~/lab

scenrio-prod-env

SESSION COMPLETE · 38:24

AI EVALUATION REPORT

Candidate scored across 6 dimensions.

Every command, log dive, and fix is captured, weighted, and turned into a structured verdict you can act on instantly.

✓Found root cause in 4 commands

✓Fixed via IaC, not a hot patch

✓Verified rollout before closing

OVERALL VERDICT

8.7 / 10

STRONG HIRE

Debugging

9.2

Reasoning

8.8

Impact

9.0

Efficiency

8.6

Communication

8.2

Ownership

9.1

Debugging is the
Real Engineering Interview

/ 01 · THE PROBLEM

THE INTERVIEW IS BROKEN.

What the typical panel process costs, estimated from our pilot and industry studies.

METRIC 01↑ ENG HRS

0hrs

Engineering time lost per candidate, panel sync. Multiply by your team.

METRIC 02UNDERPERF

Of true hires miss expectations in their first 90 days. The interview missed something else.

METRIC 03SIGNAL

More signal per minute from a debug session than a whiteboard, across our pilot sessions.

METRIC 04·

LeetCode problems solved on the job, ever. The map is not the territory.

The Interview Isn't Hard. It's Fake.

/ CASE FILE · FAMPAY

Two interview rounds said yes.
The lab said no.

A backend candidate at FamPay cleared two verbal interview rounds: strong communicator, all the right answers. Before extending the offer, the team dropped him into a Scenr lab, a live environment with a database timing out.

Forty minutes later, the root cause was still untouched. No systematic investigation, no hypothesis, no fix. The offer was never sent. A mis-hire caught before it cost two quarters.

“The interview told them what he'd say. The lab showed them what he'd do.”

FAMPAY · TECHNICAL HIRING

/ 02 · THE METHOD

THREE STEPS. NO PANEL.

From scenario to hiring decision in under 5 minutes.

PICK A SCENARIO

A library of pre-built broken environments, or define your own in YAML.

▶Pick template
▶Set fault
▶Set budget

payments-svc

Connection pool exhausted

45m

redis-outage

Cache layer failure

30m

auth-failure

Token validation bug

35m

View all scenarios

SEND THE LINK

Candidate clicks, drops into the live environment in under 5 seconds.

✓Provision✓Browser shell✓No SSH leak✓Recorded✓Idle tracking

LIVE SESSIONREC

$ kubectl get pods

NAME STATUS RESTARTS AGE

api-gateway CrashLoopBackOff 6 2m

payments-svc Error 4 2m

redis Running 0 2m

$ kubectl logs payments-svc

ERR connection pool exhausted

ERR timeout while acquiring client

Browser terminal⊘ No SSH⊘ No copy◎ Tracked

READ THE REPORT

AI evaluates across 6 dimensions. Get a structured report you can act on instantly.

▶Action graph▶Score 6 dims▶Weighted total▶Replay link▶Shareable

AI EVALUATION REPORT

Debugging

9.2

Reasoning

8.8

Impact

9.0

Efficiency

8.6

Communication

8.2

Ownership

9.1

OVERALL VERDICT

8.7 / 10

STRONG HIRE

/ 03 · THE PROOF

SCORE THE SCORERS.

Head-to-head comparison of how we evaluate.

CAPABILITY what teams actually need	CODING-TEST SAAS incumbent, gen 1	LIVE INTERVIEW SAAS incumbent, gen 2	SCENR est. 2023 ★
Real stack environments	✕FAIL	✕FAIL	✓A+CORE
Process scoring (not output)	✕FAIL	△PARTIAL	✓A+NATIVE
Self-hosted / VPC	✕NO	✕NO	✓ASHIPPED
Onboarding ramp	✕NO	✕NO	✓AYES
Day-1 signal vs day-90 outcome	✕LOW	△MID	✓A+HIGH
Feels like the actual job	✕NO	△SOMETIMES	✓AALWAYS
GPA FINAL SCORE	0.0 F	0.0 D+	0.00 A

GRADES REFLECT OUR EVALUATION RUBRIC. BRING YOUR OWN CRITERIA TO THE DEMO.

Convinced by the scorecard? See it on your stack.

30 MIN · LIVE BROKEN ENVIRONMENT · NO SLIDES

Book a Demo

/ 04 · THE SURFACES

HIRE. ONBOARD.

Two surfaces, one primitive: a real environment.

TECHNICAL HIRING

Replace whiteboards with real debugging.

Deploy a live broken environment and watch how candidates investigate, prioritize, and fix issues under real constraints.

Score process, not output.

Real environments

Kubernetes, databases, services

Process scoring

Measure how they think

Calibrated & fair

Rubrics built by senior engineers

SCENARIO

Redis Pool Failure

Multiple services impacted

Critical

CANDIDATE SESSION

$ kubectl logs

$ kubectl get pods

$ kubectl describe svc

Live

EVALUATION

Debugging

9.2 / 10

Ownership

8.9 / 10

TECHNICAL HIRING

Replace whiteboards with real debugging.

Deploy a live broken environment and watch how candidates investigate, prioritize, and fix issues under real constraints.

Score process, not output.

Real environments

Kubernetes, databases, services

Process scoring

Measure how they think

Calibrated & fair

Rubrics built by senior engineers

SCENARIO

Redis Pool Failure

Multiple services impacted

Critical

CANDIDATE SESSION

$ kubectl logs

$ kubectl get pods

$ kubectl describe svc

Live

EVALUATION

Debugging

9.2 / 10

Ownership

8.9 / 10

/ NEXT SURFACE: AGENT EVALUATION · PUBLIC BENCHMARK COMING · GET NOTIFIED

/ 05 · FROM THE FIELD

FIELD REPORT

Real outcomes from real companies Using Scenr

SOURCED · ENG-LEAD PT-01

★★★★★

“

“This is the interview I wish I had given our last ten hires.”

Engineering Lead

Series B Fintech

SOURCED · STAFF-PLAT 002

★★★★★

“

“Finally something that tests what actually matters on day one.”

Staff Engineer

Platform Team · 50 Eng

SOURCED · HR-DIR 003

★★★★★

“

“We cut our hiring loop from 5 rounds to 2. Same hire quality, half the eng-hours.”

Head of Talent

Series C DevTools

SOURCED · CTO SEED-004

★★★★★

“

“The first screen that predicts on-call performance, not puzzle skills.”

CTO & Co-founder

Seed Infra Startup

SOURCED · SRE-MGR 005

★★★★★

“

“Candidates love it. They finally get to show what they can really do.”

SRE Manager

Public SaaS · 300 Eng

Ready to see the
real candidates?

Book a Demo

HIRE REAL ENGINEERSHIRE REAL ENGINEERSHIRE REAL ENGINEERSHIRE REAL ENGINEERSHIRE REAL ENGINEERSHIRE REAL ENGINEERSHIRE REAL ENGINEERSHIRE REAL ENGINEERSHIRE REAL ENGINEERSHIRE REAL ENGINEERS

SCENR.IO

PRODUCT

USE CASES

COMPANY

V0.1.4-RC.2 · BUILT IN US-EAST-1

Stop Hiring Engineers Who Can't Debug

Candidate scored across 6 dimensions.

Debugging is the Real Engineering Interview

THE INTERVIEW IS BROKEN.

Two interview rounds said yes.The lab said no.

THREE STEPS. NO PANEL.

PICK A SCENARIO

SEND THE LINK

READ THE REPORT

SCORE THE SCORERS.

HIRE. ONBOARD.

Replace whiteboards with real debugging.

Replace whiteboards with real debugging.

FIELD REPORT

Ready to see thereal candidates?

Stop Hiring Engineers
Who Can't Debug

Debugging is the
Real Engineering Interview

Two interview rounds said yes.
The lab said no.

Ready to see the
real candidates?