← Orkes
Orkes role-play cheat sheet
For the mock cold call at the end of most SDR interviews.
What they sell, in one line
Orkes sells a managed platform built on open-source Conductor that helps developers run reliable, multi-step workflows across services.
Who you'd be calling
VPs of Engineering, engineering managers, architects, and backend developers at software companies and large enterprises.
Your opener
“Hi [Name], this is [You] from Orkes. We help engineering teams keep multi-step processes from breaking when one service fails. Is that something your team has had to deal with?”
Problems you solve for them
- Multi-step processes break halfway and are hard to recover
- Teams build and maintain their own fragile orchestration code
- Little visibility into what failed and why
Discovery questions to ask
- How do your services coordinate long multi-step processes today?
- What happens when a step fails halfway through?
- How much engineering time goes into maintaining that glue code?
Objections they'll throw at you
“I'm busy right now.”
→ Understood, I'll be brief. Could I grab two minutes next week, or is there a better time to catch you?
“We're not interested.”
→ Fair enough. Is it that your workflows are running smoothly, or that this isn't on the roadmap right now?
“We already use something / build it in-house.”
→ A lot of teams start there. How much time does your team spend maintaining it, and how easy is it to see where a run failed?
“Just send me an email.”
→ Sure thing. Who on your team handles this kind of workflow work, so I can send it to the right person too?
Competitors worth knowing
Temporal, Camunda, AWS Step Functions
Interview tips for this company
- Learn what 'workflow orchestration' means with a simple analogy, like a traffic controller for software tasks.
- Know that Conductor started at Netflix as open source. Developers are skeptical of sales pitches, so keep it short and respectful.
Written from public information about Orkes to help you practice. Ask an insider what their role play looked like; it's the best prep there is.