Really interesting question, Mike. Here's my two cents:
If you were tasked with hiring an engineer significantly more senior than you, how would you approach the interview?
I would approach this as an exploration of their experience rather than trying to measure skills or knowledge directly. Have a conversation about work they've found challenging, projects they've enjoyed, a problem that had them scratching their head recently and how they solved it, a piece of work they've found frustrating, what kind of work they try to avoid, how they've dealt with legacy code they ended up inheriting, how they've dealt with reviewing code that was problematic (and what was the problem), etc.
Discussing these kinds of things should help reveal what level the candidate is relative to you without needing to ask specific technical knowledge questions. Devs at any level will be able to answer all but the last two, but you'll find the experienced devs talk about much more complex and nuanced problems/topics. I'd also personally find an interview like this really fun fwiw.
Think of questions where the answer can be anywhere between printing "hello world" and landing a rocket on a barge in the middle of the ocean.
Or is it more important that you work well together and less about technical ability?
To some degree, yes - you should be able to establish if someone has more experience than you, but you probably can't objectively judge just how big that gap is outside of "they're where I want to be" and "I'm completely blown away".
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Really interesting question, Mike. Here's my two cents:
I would approach this as an exploration of their experience rather than trying to measure skills or knowledge directly. Have a conversation about work they've found challenging, projects they've enjoyed, a problem that had them scratching their head recently and how they solved it, a piece of work they've found frustrating, what kind of work they try to avoid, how they've dealt with legacy code they ended up inheriting, how they've dealt with reviewing code that was problematic (and what was the problem), etc.
Discussing these kinds of things should help reveal what level the candidate is relative to you without needing to ask specific technical knowledge questions. Devs at any level will be able to answer all but the last two, but you'll find the experienced devs talk about much more complex and nuanced problems/topics. I'd also personally find an interview like this really fun fwiw.
Think of questions where the answer can be anywhere between printing "hello world" and landing a rocket on a barge in the middle of the ocean.
To some degree, yes - you should be able to establish if someone has more experience than you, but you probably can't objectively judge just how big that gap is outside of "they're where I want to be" and "I'm completely blown away".