Microsoft

Role: Senior Software Engineer (Azure)

College: Not Specified

Interview Date: Applied May 4, 2024; Recruiter Email May 16, 2024; Technical Screen June 18, 2024; Onsite July 2-3, 2024

Interview Type: Full-Time

Result: Offer received (Declined)

Difficulty: Hard (Technical screen and first onsite coding problems were challenging, leading to down-leveling from L64 to L63)

Rounds: Recruiter Call, Technical Screen, 4 Onsite Rounds

Topics Asked: Behavioral, background/experience, LeetCode (Course Schedule II, Find Median from Data Stream, add/remove nodes from a tree), System Design (object-oriented implementation, converting tree problem to distributed system, aggregating data for Azure tenants)

Experience:

This candidate, with 6 years of experience, interviewed for a Senior Software Engineer position at Microsoft (Azure) in 2024.

Recruiter Email:

• **Date:** May 16, 2024
• **Content:** Included ~20 biographical/HR, background/experience, career aspirations, and 2 role-specific questions.

Technical Screen:

• **Date:** June 18, 2024
• **Interviewer:** Principal Engineering Manager (hiring manager)
• **Duration:** 1 hour
• **Question:** LeetCode 210. Course Schedule II (domain/details changed).
• **Performance:** Struggled to find an optimal solution, received help from the interviewer, but passed due to strong communication and making a key insight about treating data as a graph.

Onsite Rounds (July 2-3, 2024):

• **Round 1:**
  • **Interviewer:** Principal Engineer
  • **Duration:** 45 min LeetCode, 15 min system design
  • **Question:** LeetCode 295. Find Median from Data Stream, expected object-oriented implementation.
  • **Performance:** Gave a suboptimal solution (binary search/inserts over sorted list instead of min/max heap). Believed this round led to down-leveling from L64 to L63. Positive feedback on communication and interface structure.
• **Round 2:** Not explicitly detailed separately from Round 1, but part of the same day's loop.
• **Round 3:**
  • **Interviewer:** Senior Engineer
  • **Duration:** 30 min LeetCode, 30 min system design
  • **Question:** Create a class to add/remove nodes from a tree, then convert it to a distributed system.
  • **Performance:** Very positive feedback on coding (simple problem, strong communication), fine feedback on system design (basic client, load balancer, service, database).
• **Round 4:**
  • **Interviewer:** Principal Engineering Manager (different from tech screen)
  • **Duration:** 15 min technical/background, 45 min system design
  • **Question:** Challenging question about aggregating all data for all tenants in Azure without rate-limiting customers.
  • **Performance:** Okay, caught off guard as recruiter indicated this would be experience/culture focused.

Result: Received an initial offer on July 8, 2024, and a final offer on July 15, 2024 ($194k base), which was declined.

Tips: Over-communicate, pause and ask if everything makes sense, be collaborative, practice out loud.