Microsoft | L63 | India | June 2023 | Offer

My interview journey for the L63 SDE role at Microsoft in India began with an online cordiality screening round. This round included two problems: Car Fleet and the Two Rooks problem. After successfully clearing this, I was invited for online interviews.

Round 1 was a challenging mix of High-Level Design (HLD) and Low-Level Design (LLD). The interviewer asked me to design a Web Crawler, starting with the HLD and then delving into the LLD aspects.

Round 2 focused on coding. I was presented with two problems: Sort Colors, where I initially provided a time-optimized solution but was then prompted to optimize for space, and Search in Rotated Sorted Array.

Round 3 was entirely dedicated to HLD. I discussed the pros and cons of Microservices versus Monolith architectures and was then tasked with designing a text auto-complete system.

Finally, Round 4 was a managerial discussion. The questions included 'Why do you want to join Microsoft?', an HLD discussion on a VPN service (which lasted only about 15 minutes), and a question about my approach to removing a public API from the market with minimal client impact.

Overall, the rounds felt hard for me, but my persistence paid off, and I received an offer after two weeks of anxious waiting.