How i got “that” job at Microsoft

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Firstly, some news! 🎊 I recently started my new gig at Microsoft Bangalore as a Senior Software Engineer in Teams Mobile Engineering Systems team.

This team is focused on improving developer productivity by providing the tools, frameworks and infrastructure required by Teams mobile developers to land their changes in a safe and predictable manner and optimize the build test deploy loops.

In this blog, I demystify and give you an idea on how the Interview process was like at Microsoft and share my perspective on how to prepare well by offering your some tactical tips

I previously wrote a post about how I got a job at Meta London and this blog would mostly build on top of that, it may be a good idea to read that first and come back to get additional insights on how the process is different here. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

The process as you may have already imagined is pretty standard in larger tech companies but I did notice some nuances that were unique to the Microsoft interview loop.

Broadly it looks like below:

1. Getting the interview
2. Coding round
3. Domain round
4. System design round
5. Behavioral/Leadership round

Let’s break it down a bit.

Disclaimer: This blog would give you a rough outline of the process, how to prep and the mindset to have as you approach the interview loop. Some of this is already published in the public domain by Microsoft How we hireand Interview tips. I will not be discussing any questions asked or answers given to respect the company NDA.

Getting that interview

How did I discover this position?

I mostly used LinkedIn search with a custom query to pick up roles/descriptions that seemed like a fit for my interests and skill set

You can paste a query like below in the search box under Jobs and replace it with keywords relevant to your specific industry

((SDET OR "Automation" OR "Test" OR "Quality" OR "QA") AND (Senior OR Lead OR Staff OR Principal)) OR 
((Test OR Quality OR "QA" OR "Quality Assurance" OR "QE" OR "Automation") AND ("Manager" OR "Head" OR "Director"))

As you can see, I cast a pretty wide net. One of the perks of being a senior engineer in the industry with decades plus of experience.

This query led me to this position on a fine day.

I could see some strong overlap with my past experience and skills and also felt there were few areas which were going to be huge learning opportunities for me so targeting this position was a no brainer.

I then used LinkedIn network to find 1st level connections in Microsoft and reached out to someone I knew and trusted for a referral.

I tailored my resume and sent it off to my contact

And then I waited …

After getting the referral, I did not hear back for a couple of weeks and reached out to my referrer. Luckily they were able to follow up internally with the hiring manager to try to get the profile prioritised.

It helped that this position was for the same team my referrer worked at so a direct line to the reporting manager did make it easier.

Your mileage really may vary here but having someone who can advocate for you internally helps a lot.

⚡ Tip: The obvious tip is to invest in building your network. LinkedIn is a good place to do so and there are nuances on how to do this well. The potential gains are opportunities not just for your career growth but also learning and developing yourself as an engineer.

Coding

The first round focussed on solving Leetcode-like problems on Data structures and algorithms

Interviews at Microsoft were 1 hour long and I was able to solve 2 problems with optimized solutions within 30-35 mins itself, leaving ample time for questions to the interviewer. We talked about engineering culture in detail and the signs were quite positive based on that interaction.

How did I prepare?

Since I had done a longpreparation process for coding rounds back in 2021 for meta, and already had notes and prep material ready to go, I started with reviewing the notes first and then practiced solving Leetcode top Interview 150 with a premium subscription.

I initially did guided paths on Arrays, Binary search, Trees and Linked list

And then focussed on easy and medium problems across different problem types followed by solving some harder problems.

A tactical approach I followed here was to timebox the practice session and prepare like an actual interview by thinking out loud and speaking as I solve the problem. If I was not able to arrive at the solution within 20 mins. I would pause and look at the solution and then again wipe the code and try another round.

This helps build muscle 💪 wherein you don’t spend long hours perfecting one question. If you are unfamiliar with the data structure or algorithm, by all means take more time and understand the fundamentals, but if not, waiting for 2 hours to see if you can solve the problem is not a realistic interview setting anyway.

I also leveraged Anki for spaced repetition and active recall techniques to keep approaches to problems in my head.

While trying to remember solutions is an exercise in futility. Keeping general tips, practices and patterns in your mind so that you can pattern match faster is helpful. For e.g. if asked to find top k items in an array, using a heap is usually a good optimised approach with good time and space complexity

Closer to my interview date, I sorted the list from recently asked Microsoft questions and practiced them on the basis of asking frequency.

I feel like this time, this phase was not as involved as I had already built the muscle, however if I had got questions I was completely unfamiliar with the performance may have been a different story.

Your friendly reminder: As always, don’t take failures in these rounds to heart and keep practicing. Eventually you’ll cross the chasm where even medium problems would appear easy and hard problems at least approachable. Coding interviews are like going to the gym. You will not see the difference if you look everyday, but over a period of time, it would feel somewhat intuitive.

Domain

While Meta and other companies like Amazon focus more on your problem solving skills with another coding round, Microsoft instead shifted to a more domain focussed round.

Since this was a role at a team that builds Engineering systems, this round focussed more on what I had listed in the resume and aspects of the job description. My interviewer was friendly and would ask me if I have experience in X, before asking for more details trying to nudge the discussion towards understanding what skills I bring and how good of an understanding I had about the fundamentals.

I would imagine that depending on the specific team and role, this interview could focus on different things like Android, iOS, Web, Backend, AI/ML concepts relevant to the role.

How did I prepare?

For starters, I ensured that I could speak in sufficient detail about whatever technology I had listed in my resume, secondly I also researched the technologies listed in the job description a bit as a prep strategy to ensure I had the rough outline in my mind before going in.

I have prior experience with building test infrastructure and android mobile testing frameworks and we had healthy discussions about the technologies in this space.

System Design

The third round was a system design round

I was asked a problem related to mobile domain, however it was more like an engineering system/tooling problem instead of the standard design of a large scale distributed system like whatsapp, YouTube that you usually hear about in LinkedIn.

How did I prepare?

I started with reviewing my system design notes from earlier prep and re-read Alex Xu’s book System design Interview first edition cover to cover.

I also found Hello Interview Youtube channel videos helpful. They covered all the common problems as well as had deep dives on common systems like Kafka, redis, elastic search and while I did not get a question on any of these topics, loading the context in my brain did help as I was able to apply knowledge of tools from practical experience, data structures knowledge and the prep to come up with an approach.

Closer to my interview, I paired with a friend and practiced a mock system design interview to get a more realistic feel

⚡Tip: Microsoft Interviewers focus a lot on how you approach the problem and communicate your thinking. You should practice for this round with the same mindset.

Behavioral

The last round was a leadership/behavioral round

This round focussed on my prior experience and role building test infrastructure and frameworks, what problems I’ve solved in the past and my learnings and then dived into a free conversation about a couple of problems they are looking to solve with this hire and how would I approach solving them.

I sensed this round also focussed more on assessing technical acumen about AI and its implementations and was a bit different from standard behavioral interviews

How did I prepare?

I have this personal habit of introspecting about my past roles and experience and have few example stories in STAR format + my learning’sin below areas.

Before the interview, I make it a point to skim through these notes and ensure I have the general outline in mind.

• Failure stories and learnings
• Leadership
• Mentorship
• Innovation
• Collaboration
• Challenging situation
• Conflict situations with team
• Conflict situations with manager
• Conflict situations with cross functional team
• What were you hired for?
• What accomplishments are you most proud of?
• Low points during your job.
• Who was your team leader and how was your exp working with them?
• Your biggest strength.
• Your areas of improvement.
• Why did u leave your job
• When you received critical feedback and how did you take it?

While these questions are rarely asked as is, they usually cover a wide spectrum of impact and scope and help in framing an answer to the interview questions.

I would say below aspects matter more in such rounds

• Your communication and problem solving skills
• The ability to think critically
• Apply your learning and experience to suggest approaches in a constructive manner
• Your collaboration skills
• Being a team player
• Having a growth mindset

I think my community contributions around writing content and creating videos did help in me having a more rounded perspective around technology and that certainly helped as well.

Offer

My entire interview loop took 2 weeks and the offer was rolled out quite soon since I was an immediate joiner at this point.

Overall, I had a fantastic recruiter who worked well with me in order to arrive at an offer that made sense for the both of us and I was happy to accept.

I also opted for a conversation with the reporting manager post offer to understand the role, expectations and align on what value I could bring to the table.

There was a background screening and verification stage that took close to 3-4 weeks which was a longer wait than I had anticipated, however it gave me time for personal travel which I enjoyed. It worked out in the end.

Overall, while there were few hiccups during the interview process, I was quite happy and grateful for the opportunity and joined Microsoft in June 2025. People that I’ve interacted with so far at the office are extremely talented, helpful and I definitely feel I’ll learn a lot and grow with the challenges that this role and team provides.

Hopefully I’ll do my part in “Empowering each organization and person on the planet to achieve more” and have fun while doing it!

Onwards and upwards to this next exciting chapter 🚀

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Disclosure: I’ll earn a small commission if you decide to purchase some of the educative.io text courses linked in the blog for your learning and growth. Their system design courses and grokking coding interview courses are arguably quite helpful for interview prep.