Microsoft | SDE 2 | L61 | Interview Experience

Microsoft | SDE 2 | L61

Years of Experience: 2.6 years Prior Experience: Amazon

I applied through the careers portal, and a recruiter contacted me.

I had four rounds of interviews.

Round 1:

1. Introduction and discussion about my current team and work.
2. A variation of Valid Parentheses: Instead of braces, there were different destinations and speeds associated with them.
   • Find the speed at the last stop.
   • Extension: Find the speed at each stop. Solved using a Hashmap and Stack<pair>.

Round 2:

1. Candy
2. Multiple theoretical questions on OOP concepts: Why public static void main in Java, access modifiers, static & final keywords, design principles, and design patterns with examples.
3. High-level design (HLD) of a system for uploading and streaming videos on a platform like Youtube.
4. HLD and technical deep dive into my current project, including AWS concepts.

Round 3:

1. This round was with a manager. It included behavioral questions about my previous work experience.
2. A puzzle about a chess tournament.
3. HLD: Design a system for restaurants within a 5km radius to add their details, and for users to review and comment.

Round 4:

This round was with a director-level employee. It included technical and behavioral questions, and Validate Binary Search Tree.

All coding rounds were on Codility. I was expected to write clean code with good naming conventions, run it for different test cases, and discuss time and space complexities. Design rounds were conducted using draw.io or a whiteboard of my choice.