Interview Loop Guide
Know every round before you walk in
Exact interview rounds, round types, difficulty levels, and what to expect — for 10 top companies across SDE-1, SDE-2, and Senior roles.
Microsoft
Interview Loop — SDE-1
- Recruiter Screen30 minBehavioral
Resume walkthrough and level-fit confirmation. The recruiter is gatekeeping the loop, not evaluating your algorithms. They will ask one or two warm-up CS questions to confirm you can hold a technical conversation, then explain the loop structure. This round often decides whether you get SDE-1 or SDE-2 track — scope your projects accordingly.
- Coding Round 160 minDSA
One interviewer, 1–2 problems in 60 minutes. The OA already tested your fundamentals; this round probes whether you can translate that to communicative, readable code. Microsoft uses Codility or a shared coding doc — no IDE autocomplete. Arrays and strings dominate the first problem. The second problem typically involves a HashMap or sliding window. Partial credit is real but only if your thinking was audible.
- Coding Round 260 minDSA
Difficulty steps up to Medium–Hard. Graphs and trees are extremely common — Microsoft's products (Azure service meshes, Teams org graphs, OneDrive directory trees) give interviewers natural framing for these. Expect one meaty problem with follow-up constraints rather than two separate problems. Silent coding for more than 5 minutes is flagged negatively regardless of whether you get the right answer.
- Hiring Manager Round45 minBehavioral
The Growth Mindset round. This is where SDE-1 offers get killed most often. The HM is not looking for a perfect STAR story — they are calibrating whether you're a 'learn-it-all' (Satya Nadella's phrase) or a 'know-it-all'. Failure questions here are weighted higher than at most other companies. Expect a light design question to check whether you can hold a technical conversation without a whiteboard.