Prepare for a software engineering interview loop that actually happens

The usual sequence

1. Recruiter screen: resume walk-through, location, notice period, compensation band, work authorization.
2. Online assessment or coding screen: arrays, hashes, graphs, a bit of SQL or debugging.
3. Onsite / virtual loop: 2–4 interviews, mix of coding, design (senior+), and behavioural.
4. Hiring manager decision. Microsoft does not use a Google-style hiring committee; the manager plus a senior interviewer matter a lot.

Coding, without theatre

Practice out loud. Interviewers grade communication as much as the final answer. Talk brute force, then improve. Check edge cases (empty input, duplicates, overflow). Languages they actually run: Python, Java, C#, C++, JavaScript. Use the one you can write without docs.

Do not only grind hard puzzles. Medium problems you can explain beat a memorised hard solution you cannot modify.

Design rounds

For product teams: design a feed, a file sync, a notification service, an update pipeline. For AI / ML roles: evaluation for an LLM feature, RAG that does not hallucinate, batch vs streaming inference, GPU capacity. Start with requirements, sketch API and data, then scale and failure modes. Ask who the user is before you draw boxes.

Behavioural: keep 5 stories

Write five short stories you can tell in 2 minutes each: a production incident, a disagreement, a time you were wrong, a project you led, a time you taught someone. Use situation → action → result. Microsoft interviewers listen for growth mindset (you learned, you changed the approach). Do not badmouth a previous manager.

The day before

Re-read the JD and your resume. Be ready to explain every bullet. Check camera, network, and a whiteboard app. Have the job ID and team name in front of you so you do not mix up the Windows role with the Azure Data one.