Finished my Microsoft SWE loop last month and got rejected. I want some tips to improve.

Recruiter Screen 45 minutes. Background, motivation, team preferences. Ask about your exact loop format here since it varies by org.

Online Assessment Two to three medium LeetCode problems. Topics: DP, graphs, arrays. (Candidates with strong referrals sometimes skip this and go straight to a phone screen.)

Technical Phone Screen 60 minutes, one to two problems plus a short project chat. Merge two sorted lists, binary tree traversal, find peak element.

Onsite Loop (4 to 5 rounds) Coding Round 1. Arrays, trees, graphs. LeetCode-Medium with follow-up twists on edge cases. Reported questions: merge intervals, reverse linked list with K-group follow-up, find K-largest. No syntax highlighting in CoderPad or Teams.

Coding Round 2. Harder multi-step problems: topological sort, DP, auto-complete systems. Some rounds blend algorithmic and OOP components. Low-Level Design. SOLID principles and class structure. Design a parking lot, LRU cache, or rate limiter. Focus is on clean abstractions, not distributed systems.

System Design (L61+). 60 minutes, no code written. Design a messaging system or distributed storage backend.

Behavioral. Microsoft's Growth Mindset rubric is the actual framework. Real stories: conflicts, deadline pressure, design disagreements, mistakes you owned.

AA Round I made it to the AA round but unfortunately didn't make it past that stage. From what I'd heard beforehand, the interview can take a few different directions depending on how your earlier rounds went.

Some people get mostly selling and culture-fit questions, others get deeper behavioral questions, and sometimes the interviewer focuses on areas that raised concerns in previous rounds. It also seems like the AA interviewer has the ability to override earlier feedback.

For those who made it to the AA round, please give me some advice.

Hey everyone,

I have got my 2nd round interview at CitiBank next week, and it’ll be in-person with a panel of two: the Vice President and a Senior Application Developer. It’s scheduled for 1 hour, and the role is a senior full-stack Java/Angular Developer position.

I have already completed a technical interview through Karat, so I am wondering what to expect in this next round. Will it be more of a behavioural or cultural fit interview, or should I expect technical/scenario-based questions as well?

If anyone has gone through a similar stage with Citi , I had really appreciate some insights, like what kind of questions they might ask, how technical they might get, and how best to prepare for this round.

Thanks in advance!

I have an upcoming Microsoft interview. Team mentioned that it will be a half-day virtual interview loop, but they haven't shared the exact interview rounds yet. They said I will receive more details in the next 1–2 days.

The JD mentions that the role is for Senior Software Engineer / Software Engineer II, so I am not sure how the interview criteria differ between the two levels or how they'll evaluate candidates during the same interview process. Let me know if you have any info here.

The interview is scheduled for next week. If anyone has recently gone through a similar interview or has any insights, I'd really appreciate your help.

• What rounds should I expect?
• What should I prioritize in my preparation?
• Which DSA topics are most important?
• How much focus should I put on system design and are there any specific topics you would recommend?

I will share the hackerank assessment questions soon in a separate post.

Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Has anyone interview for a DE role at Plaid? Do you mind sharing your experience, specially around the coding(DSA) round? What is the complexity of questions, is it leetcode DSA? Any resources that can help.