Microsoft SDE-2 Frontend — DSA, JS fundamentals and a collaborative editor design

Background

A recruiter reached out on LinkedIn about a Frontend-focused SDE-2 opening. I have 4+ years of experience.

Online assessment

A HackerRank assessment with two DSA problems, both medium-to-hard.

Hiring drive

Shortlisted for a Saturday drive with all four rounds packed into a single day.

Round-by-round

Round 1 — DSA & JavaScript

Two parts. The DSA portion was a medium graph problem. The JavaScript portion involved working with Date objects to build a calendar view.

Round 2 — Frontend fundamentals

Fast-moving: rapid-fire conceptual questions, output-based questions (predicting what a snippet prints), and a debugging exercise finding the issue without a debugger. I was also asked to build a custom hook to handle a dynamic form.

Round 3 — System design

A high-level design discussion on building a collaborative editor — a real-time, multi-user document tool. The focus was heavily on trade-offs between architectural approaches rather than one "correct" design.

Round 4 — Behavioural & technical

With a Group Engineering Manager. Career aspirations on the behavioural side; on the technical side, the architecture of a file uploader.

Verdict

Selected — offer extended at the L62 level.