Microsoft SDE-2 via LinkedIn referral — offer one day after the final round

Background

I applied to Microsoft through a LinkedIn referral, with 3.5 years of experience (previously at JP Morgan).

Online assessment

On HackerRank: two problems centred on graphs, medium-to-hard.

Round-by-round

Round 1 — DSA

About an hour on tree and dynamic programming problems — both common themes in Microsoft's process.

Round 2 — DSA (originally slated as LLD)

I'd prepared for low-level design, but the interviewer pivoted to two more DSA problems: one on linked lists, one math-based. Also close to an hour.

Round 3 — High-level design

Design a notification service from the ground up: functional requirements, non-functional requirements and back-of-the-envelope capacity calculations.

A consistent thread across all three rounds: interviewers kept circling back to my previous project work — every round involved a deep dive into what I'd actually built and owned.

Verdict

An offer one day after the final round. Selected.