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Rejected

SDE-2 at Microsoft

Difficulty
Process took
3-4 Weeks
Rounds
3
Format
Remote
Applied via
Company Website

How it went

  • What I Learned Microsoft interviews are thorough expect DSA, LLD, and real-world edge cases.

What they would tell you

  • What I Learned Microsoft interviews are thorough expect DSA, LLD, and real-world edge cases.

How to prepare

Outcome: Rejected

  • if you are targeting a specific company, do. company tag wise problem it helped me in round one

Their background

I am a SDE-2 engineer, right now working at a agritech startup

Round by round

  1. 1

    Data Structures & Algorithms (DSA)60 min

    Start with intro part, then just basic resume mentioned questions then some core java language Problem1: Find LCA of two given nodes in a binary tree Problem2: Given an unsorted array of integers, find the length of the longest consecutive elements sequence.

  2. 2

    Low-Level Design60 min

    Problem: Design Parking Lot.

  3. 3

    Design60 min

    Design a Rate-Limited Distributed API Gateway Problem:

    • Implement an API Gateway that exposes multiple APIs to clients.

    • Requirements:

    • Each API has a rate limit per user (e.g 100 requests per minute).

    • Support dynamic updates of rate limits without restarting the gateway.

    • Must handle concurrent requests from multiple clients efficiently.

    • Support burst handling: allow short spikes without dropping all requests.

    • Should return proper HTTP error codes when limits are exceeded. Follow-ups was related to scaling

    • How to distribute the rate limiter across multiple servers.

    • How to persist request counts in case of server crash.

    • How to optimize for latency while enforcing rate limits.

    • How to handle multi-tiered rate limits (per user, per API, per region).

What came up

HardRemote5+ years

A candidate-reported account, lightly edited. Interview processes change by team and date.

Sources