Recent Microsoft Senior Software Engineer interview experiences (India)?

Hi folks, I have an upcoming **technical job fitment / phone screen** for a **Senior Software Engineer (SSE)** role at Microsoft (India), and I wanted to check if anyone here has interviewed with Microsoft recently (late 2025 / early 2026). I’m particularly curious about: * What the **technical job fitment round** typically focuses on * Whether there’s **live coding** in this round, and the general difficulty level * The kind of **resume deep-dive / system design / backend questions** asked for senior roles * **Questions asked during the full loop (onsite/virtual loop)** — coding, system design, and behavioral I’ve seen a lot of older experiences online, but not many recent ones, especially for India-based roles. Any insights, sample questions, or pointers would be really helpful. Thanks in advance — appreciate the community 🙏 **UPDATE:** It was a **45-minute interview** and very **time-bound**. The interviewer was friendly and mentioned upfront that they would interrupt me if needed to keep things on track. The interview started with a brief **self-introduction**, followed by **behavioral questions**, then **code review**, and finally a **DSA problem**. # Behavioral questions * What was the most technically challenging issue you’ve faced? * Follow-up: How did you make sure it wouldn’t happen again? * Why are you looking for a change? * How would you influence someone when you’re not in a position of authority (i.e., leading without being a manager)? # Code review I was given a Python file with a few functions and asked to review it. I pointed out issues like: * Missing validations * Credentials being printed to the console * General code quality and safety concerns # DSA I got a **previously asked Microsoft question**: [https://leetcode.com/problems/open-the-lock/description/](https://leetcode.com/problems/open-the-lock/description/) I explained the approach by modeling it as a **graph/tree traversal**, with `"000"` as the root, deadends as blocked nodes, and the target as a reachable node. Since the goal is to reach the target in the **minimum number of steps**, the correct approach is **BFS**. Due to time constraints, I had **only \~10–15 minutes** to explain and implement the solution. I managed to complete the code and pass a few test cases (using custom inputs), but the implementation wasn’t very clean—there was some repetition that I didn’t get time to refactor. # Overall thoughts I wasn’t fully prepared for the **behavioral depth** expected at an **SSE level**, and that likely mattered. I had prepared heavily around explaining my resume and past projects, assuming this would be more of a resume deep-dive since it was labeled a *“job fitment”* round. Hopefully this helps others going into a similar round.