Hey everyone,
I recently completed the Microsoft SDE II interview process for an L62 role with the Azure MySQL team and received an offer.
I applied through the Microsoft careers website and received the screening invitation approximately three weeks later.
Round 1: Hiring Manager Screen
Date: August 26
Duration: Approximately 45 minutes
The Hiring Manager asked one coding question involving an expression evaluator. It was similar to LeetCode 150: Evaluate Reverse Polish Notation.
The standard solution uses a stack:
- Push operands onto the stack.
- When an operator appears, remove the two most recent operands.
- Apply the operator and push the result.
- Return the final value remaining in the stack.
One important detail is operand order for subtraction and division. If right is popped before left, the operation must be evaluated as:
left operator right
Round 2: Project Architecture and HLD
Date: August 28
Duration: Approximately 50 minutes
This was scheduled as a coding interview, but the interviewer instead focused on my current project architecture.
I explained:
- The main services and their responsibilities
- Request and data flows
- Database choices
- Communication between components
- Scalability and availability
- Failure handling
- Important technical trade-offs
The interviewer introduced several hypothetical changes and asked how the architecture would behave under higher load or partial failures.
My takeaway was to prepare project architecture as thoroughly as a standard system-design question. Interviewers may go several layers deeper than the overview shown on a resume.
Round 3: Database Backup Retention
Date: September 1
Duration: Approximately 55 minutes
I received a list of database backups containing timestamps and metadata.
The initial requirement was to:
- Retain the seven most recent backups.
- Return the backups that should be deleted.
The interviewer expected production-ready code rather than a short algorithmic solution. The discussion covered:
- Input validation
- Timestamp parsing and time zones
- Duplicate backups
- Deterministic ordering
- Empty input
- Safe and idempotent deletion
- Failure handling
- Testability
- Extensibility
The retention requirements were then expanded:
- Keep the most recent backup for each day in a seven-day window.
- Keep the most recent backup for each week in a monthly window.
- Keep the most recent backup for each month during the previous four months.
A clean design is to model each rule as a retention policy:
RetentionPolicy
selectBackupsToKeep(backups, currentTime)
The final protected set is the union of the backups selected by every policy. Any backup outside that union becomes a deletion candidate.
This avoids deleting a backup that is protected by one rule but not another. In a production system, I would first generate a deletion plan and validate it before performing any destructive action.
Round 4: AA Round
Date: September 4
Duration: Approximately 50 minutes
The final round included a backtracking problem.
Two players take turns rolling a three-faced die. Each roll adds 1, 2, or 3 to the active player’s score. The first player to reach the target score wins.
The task was to count all valid game sequences.
The natural state is:
(scorePlayer1, scorePlayer2, currentTurn)
From each state, try the three possible roll values. A sequence ends when one player reaches the target.
The exact recurrence depends on details that should be clarified:
- Do the players always alternate?
- Does reaching or exceeding the target count as winning?
- Do both players use the same target?
- Should the answer be returned modulo a number?
- Are different roll sequences counted separately?
A direct backtracking solution may repeat the same states. Memoizing the state reduces the work to approximately O(target²) states, with three transitions from each state.
Offer
I received the final update on September 7, 2026.
The process tested more than DSA. The most important round for me was the database-backup problem because it evaluated code structure, operational safety, edge cases, and extensibility together.
My detailed compensation breakdown is available in this Microsoft L62 Azure MySQL offer post.
Preparation Takeaways
- Practice stack-based expression evaluation.
- Know your current project architecture in depth.
- Prepare to explain scalability and failure scenarios.
- Treat production-oriented coding differently from LeetCode.
- Clarify calendar boundaries, time zones, and retention-policy overlap.
- Discuss safe deletion, retries, idempotency, and observability.
- Recognize when backtracking can be optimized using memoization.
I hope this helps anyone preparing for a Microsoft SDE II or L62 interview.
