I applied online. I interviewed at Microsoft (Hyderābād) in Apr 2021
Interview
I applied via their Careers page. The recruiter reached out to me shortly after (~10 days) and scheduled the first interview. The first interview was with a senior data scientist about my previous projects' data science components in detail. We talked about a lot of things: loss functions, EDA, non-linearity, neural networks, etc. Non-stop grilling though, but was fun and pushed me. This was followed up by a DEI call where I was asked about my interactions with other people in the team, just a call to understand how I work with various personalities on board. The third call was another data science call where we went deep into the time series rabbit hole (I think it was a strict team requirement). The recruiter was very responsive.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about cross entropy
What's better: SVM or Logistic Regression
Precision, recall, F1, when to use what
Time series analysis: ARIMA - entirely + some novel research questions which were open ended but daunting to face in a 1 hour interview
Feeling thrilled to have accepted the offer, I look back on this interview process as both challenging and rewarding. It began with a technical round where I tackled a complex A/B testing design question, followed by a SQL query on user retention. The final stages included a system design discussion that had me sweating, but honestly, the system design section on PracHub prepared me well. Each step pushed my limits, but the culmination was definitely worth it, landing me a role at Microsoft.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Design an A/B test to measure the impact of a new ranking change in Bing, and explain how you would handle network interference between treatment and control users.
Write a SQL query that computes 7-day rolling user retention from a daily events table, then flags cohorts whose week-over-week retention dropped more than 10%.
Phone screen with HR/recruiter. Less than 10 mins. Very basic mostly about role fit and my background and resume. Did not hear back from them at all. Very unenthusiastic during the call
I applied online. I interviewed at Microsoft (Hyderābād) in Feb 2026
Interview
Overall 3 rounds with 2 technical and 1 managerial. The 1st round was DS and ML heavy with some analytics. The 2 nd round was resume, SQL and causal /AB experimentation. The managerial round was resume related and some behavioural questions.
