I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Microsoft (Sunnyvale, CA)
Interview
I was invited for onsite interview for data scientist position at Sunnyvale office
The first thing I noticed was unfriendly office managers, and lack of diversity in the team and office and no women in onsite interviewers! The interviewers were not able to ask questions related to my specialty and aligned with the position which was computer vision based but rather in their area of expertise mainly nlp and which was not what I applied for or I had in my resume, A couple of interviewers were texting alot with their phones during the interview and barely looking at me when I was explaining! I found One of them very disrespectful leaving me during lunch interview to talk to one of his friends the last interviewer arrived 15 min late in the meeting room They repeated the same questions over and over mainly on statistics and probabilities and writing formula of regression in three of the interviews very disappointing experience and unprofessional! I felt immediately after the interview that would not like to join such team ...
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Write logloss and regression formula repeated in three interviews
What is the probability of two consecutive heads when tossing a coin,
Nlp questions and embedding which was outside of my resume
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.
