went through the Microsoft frontend interview loop in March for a role on the Teams web client team. sharing notes while it's fresh.
the loop: phone screen with recruiter, coding screen with engineer, then 4-round virtual onsite.
coding screen: one medium LC-style problem. it was a DOM manipulation question disguised as a general algorithm. they wanted me to work in JS/TS and expected me to talk through time complexity. no tricks, just basic competency check.
onsite rounds:
round 1 - coding: another algorithm problem, medium difficulty. graph-adjacent. i got the sense they care that you can code but they're not trying to trick you with twisty problems. clean solution with reasonable complexity is what they want.
round 2 - frontend system design: this was the most distinctive round. they gave me a prompt like 'design a real-time collaborative editor' and we went deep. they specifically probed: how do you handle state synchronization, what's your approach to optimistic UI updates, how would you handle offline mode. i hadn't seen many write-ups on microsoft's frontend system design and it was more sophisticated than i expected.
round 3 - behavioral: STAR stories. they asked 'describe a time you disagreed with a technical decision and how you handled it' and 'tell me about a project you're proud of.' growth mindset framing again.
round 4 - manager conversation: less of an interview, more of a 'here's the team, do you have questions' vibe. but they're still evaluating culture fit. i asked about on-call expectations for frontend (answer: yes, there is some, mainly around deployment health).
what they care about in frontend: performance is a real axis. i mentioned bundle size, lazy loading, and web vitals in context and it landed. accessibility came up briefly. they didn't go super deep on CSS specifics but they expected me to be comfortable with it.
offer: L62 in Redmond, base $195k, RSUs $280k over 4 years. teams web is a solid team from what i saw.