Microsoft Intern Machine Learning Engineer Interview Experience — Research Intern Video Screen That Was Pure LeetCode

Background: currently a student at CMU.

Process: I applied online through a mass application, and about two weeks later I got an interview invitation. It was a video interview.

What the interview was like: the interviewer was an MLE on the team who had been working for a few years. He was really nice and gave me quite a few hints along the way. Even though this was a research intern role, the interview was a pure LC interview. Apart from solving the problem they barely asked anything else, and they did not ask anything about research.

Question: LC 347. Top K Frequent Elements (Medium)

The standard approach is to count frequencies with a hashmap first, then use a heap to take the top k (O(n log k)), or use bucket sort to get O(n). I'd suggest preparing both versions, since the interviewer may ask about complexity and optimizations.

How it felt: the interview experience was very good and the interviewer was really nice. The research intern interview for this team also puts a lot of weight on coding, so make sure you've practiced the high-frequency Medium problems until you know them cold.

Result: Pass.