1. Initial Screening (Recruiter + Hiring Manager) Discussion around my background, experience in building large-scale backend systems, and alignment with the role. Covered my work at Microsoft. Focus on cultural fit, ownership mindset, and expectations from a Staff Engineer. 2. Low-Level Design / Code Design Round Focus on object-oriented design and extensibility. Covered: Class design (interfaces, abstractions) Design patterns Clean separation of concerns Interviewers expected production-grade thinking rather than textbook answers. 3. System Design Round (High-Level Design) Designed a scalable backend system (aligned with distributed systems / SaaS platform use cases). Key areas evaluated: Scalability (handling high throughput) Reliability and fault tolerance API design and data modeling Trade-offs (consistency vs availability, caching strategies, etc.) Discussion was very interactive, simulating real architectural decision-making.