ROHIT MANE

🎯 MICROSOFT SOFTWARE ENGINEER PREPARATION BLUEPRINT (2026) A realistic 3–4 month preparation plan for Software Engineer interviews. 📌 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⏳ Time Commitment • Weekdays: 3–4 hours/day • Weekends: 6–8 hours/day Total: ~450–500 focused hours Difficulty: ★★★★☆ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ What Microsoft Looks For ★★★★★ Data Structures & Algorithms ★★★★★ Problem Solving ★★★★★ Communication ★★★★☆ Computer Science Fundamentals ★★★★☆ Low-Level Design ★★☆☆☆ High-Level Design (mainly for experienced roles) ★★★★★ Behavioral Interviews (STAR) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📅 Month 1 (120 Hours) Build strong DSA fundamentals. Topics • Arrays • Strings • Hashing • Linked Lists • Stacks & Queues • Binary Search • Sorting • Recursion Resources Striver A2Z takeuforward.org/strivers-a2… NeetCode Roadmap neetcode.io/roadmap LeetCode leetcode.com/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📅 Month 2 (120 Hours) Advanced problem solving. Topics • Trees • BST • Heaps • Graphs • Greedy • Tries • Backtracking • Dynamic Programming Resources Take U Forward youtube.com/@takeUforward CP-Algorithms cp-algorithms.com/ LeetCode leetcode.com/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📅 Month 3 (100 Hours) Computer Science Fundamentals. Topics • Operating Systems • DBMS • Computer Networks • Object-Oriented Programming • SQL Resources OSTEP pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OST… DBMS geeksforgeeks.org/dbms/ Computer Networks geeksforgeeks.org/computer-n… SQLBolt sqlbolt.com/ Refactoring Guru (OOP & Design Principles) refactoring.guru/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📅 Month 4 (100 Hours) Interview Preparation. Low-Level Design Refactoring Guru refactoring.guru/design-patt… Kunal Kushwaha (LLD Playlist) youtube.com/@KunalKushwaha High-Level Design System Design Primer github.com/donnemartin/syste… ByteByteGo bytebytego.com/ Gaurav Sen youtube.com/@gkcs Behavioral Interviews Tech Interview Handbook (STAR Method) techinterviewhandbook.org/be… Mock Interviews Pramp pramp.com/ Interviewing.io interviewing.io/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Projects (50+ Hours) If you don't have internship experience, your projects become your experience. Instead of building simple CRUD applications, build 2 production-ready backend projects. Recommended Stack • Java • Spring Boot • PostgreSQL / MySQL • Docker • Redis • Git & GitHub Your project should include: ✓ JWT Authentication ✓ Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) ✓ Spring Security ✓ REST APIs ✓ Proper Database Design ✓ Validation ✓ Exception Handling ✓ Logging ✓ Pagination & Filtering ✓ Docker ✓ Redis Caching ✓ Kafka / RabbitMQ (Bonus) ✓ Unit & Integration Testing ✓ GitHub Actions (CI/CD) ✓ Swagger / OpenAPI ✓ Clean Architecture ✓ Proper README ✓ Live Deployment Suggested Projects • Banking System • E-Commerce Backend • Food Delivery Backend • Ride Booking Backend • Inventory Management System • URL Shortener • File Storage Service ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Resume Jake's Resume Template overleaf.com/latex/templates… GitHub Skills ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Microsoft Interview Tips • Clarify the problem before coding. • Explain your approach first. • Write clean and readable code. • Handle edge cases. • Test your solution. • Communicate throughout the interview. • Use the STAR framework for behavioral questions. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Common Mistakes ✗ Grinding only LeetCode ✗ Ignoring CS Fundamentals ✗ Weak communication ✗ No mock interviews ✗ Projects you can't explain ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ This roadmap won't guarantee a Microsoft offer. But if you consistently invest 450–500 focused hours into these areas, you'll build the skills needed for Microsoft—and many other top product-based companies. Bookmark this.