Microsoft Principal Software Engineer interview questions

The interview process so far has been quite engaging. I have successfully completed the initial phone screening, which was followed by a detailed discussion with the hiring manager regarding the role and expectations. Moving forward, I have four technical interview rounds scheduled, where I look forward to showcasing my skills and experience.

The process was fairly standard: 1 technical screen followed by a 4 interview loop. Unfortunately, there were several problems in the process that impacted my ability to succeed. The preparation guidance provided was incorrect. The recruiter told me to study Leetcode for the first screening. In that interview, no coding questions were asked, only behavioral questions. The interviewer said I should work on my behavioral question responses in the next round. Of course having focused my time on Leetcode questions, I hadn't polished my answers for behavioral questions. Again, for the next 4 interviews, I was told to focus on Leetcode. And again, two of the 4 interviews had no coding. Not only did they have no coding, the first interview in the 4 interview loop was with the same person who interviewed me for the tech screen and both were fully behavioral. I wonder if there was some mix-up there. During the interviews with coding, only 15 minutes was given to solve the coding questions (these normally have at least 30 min). Additionally, one of the interviews was an interrogation to verify what's on my resume. That wasn't so bad because if it's on my resume, I can answer questions about it but I wasn't prepared for a deep dive on every aspect of REST. There was also a system design - I expected this even though the recruiter didn't actually tell me there would be a system design interview. The final thing that made this a negative experience was the pressure from the hiring team. I was told I had to schedule my final round interviews within 2 weeks or the position would close. For further context, I had applied to this position 2 months prior and had no idea if they would ever get back to me or when. I had to move a non-trivial personal obligation in order to make these interviews work. And then one of the interviewers didn't show up. I was told the recruitment team accidentally put the wrong interviewer on the loop. I guess they didn't check for an acceptance. I couldn't move my personal obligation so I told them it would have to be pushed out 2 weeks. Apparently, that was fine. So much for the position closing within those first 2 weeks. I'm rating the overall difficulty average - if I knew what I should have prepared for, the interviews were reasonable difficulty.