As any experienced interviewer will know, “I’m looking to explore new opportunities” is code for “I got fired” or “I’m not doing well”. You’re giving the interviewer full control over what they want to guess your issues are, so it’s usually a better idea to be a bit more upfront (in particular if you can explain what you learned in the process)
Have you ever worked with people in HR at a large (more than 1K headcount) firm? Your mindset is that of an engineer's and you are overthinking things. An HR person doesn't give two fucks about why you are leaving your previous company in a high demand field like software engineering as long as there are no obvious red flags.
