Microsoft software engineer interview (questions, process, prep)

Microsoft coding interviews are really challenging. The questions are difficult, specific to Microsoft, and cover a wide range of topics.

The good news is that the right preparation can make a big difference. We've analyzed 250 software engineer interview questions reported by Microsoft candidates, in order to determine the most frequently asked types of questions. Below, we've provided a curated list of real example questions, including free solutions. 

In addition, you'll find preparation tips and links to the best resources, so that you can prepare more strategically and maximize your chances of landing that software engineer job at Microsoft.

Here's an overview of what we will cover:

• Process and timeline
• Example questions
  • Coding interview
  • System design interview
  • Behavioral interview
• Preparation tips

Click here to practice 1-on-1 with a Microsoft SWE ex-interviewer

1. Interview process and timeline

What's the Microsoft software development engineer (SDE) interview process and timeline? It takes four to eight weeks on average and follows these steps:

1. Resume, cover letter, and referrals
2. HR Recruiter email or call
3. First round: phone screen, on-campus or online test
4. Second round: onsite (four interviews)
5. Hiring committee review
6. You get an offer!

As a side note, this is quite similar (but slightly different) to the software engineer interviews at LinkedIn (which is a Microsoft subsidiary). If you're interviewing for a management role, take a a look at our Microsoft engineering manager interview guide.

1.1 What interviews to expect

Now, let's drill down further into the different stages of your software development engineer interview process with Microsoft. Here are the steps:

• Resume screen
• HR Recruiter email or call
• First round: phone screen, on-campus or online test
• Second round: onsite, four interviews

1.1.1 Resume screen

First, recruiters will look at your resume and assess if your experience matches the open position. This is the most competitive step in the process, as millions of candidates do not make it past this stage.

So take extra care to tailor your engineering resume to the specific position you're applying to.

If you’re looking for expert feedback, get input from our team of ex-FAANG recruiters, who will cover what achievements to focus on (or ignore), how to fine tune your bullet points, and more.

1.1.2 HR recruiter email or call

Next, the interview process starts with an HR recruiter call to discuss your interests and to see what group or team would be best for you. Your recruiter will also use this conversation to confirm that you've got a chance of getting the job at all. You should be prepared to explain your background and why you’re a good fit for Microsoft.

1.1.3 Microsoft's first round

If things go well with the recruiter, then you'll move on to the next step of the process. What happens at this stage varies depending on what team and role you're applying for.

But, you can usually expect a phone screen if you're an industry hire, an on-campus interview if you're a new graduate, or an online test instead of an actual interview in some cases. We'll review each format below.

Technical phone screens

This step is called the "phone screen", but it can also sometimes happen over video using Skype. Each interview will last 45 to 60 minutes. You'll speak to a peer or a potential manager and they'll ask you a mix of technical and behavioral questions.

For the technical part of the interview, you can expect typical data structure and algorithm questions which you'll have to solve in an online collaborative text editor. The text editor won't have syntax highlighting or autocomplete features, so you'll need to get used to not having those features during your interview preparation. As an additional note, you're very unlikely to be asked system design questions during your phone screen.

For the behavioral part you can expect questions like, "Tell me about yourself," "Why Microsoft?", or "What's your favorite Microsoft product? And why?" In our experience, Microsoft interviewers spend more time on behavioral questions than their counterparts at Facebook or Google. So, it's worth making sure you're ready for common behavioral questions (more on that later).

On-campus interview

If you're a student then you'll usually have an on-campus interview instead of a phone screen. You'll be asked a mix of behavioral questions and technical questions that you'll need to solve on a whiteboard. In some cases, you'll also have more than one interview on campus.

Online coding assessment

Microsoft also sometimes uses online coding tests before passing a candidate through to the onsite interviews. The company uses a variety of tests, but the most common one is a three-question test which you need to solve in 60 to 90 minutes and is administered by Codility.

The questions are typical data structure and algorithm questions for which you need to submit a solution in an online editor. Leetcode maintains a helpful thread of the types of questions that have recently been asked in the test.

1.1.4 Onsite interviews

If you crack the first round, the next step is to spend a full day at one of Microsoft’s offices and participate in four on-site interviews. These interviews will last about 60 minutes and be a one-on-one with a mix of people from the team you’re applying to join, including peers, the hiring manager, and sometimes a senior executive.

Question types

Three or four of your interviews will include coding questions (i.e. data structure and algorithm questions) which you'll need to solve on a whiteboard. The other one or two interviews will cover system design questions. You'll be asked behavioral questions in all your interviews.

All candidates are expected to do extremely well in coding and behavioral questions. If you're relatively junior (e.g. SDE II or below) you might not be asked system design questions. And if you do then the bar will be lower than for mid-level or senior engineers (e.g. Senior SDE or above).

The "as appropriate", AA or ASAPP interview

Finally, your last interview will be with a senior executive from Microsoft (e.g. your hiring manager or possibly their boss). This interview is often referred to as the "as appropriate", AA or ASAPP interview because you will only be asked to do that interview if your first three interviews go well. If you don't do well in the first three, then you won't get an AA interview and you won't get an offer.

AA interviewers have two roles. The first one is to ensure that there's no blind spot in your assessment. For instance, if your first three interviewers have established that you meet the technical hiring standards but aren't sure about culture fit, then your AA interview will mainly focus on behavioral questions. The second role of an AA interviewer is to "sell" the company to you if you did well in previous interviews. The idea here is that Microsoft wants to make sure you'll accept the offer if they decide to make you one.

1.2 What exactly is Microsoft looking for

At the end of each interview your interviewer will grade your performance using a standardized feedback form. Here is some of the information that's contained in the form.

A) Interview notes

Interviewers will file the notes they took during the interview. This usually includes: the questions they asked, a summary of your answers and any additional impressions they had (e.g. communicated ABC well, weak knowledge of XYZ, etc).

B) Competencies assessment

Your interviewer will then grade you on different competencies. They will be trying to determine if you meet the bar or not for each competency they are interested in. In other words, you'll need to convince them that you are at least as good as, or better than, the average current Microsoft SDE at the level you're applying for (e.g. Senior SDE).

The exact list of competencies Microsoft looks for varies depending on groups, roles, and levels. But here are some of the main ones that are usually discussed by Microsoft recruiters:

• Passion for technology
• Problem solving
• Analytical ability
• Creativity
• Etc.

C) Hiring recommendation

Each interviewer will give a hiring recommendation at the end of the interview. The different options are along the lines of: "Strong hire", "Hire", "No hire", "Strong no hire".

D) Suggested follow-ups

The feedback forms are accessible by all the interviewers in your loop. And each interviewer can suggest a follow-up topic for your next interview. For instance, if you didn't check edge cases in your first coding question, then your interviewer might flag that with you and also with your next interviewer so they can see if you will apply the feedback.

1.3 What happens behind the scenes

Your recruiter is leading the process and taking you from one stage to the next. Here's what happens at each of the stages described above:

• After the first round, your recruiter and hiring manager decide to move you to the onsite interviews or not, depending on how well you've done.
• After the onsite, each interviewer files their notes into the internal system, grades you and makes a hiring recommendation (e.g. "Strong hire", "Hire", "No hire", "Strong no hire"). You usually need to receive a "Hire" grade from all interviewers to get an offer. But in some cases, the AA interviewer and / or hiring manager can decide to hire you even if you got one "No hire".
• You get an offer. If everything goes well, the recruiter will be in touch with an offer, usually within a week of the onsite but it can sometimes take longer

It's also important to note that recruiters and people who refer you have little influence on the overall process. They can help you get an interview at the beginning but that's about it.

2. Example questions

Here at IGotAnOffer, we believe in data-driven interview preparation and have used Glassdoor data to identify the types of questions which are most frequently asked at Microsoft.

For coding interviews, we've broken down the questions you'll be asked by subcategories (e.g. Arrays / Strings , Graphs / Trees , etc.) so that you can prioritize what to study and practice first. For system design and behavioral questions, we've listed questions that were frequently reported on Glassdoor and other resources.

2.1 Coding questions

Microsoft software development engineers solve some of the most difficult problems the company faces with code. It's therefore essential that they have strong problem-solving skills. This is the part of the interview where you want to show that you think in a structured way and write code that's accurate, bug-free, and fast.

Here are the most common question types asked in Microsoft coding interviews and their frequency. Please note the list below excludes system design and behavioral questions which we cover in the next sections.

1. Arrays / Strings (36% of questions, most frequent)
2. Linked lists (29%)
3. Graphs / Trees (20%)
4. Search / Sort (6%)
5. Dynamic programming (5%)
6. Bit manipulation / Maths (4% of questions, least frequent)

We've also listed common examples used at Microsoft for these different question types below. For each example, we modified the phrasing of the question to match the closest Leetcode problem and we linked to a free solution on Leetcode.

Finally, we recommend reading this guide on how to answer coding interview questions and practicing with this list of coding interview examples in addition to those listed belows.

2.2 System design questions

Microsoft products have millions of monthly active users. Therefore, the company's engineers need to be able to design systems that are scalable. The coding questions we've covered above usually have a single optimal solution. But the system design questions you'll be asked are typically more open-ended and feel more like a discussion.

This is the part of the interview where you want to show that you can both be creative and structured at the same time. In most cases, your interviewer will adapt the question to your background. For instance, if you've worked on an API product they'll ask you to design an API. But that won't always be the case so you should be ready to design any type of product or system at a high level.

As mentioned previously, if you're a junior developer the expectations will be lower for you than if you're mid-level or senior. In addition, for certain roles (e.g. infrastructure, security, etc.) you will likely have several system design interviews instead of just one.

Below we've listed some common system design questions which can be found in the Microsoft interview reports on Glassdoor or on relevant forums (like the Leetcode forum). For more information, we recommend reading the following guide on how to answer system design questions and we recommend practicing system design questions here.

2.3 Behavioral questions

You'll be asked typical behavioral interview questions such as "Tell me about a difficult project you worked on" in all your interviews. Yet it's common to fail a Microsoft interview because of a lack of preparation for the behavioral section. Fortunately these questions can be easy to prepare for if you know what to expect (see the list below).

In addition, one of the things that sets the company apart is that interviewers are particularly keen to understand why you want to work at Microsoft and not another place. You should therefore be ready to answer questions such "Why Microsoft?", and "What's your favorite Microsoft product? And why?"

Finally, it's worth noting that Microsoft has recently changed its culture to focus on the growth mindset. Showing that you embrace challenges, persist in the face of setbacks, and learn from criticism are therefore all good ways to show you're a good fit for the company.

3. How to prepare

Now that you know what questions to expect, let's focus on how to prepare. Here are the four most important things you can do to prepare for your Microsoft software development engineer interviews.

3.1 Learn about Microsoft's culture

Most candidates fail to do this. But before investing tens of hours preparing for an interview at Microsoft, you should take some time to make sure it's actually the right company for you.

Microsoft is prestigious and it's therefore tempting to ignore this step completely, but the prestige of the company, in itself, won't make you happy day-to-day. It's the type of work and the people you work with that will.

If you know engineers who work at Microsoft (or used to), talk to them to understand what the culture is like. In addition, we would also recommend reading the following resources:

• Microsoft's growth mindset culture (by Microsoft)
• Microsoft strategy teardown (by CB Insights)
• Microsoft vision and mission analysis (by Panmore Institute)
• Microsoft annual reports (by Microsoft)

3.2 Practice by yourself

As mentioned above, you'll have to answer three types of questions at Microsoft: coding, system design, and behavioral. The first step of your preparation should be to brush up on these different types of questions and to practice answering them by yourself.

3.2.1 Coding interview preparation

For coding interviews, we recommend getting used to the step-by-step approach recommended by Microsoft in the video below.

Here is a summary of the STAR approach recommended by Microsoft:

• Step 1: Situation, make sure you understand the problem correctly
  • Write down the problem provided by the interviewer
  • Ask clarification questions
  • Agree on inputs and outputs
• Step 2: Task, outline how you are going to solve the problem
  • Talk through your ideas for solving the problem out loud
  • Start with a simple case and work toward a solution, without coding
  • Think about different test cases which you'll use for testing later
• Step 3: Action, write clean code to solve the problem 
  • Start writing clean code with clear variable and function names
  • Modularize your code with helper functions
  • Check with your interviewer before using a library
  • Bugs and forgotten variables are ok as long as you catch them early
• Step 4: Result, test your solution and suggest improvements
  • Run through the different test cases you've developed in step 2
  • Incorporate any feedback from the interviewer into your approach
  • Analyze the time and space complexity of your code and suggest improvements

We recommend using our coding interview prep article as your one-stop-shop to guide you through your coding preparation process.

3.2.2 System design interview preparation

For system design interviews, Microsoft does not give specific recommendations. But Amazon does, and the approach they outline in the video below is quite helpful.

Here is a summary of what you should do:

• Step 1: Ask clarification questions
  • Understand the goal of the system (e.g. sell ebooks)
  • Establish the scope of the exercise (e.g. end-to-end experience, or just API?)
  • Gather scale and performance requirements (e.g. 500 transactions per second)
  • Talk through any assumptions you're making out loud
• Step 2: Design at a high-level, then drill-down
  • Lay out the high-level components (e.g. front-end, web servers, database)
  • Drill down and design each component (e.g. front-end first)
  • Start with the components you're most comfortable with (e.g. front-end if you're a front-end engineer)
  • Work with your interviewer to provide the right level of detail
• Step 3: Bring it all together
  • Refer back to the requirements to make sure your approach meets them
  • Discuss any tradeoffs in the decisions you've made
  • Summarize how the system would work end-to-end

We'd also recommend studying our system design interview prep guide and learning how to answer system design interview questions. These guides cover a step-by-step method for answering system design questions, and they provide several example questions with solutions. 

3.2.3 Behavioral interview preparation

For behavioral interviews, we recommend learning our step-by-step method to answer this type of question and then practicing the most common software engineer behavioral interview questions.

In addition, you'll want to write down your answers to the common behavioral questions we have listed in the previous section.

Finally, a great way to practice coding, system design, and behavioral questions is to interview yourself out loud. This may sound strange, but it can significantly improve the way you communicate your answers during a real interview. Play the role of both the candidate and the interviewer, asking questions and answering them, just like two people would in an interview.

3.3 Practice with someone else

Practicing by yourself will only take you so far. One of the main challenges of coding interviews is communicating what you are doing as you are doing it. As a result, we strongly recommend practicing live coding interviews with a peer interviewing you. 

If possible, a great place to start is to practice with friends. This can be especially helpful if your friend has experience with software engineer interviews, or is at least familiar with the process.

3.4 Practice with ex-interviewers

Finally, you should also try to practice software engineer mock interviews with expert ex-interviewers, as they’ll be able to give you much more accurate feedback than friends and peers

If you know a software engineer who has experience running interviews at Microsoft or another big tech company, then that's fantastic. But for most of us, it's tough to find the right connections to make this happen. And it might also be difficult to practice multiple hours with that person unless you know them really well.

Here's the good news. We've already made the connections for you. We’ve created a coaching service where you can practice 1-on-1 with ex-interviewers from leading tech companies like Microsoft. Learn more and start scheduling sessions today. 

Applying for other companies? Check out our other guides for Facebook, Google, Amazon, LinkedIn, and Airbnb software engineer interviews.