Company interview guide

Microsoft software engineer interview questions

Prepare for Microsoft coding, design, collaboration, and growth-mindset interview questions.

Coding fundamentalsDesignGrowth mindsetCollaboration

Practice guide: Interview content varies by role, level, team, and location. These representative prompts are based on public company guidance and general interview patterns; Microsoft does not endorse this guide.

Practice library

6 questions, one at a time

Coding questions

Each problem has a full statement, examples, constraints, and a tested solution in Python, Java and C++.

3 questions

MediumArraySortingIntervals

Merge Intervals

Merge every group of overlapping intervals.

MediumTreeBinary search treeDFS

Validate Binary Search Tree

Check whether a binary tree is a valid binary search tree.

MediumMatrixSimulation

Spiral Matrix

Return the elements of a matrix in spiral order.

System design questions

Turn requirements into APIs, data models, architecture choices, bottlenecks, and explicit trade-offs.

1 question

System design

Design a multi-channel notification system.

Event modeling, user preferences, delivery reliability, and scale.

Behavioral questions

Prepare truthful evidence of decisions, ownership, collaboration, learning, and measurable results.

2 questions

Growth mindset

Tell me about feedback that changed how you work.

Self-awareness and proof that feedback produced a durable behavior change.

Execution

Tell me about a time you handled competing priorities.

Decision criteria, stakeholder alignment, and conscious trade-offs.