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Microsoft Software Engineer Interview: Process, Technical Rounds and How to Prepare

How Microsoft's software engineer interviews work: the hiring steps, what the 45-minute technical rounds expect, system design topics, growth mindset questions, and original practice questions with solutions. Free, no sign-up.

Facts checked September 30, 20267 min readSoftware engineering

Microsoft at a glance

Conversations
2 to 4, up to an hour each
Technical round
About 45 min
Code in
Your strongest language, no pseudocode
Looks for
Growth mindset

The stages

  1. 1ApplyProfile, questions, resume
  2. 2ReviewSometimes a screening call
  3. 3Interviews2 to 4 conversations
  4. 4OfferDocuments to review
  5. 5OnboardingPre-hire steps

Microsoft's technical interviews reward clear, working code and good judgement more than trick questions. Microsoft also says plainly that it wants to see how you think, not just what you know, and it looks for a growth mindset. This guide covers what Microsoft publishes about its process and how to prepare for a software engineer role.

How the process runs

Step through: Microsoft's hiring process

Step 1 of 4

Apply

Create a profile, answer the role's questions and upload your resume. Read the job description closely: it tells you which skills the interviews will focus on.

What Microsoft looks for

Microsoft says it evaluates both skills and shared principles: how you'll learn, collaborate and contribute across teams. The principles it names are respect, integrity, accountability and growth mindset.

A growth mindset means you treat problems as chances to learn. In interviews, it shows when you talk honestly about a mistake and what you changed afterwards, or when you take a hint and build on it instead of getting defensive.

What would you do?

Halfway through a coding round, the interviewer points out that your approach fails on an empty input.

What response best shows a growth mindset?

The technical rounds: what Microsoft expects

Microsoft's technical interviewing page is unusually specific:

  • Use the language you're strongest in, and don't write pseudocode.
  • Write clean, concise, bug-free code, following best practices. You may use a coding tool where you can run and compile your code.
  • Know at least one O(n log n) sorting algorithm in detail, preferably two (for example quicksort and merge sort), and explain the complexity of what you write.
  • Ask clarifying questions and plan before you code. Test your solution before you say you're done.
  • Manage your time: the round is only about 45 minutes.
  • Be comfortable with arrays, strings, queues, linked lists, trees and tries, hash maps and sets, and graphs.

Flip cards · 0 of 6 revealed

Quick check

An interviewer asks why you chose merge sort over quicksort for sorting records by date, keeping ties in their original order. What's the key reason?

System design

For more experienced roles, Microsoft says knowledge of distributed systems, service-oriented architecture and n-tier architecture matters, including resiliency, high availability, auto-scaling, replication, the CAP theorem and partitioning. If you don't use these day to day, review them before your interview.

Practice questions (original)

Practice question

First one-off error code

easy

A service logs error codes in order, e.g. ["E42", "E7", "E42", "E9", "E7"]. Return the first code that appears exactly once (here "E9"), or None if there isn't one.

Practice question

Can every course be finished?

medium

There are n courses numbered 0 to n-1 and a list of prerequisites [a, b] meaning you must take b before a. Return a valid order to take all courses, or an empty list if it's impossible (because of a cycle).

Practice question

Merge sorted service logs

medium

You have k lists of log timestamps, each already sorted, e.g. [[1, 4, 9], [2, 3, 10], [5]]. Merge them into one sorted list.

Behavioural questions

Microsoft suggests preparing specific examples that explain the situation, what you did, the outcome and what you learned. That's the STAR method with a reflection step at the end. The reflection is where a growth mindset shows. Good stories to prepare:

  • A time you learned something difficult quickly
  • A mistake you made and what you changed
  • A disagreement with a teammate and how you resolved it
  • A project where you collaborated across teams

A 4-week prep plan

Step through: Four weeks to interview-ready

Step 1 of 4

Week 1: Fundamentals

Arrays, strings, hash maps, linked lists. Implement merge sort and quicksort from memory and explain their complexity.

Keep going

Sources

Checked on September 30, 2026. Hiring processes change, so confirm details with your recruiter.

Nokku.ai is not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft. Company names are used only to describe their publicly documented hiring process. Practice questions are original.