Microsoft Software Development Engineer I interview questions
based on 1.2K ratings - Updated Jul 22, 2025
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Software Development Engineer I applicants have rated the interview process at Microsoft with 4 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 100% positive. To compare, the company-average is 71.3% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Software Development Engineer I roles take an average of 1 day to get hired, when considering 1 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Microsoft overall takes an average of 46 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Microsoft as a Software Development Engineer I according to 1 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 100%
Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -
The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in Oct 2009
Interview
I applied online through the Microsoft website and was contacted a few days later through email by a HR company. This email had arranged several campus interview dates and asked me to list the times I was available. At the interview I met with a Manager of a Software Development Engineer in Test. He took casual to an extreme, and was noticeably tired and uninterested. He had been interviewing candidates all day. He asked two logic based questions.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Imagine you're a door company, and the company that sells you your door handles decides to raise the price. You now want to make your own handles and enter the door handle market. How would you design your door handle
You are given two numbers M and N, ex. 10 and 15, and array with N-M numbers. In that array are numbers between M and N. Ex( 11,12,13,11,14). The numbers are not ordered, and can be repeated. How do you find the number(s) which is not listed in the array.
I applied through college or university. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in Sep 2009
Interview
College Career Fair followed by an on campus interview followed by a phone screen and then onsite. The phone interview had some puzzles like
1. How will you measure 45 min with 2 ropes which exactly burn in one hour each?
2. Background and experience questions
3. Give a general idea how to remove comments from a C program
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Searching a page in 100 million pages. What data structure would be optimal?
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft in Feb 2008
Interview
The recruiter was aggressive, he painted pretty pictures of new features and cool new technologies I would be working on, but in reality, I did over a year of bugfixing on a mature technology nearing maintenance stage.
I was interviewed by 7 people overall, from 10am up to 6pm in the evening when I had the final conversation with the recruiter.
The interview questions were not too hard, I got some usual questions on linked lists and trees. Other questions were mostly about hardware and low-level drivers. I wasn't asked any puzzles that MS was once famous for, but I got several interesting questions about emulating an old console game on modern hardware and about avoiding issues with problematic hardware.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Implement a solution for the bounded buffer problem where you have a queue of work items and several producer/consumer threads.