Microsoft Software Development Engineer interview questions
based on 1.2K ratings - Updated Jul 22, 2025
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Software Development Engineer 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 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 according to 1 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 100%
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I applied through college or university. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA)
Interview
First I had an on-campus interview with a recruiter with an easy coding question. A bit later they told me they wanted to fly me out to Redmond for on-site interviews. First I met with a recruiter who told me what the rest of the day was going to be like, then they called a shuttle to take me to another building for the interviews themselves. The first interviewer greeted me in the lobby, took me to the kitchen to offer me a drink, then led me to his office for the first interview. Each interviewer generally started by asking me about myself, asked a coding question, asked me to optimize my solution, asked how I should test my solution, then gave me some time to ask them any questions I had. This took about 45 minutes total per interview. Then they would take me to the kitchen to offer me another drink then pass me off onto the next interviewer. One interviewer in the middle took me to lunch, where we ordered our food and took it to his office to eat during the interview. I think there were 5 interviews total, all with members of the same team. Then I took a shuttle back to the first building, where the recruiter from that morning did a debriefing and sent me on my way.
They were all very nice throughout the process, and when I asked them questions, they were very honest in their responses, telling me both the pros and cons of working at Microsoft. The company was also very generous with respect to what they would pay for, especially food.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Determine if a linked list is cyclic, and if it is, find the length of the cycle.
You have an array of length n consisting of the integers from 0 through n-1 exactly once each, except for one which is missing. Find the missing number. The numbers can be in any order.
I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Microsoft
Interview
Nothing fancy, standard phone interview, no weird, tricky or anything like what you usually read. We mainly talked about my interests and my projects. I was asked to describe my most challenging projects, what I learned from them and what I think my main attributes are. I was also asked a few behavioural questions, i.e how would you deal with this situation or that situation.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Nothing really weird, I had read about tricky questions, but nothing like that