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 online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Microsoft in Feb 2012
Interview
1 to 1 interview on campus.
About thirty minutes each person.
It will be better to prepare some algorithms as well as look at some programming problems. It is required to write down the code in paper. Total time used to solve the problems is important. So be efficient.
Be careful when writing codes on paper.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Solve 'Tic-Tac-Toe'
Now we have a board and the game is currently proceeding. Write a function 'bool isFinished(char a, int x, int y) to decide whether game is finished when put one chess (a == 'O' or 'X') on (x, y) of the board.
What data structure are you going to use?
Write the whole function down on the paper
If given more space, can you improve your solution?
I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Microsoft in Mar 2011
Interview
Applied online. Got an email saying they want to do the phone interview. The phone interview was easy, general questions. Microsoft flew me out to Redmond. Gave me hotel room, car rental. Then did the one day revolving interviews, many managers. Mostly programming and skills question. Lunch was provided. Got an offer a couple of weeks later.
However they still had to find a group that needed me. Got another phone interview from the manager (about 1 hour).
I applied through college or university. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Microsoft in Oct 2011
Interview
The interviewer first asked me some questions about what class I've taken and since he was an alumni we exchanged some fun things about some courses we've both taken. Then he gave me a question on tree traversal . The tree was weird, each node points to a parent, two children, and siblings.