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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The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Microsoft in Jan 2011
Interview
I submitted my resume at a career fair at my school for a summer internship at Microsoft and was later contacted for a 30 min on-campus interview. I was asked to solve problems on arrays and to talk about my accomplishments listed on my resume. A month later, I was invited for an on-site interview in Seattle. There were three technical interviews so it involved preparing a lot and practicing algorithms. I was asked questions on binary trees, linked lists and arrays. The recruiters were friendly, the interviewers were not intimidating but I was very nervous. Two weeks later I received an email saying that I was not going to be offered a job. The questions were not difficult but I'd say I needed more practice and to make use of better resources.
I applied through college or university. The process took 3 days. I interviewed at Microsoft (Seattle, WA) in Jan 2012
Interview
I have been notified that the interview will be on December, however, they change the date to January. So I have too much more time to prepare. The interview involves much more design questions and only a little code question. It is quite tired to be interviewed from 9:00 am to nearly 6:00 pm with 5 persons. They all are very nice and smart. My feeling for the interview is very positive. Because one of my interviewer said I want you to do....blabla after interview. And one of them also give me his thumb. However, I still don't get the offer. I guess it is because my fault for analyze the complexity of a code. I was too tired and said n square, however, I mean 2 to the order of n....
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
4 by 4 puzzle with random alphabet and check all words in it
The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Microsoft in Nov 2011
Interview
Interview was fairly usual. They first ask you about basic personal background and experiences. Then they moved on to coding question, which was not very difficult. They asked you for different sorting algorithms and then about linked list. The final coding question was reversing words within the sentence.