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 (Redmond, WA) in Dec 2010
Interview
I was contacted by a Microsoft college recruiter. I initially applied for a Software Development Engineer Intern Position but because I was in my last year of my Master's degree the interviewer told me that I can't apply for an internship position because after the internship I wouldn't be going back to school anymore.
So she decided to interview me anyway but consider me for a fulltime position. I wasn't sure if I want to move from my country to the States so I guess this thing was a major black ball for me (I guess).
After all the questions were related to the projects I listed on my resume. She asked what was the most technically challenging project I worked for in the past. I didn't review enough my projects because I didn't have enough time and because mostly of them were OS &kernel related and I mostly forgot how I did them and what were the major problems that I had to overcome. So an advice would be to review all the interesting projects that you did in the past in order to answer rapidly and accurately about them. I think this was the major reason that I didn't get an onsite interview (bacause the interviewer couldn't make a clear idea about the projects that I did).
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
What was the most technically challenging project that you ever did ?
The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in Dec 2010
Interview
The interview process lasted 8 hours which ended with a 1:1 interview with the hiring manager. I felt overall I did well but no offer was made. Know your different types of data storage and how to dumb down your technical knowledge.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Find the common parent of any 2 roots in a tree (not a binary tree or any tree where parent have numerical relevance).