Microsoft Software Development Engineer interview questions
based on 1.2K ratings - Updated Jul 22, 2025
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Microsoft interviews FAQs
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%
Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Microsoft
Interview
I was contacted by the recruiter for the SDE position for their hiring event. I was asked to register and will get the Online test in a week. It's been more than a month since than. I tried to reach the recruiter many times but won't respond back. Any other recruiters won't accept my application since I was contacted previously by other recruiter. I don't understand whether they really are looking for engineers or an applicant just suffers because of all this inside conflicts. It's not believable from such a good company.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Microsoft (Dublin, Dublin) in Apr 2017
Interview
The interview was for the Software Engineering position in Dublin. It consisted of 4 45-minute technical interviews that covered everything, from algorithms and data structures up to System Design. Between the interviews I had 15 minutes to rest. I got the answer 3 days later.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in Apr 2017
Interview
I got referred to a specific team at Microsoft as New Grad hiring was halted for 2016. Talked to a manager on the phone for an hour, and was asked about my resume and did a interview question. Was flown to Seattle 2 weeks later and had an onsite interview with the team at Redmond. It consisted of 5 interviews with coding and culture-fit questions. I was at the Microsoft Campus from 9AM to 4:30PM. The process was nice, and the interviews were more conversational than say Google onsite interviews. I got a call 2 days later with an offer to join the team.
Microsoft enjoyed asking data structure questions with arrays, linked lists, strings, etc. Questions on graphs are said to be rare. Be prepared to answer any design questions, which may be follow up questions to coding questions.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Questions on string traversal, arrays + math were common in my interview.