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%
Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -
I applied through college or university. I interviewed at Microsoft (Sydney) in Feb 2016
Interview
Got a phone interview and asked me some questions. There are no difficult technical questions, some thing like what is the different between C and Java and so on. It took about 15min. I didn't get any reply after this.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Microsoft (Kongens Lyngby) in May 2016
Interview
I applied to a full-time position at Microsoft in Kongens Lyngby, Denmark. The recruiter answered me after one week and scheduled a Skype interview. This interview took 20 minutes and included a long talk about further project experiences and technological experience. Then a quiz question was asked.
Since I past this interview, one week later the on-location interview was scheduled. It included 3-4 interview sessions of each 45 minutes. The interviewers were mostly very nice and allowed me to talk about my projects which ended in detailed questions about used skills and technologies from these projects. My used programming language were Java, which was my own decision.
Interview questions [4]
Question 1
How to combine linked lists and hash maps? Which benefits do they have, which variants exist?
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in Aug 2012
Interview
Recruiter call for the application, technical Phone screening, then whole day in person interview with 5 people, lunch in between the interview, then recruiter will call for the result of the interview
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
technical algorithm
Behavioral questions asking for the scenario