Microsoft Software Engineer Interview Process: What to Expect
Devana Team
Microsoft is several large engineering organisations under one name: Azure, Windows, Microsoft 365, Teams, GitHub and Xbox among them. Its interviews vary from team to team, and Microsoft says so itself. What does not vary is the set of qualities it says it is looking for, and those are easy to prepare for once you know them.
The process
Microsoft's interview tips page is candid that "the next interview steps will vary based on the role. You may meet potential teammates and cross-functional colleagues, and some roles may include coding exercises, a portfolio review, or presenting other work samples."
For software engineering roles, candidates commonly describe a recruiter call and a technical screen, followed by a set of interviews with the team, each mixing coding or design with questions about past work. Treat the exact count as reported rather than official; it depends on the organisation and level.
What Microsoft assesses
Microsoft lists the qualities it looks for across interviews:
- โ Growth mindset: "True learners who can acquire new skills rapidly and connect with others to help bring big ideas to life."
- โ Collaboration: "One Microsoft. Actively seeks collaboration with others and looks for common ground across differences."
- โ Customer focus: learning about customers' perspectives and showing empathy for their experiences.
- โ Diversity and inclusion: being open to learning about your own biases and changing behaviour accordingly.
STAR, with an extra R
Microsoft recommends answering behavioural questions with STAR(R): Situation, Task, Action, Result and Reflection. That fifth step is where growth mindset shows: what you learned, and what you would do differently now.
Two lines worth remembering
Microsoft's own advice is to demonstrate your thinking: "start by asking clarifying questions and stating your assumptions." And, usefully for anyone who freezes: "We don't expect you to know everything."
What our Microsoft question bank looks like
Devana's question bank holds 58 Microsoft questions, written to reflect how Microsoft interviews: its products, its published values and the round types candidates describe. They are our questions, not leaked ones. How they divide up says a lot about where to spend your preparation.
| Round type | Questions | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Coding | 24 | Reverse the word order in a text buffer; Undo and redo for a document editor; Recalculate a spreadsheet after a cell changes |
| System design | 12 | Design Teams chat; Design OneDrive sync; Design a multi-tenant Azure service |
| Technical deep dives | 12 | Serving customers who never upgrade; Diagnose a memory leak in production; What actually happens when you await |
| Behavioural | 10 | Something you learned from a failure; Delivering across organisational boundaries; Changing your mind after feedback |
27 of the 58 are rated hard. The topics that come up most often are Scalability, Systems Design, Concurrency, Security, Strings and Caching.
๐ฏ Practise these out loud
Create a free account, open the question bank and filter by Microsoft. Any question can be practised as a 30-minute voice interview with an AI interviewer that talks, asks follow-ups and runs your code. The free plan includes three interviews a month. Create a free account
Our Microsoft questions are rooted in the products: editing documents, recalculating spreadsheets, chat, file sync and multi-tenant cloud services. The technical deep dives bring in enterprise realities that rarely appear elsewhere, such as customers who never upgrade and keeping data in a particular country.
How to prepare
- โ Add the Reflection to every story. End each behavioural answer with what you learned and what you now do differently. It is Microsoft's own fifth step, so leaving it out leaves points on the table.
- โ Clarify before you code. Microsoft explicitly asks for clarifying questions and stated assumptions. Make it a habit in every practice problem.
- โ Know the organisation you are interviewing with. An Azure team and an Office team care about different failure modes. Read the job posting for the product, then practise problems from that world.
- โ Prepare for enterprise constraints. Backward compatibility, multi-tenancy and compliance turn a textbook design into a Microsoft one. The system design mock interview guide shows how to structure the hour.
- โ Have a genuine learning story. Something you got wrong, what changed your mind, and how it shows in your work now. How to frame past failures helps here.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Microsoft interview process the same for every team?
No. Microsoft says the steps vary by role, and some roles include coding exercises, portfolio reviews or presenting work samples.
What is STAR(R)?
Situation, Task, Action, Result and Reflection: the STAR method with a final step about what you learned.
What if I do not know the answer?
Say what you do know and how you would find out. Microsoft states it does not expect you to know everything, and growth mindset is one of the things it is assessing.
