Microsoft Engineering Manager Interview Guide

This guide will help you prepare for the Microsoft EM interview process. We break down what each round covers and what Microsoft interviewers are looking for. Our writing has been informed and reviewed by senior EMs working at Microsoft.

Six words from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sum up what leaders at Microsoft do: create clarity, generate energy, deliver success. Daily managerial work is centered on a second framework: Model, Coach, Care. This framework is used by all Microsoft managers. 

Basically, Microsoft interviewers are evaluating: 

• Can you make sure your team is enthusiastic about their work and stays focused on the right thing?
• Are you the type of leader employees would emulate and follow? Do you set the right example, coach others, and listen and empathize with their problems? 
• Will you deliver and make sure the team delivers?

Overall, EMs have a broad set of responsibilities as managers. At higher levels, you’re expected to coach and manage engineers across the company, and the ability to influence people is highly desired.

The technical bar can also be quite high. Some EMs are expected to contribute to the codebase while building the team.

TL;DR the Microsoft EM interview loop:

Step 1: Recruiter screen

Step 2: Technical screen and/or hiring manager round

Step 3: Onsite loop, 4 to 6 rounds

3.1 Coding

3.2 System & product design

3.3 Team/people management

3.4 Project round

Step 4: The “As Appropriate” (AA) round with a senior leader

Please note: We will use EM to refer to a broad list of titles at Microsoft such as Software Engineering Manager, and other variants. 

Sometimes, the scope could be to lead senior ICs or manage other managers. The interview process will be similar, but Microsoft interviewers have total freedom and they choose to ask questions tailored to the work the team does and the problems they’re facing.

All Microsoft EM loops will be a little different from one another. Generally speaking, after your recruiter and HM/technical screenings, you will have an onsite loop where interviewers cover coding, system design, everyday execution work and leadership ability.

Behavioral questions can be asked in any round.

The recruiter screen is a roughly 30 min conversation about your background, experience, skillset, motivation, logistics. Recruiters will also be gauging your communication skills.

Microsoft recruiters have asked EM candidates:

• Why do you want to work for our company?
• Is there a specific reason you’re switching?

Also keep in mind, your recruiter is already trying to put a figure on the compensation band and level to offer you, so try to demonstrate your experience in detail to argue for the appropriate numbers later on.

The next screening will be with the HM or a more technical round with a senior EM (and possibly a senior engineer). Usually candidates interviewing for senior roles will face the latter.

HMs will go into detail on your past projects and try to understand your approach to management. For the technical screening, the questions vary; you could be asked to write or review code or have to talk about the technical details of your past work as well.

You could be asked these questions:

• What’s your favorite Microsoft product and why?
• Can you tell me about your hiring strategy and how you ensure the people you hire fit the projects you have in the pipeline?
• Can you tell me a little bit about your current role and team structure?
• You are given the heads of two sorted linked lists. Merge the two lists into one sorted list by splicing together their nodes, and return the head of the merged list.
• Given two non-negative integers A and B find the number of bits set to 1 in binary representation of the number A*B.

Along with specifics on your people skills, managerial methods, and required technical skills they’re also wondering “is this person energetic and enthusiastic?”

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote in his book Hit Refresh:

“Leaders generate energy, not only on their own teams but across the company. It’s insufficient to focus exclusively on your own unit. Leaders need to inspire optimism, creativity, shared commitment, and growth through times good and bad. They create an environment where everyone can do his or her best work. And they build organizations and teams that are stronger tomorrow than today.”

Now, for the onsite there will be a broad range of topics and rounds covered. All interviews (even the coding rounds) can include behavioral questions and Microsoft interviewers tend to start off with questions based on your resume before going into the specific qualities they’re looking for.

Interviewers will also regularly start in one domain and end up in another with their follow-up questions. So for instance, you could be asked about product reqs as an initial prompt and then interviewers will drill into API design, data structures, ranking, etc.

Basically, any type of question in any single round.

Not all candidates will have a separate coding round, but some sort of coding questions are commonly asked of prospective engineering managers at Microsoft. Questions can be LeetCode easy just to make sure you’re fluent in the language you choose, or you might be asked to review a multi-file codebase or PRs. If you’re asked to review code, interviewers will also ask you conceptual questions based around it.

Some candidates could even be given LeetCode Hards, and you should definitely expect a higher technical bar if you’re going for a Principal EM or higher position.

These questions have been reported by EM candidates at Microsoft:

• You are given an array of string names, and an array heights that consists of distinct positive integers. Return names sorted in descending order by the people's heights.
• You are given a nested list of integers. Each element is either an integer or a list whose elements may also be integers or other lists. Implement an iterator to flatten it.
• Review this code and find what’s wrong with it. Can you write tests for it also?
• Given a rows x cols binary matrix filled with 0's and 1's, find the largest rectangle containing only 1's and return its area.
• Write code for an LRU map that has a fixed number of keys in it. Every time you add a new key and a value, it should evict the least recently used key once it reaches the size of the map.

Interviewers might also switch up the constraints mid-problem, so write your first working solution with that in mind. They’re also grading how you communicate and think so narrate everything as you go along.

The system & product design round is the most important one for senior candidates. The questions tend to start off with a customer scenario/problem or some external or engineering constraints and then you’re expected to start designing.

If the req is highly technical, you might even be asked to code a component. Some candidates have been allowed to use AI tools to do so.

Microsoft EM candidates have reported these questions:

• How would you design an application which provides TinyUrl?
• How would you design a solution so call center agents can get all the info they need in one place?
• Imagine you’re working at Instagram. We are working with an external cybersecurity team that gives us info on suspicious IP addresses. How would you build something within our infra so we can block these IP addresses from accessing the Instagram website? How would you try and hit a 20-millisecond latency requirement? What issues would you expect with the system? 

5 tips for this round:

First, system design questions aren't your typical tech questions with one perfect answer. Microsoft goes for more open-ended prompts and they typically tweak the question based on your background. For instance, if you've dabbled in APIs, they might throw an API design your way. So be on your toes – you should be game to design just about any product or system at a high level. This round is highly team-dependent, so if you're interviewing for an Azure team, your interviewer could ask you to design a file system and questions about the basics of storage systems.

Next -> make sure you really understand the problem before diving into solutions – clarifying, defining scope, and explaining your approach is key. This lets the interviewer drive you into the direction they want.

Third -> keenly listen for feedback from your interviewer. They often drop hints about the topics they want to cover. For instance, phrases like "let's assume xyz isn't a constraint" signal that it's time to shift to the next theme. If they ask specific questions, such as "what if this has to be used extensively every day by a diverse user base globally" – it may be a cue to explore scaling strategies, like using CDNs.

Fourth -> come up with multiple ideas considering the given constraints. It's a positive approach, and it's essential to succinctly present these ideas, explain trade-offs, and then make a deliberate decision.

Finally -> there might be instances where you find yourself stuck or unsure about the interviewer's expectations. Don't worry, it's completely normal; just admit to it rather than bluffing - offer to explore through guesswork if needed.

Some candidates (especially for Principal EM roles) will have separate LLD and HLD rounds. This Microsoft EM candidate had 4 system design interviews.

This round will be with a senior manager (could be multiple managers across product/program or engineering). In short, they want to know if you can lead the team, and how you will do it.

Interviewers will ask you both behavioral questions about your past work and hypothetical questions. 

Microsoft interviewers have asked prospective engineering managers these questions:

• How would you handle a situation where an individual or even the team is underperforming? What signals do you look for to figure these things out?
• Tell me about an engineer whom you grew from one level to another.
• How do you think managing other managers is different from individual contributors?
• Can you give me an example where you addressed a morale situation on your team?

To give your answers a strong skeleton, we suggest you make a story bank. Take the classic STAR framework and turn it into STAR+ (Situation, Task, Action, Result + the X-Factor: Learning) to structure your stories. The Learning factor is where you can demonstrate how you’ve reflected on your past actions, and gotten better as a result.

And, think about the questions we wrote out at the beginning of this guide. For example, you can add in how you care by showing a story where an individual was struggling and you helped them through the situation. Once everything was handled, you coached them so the situation wouldn’t repeat itself.

And for the hypotheticals, you can also provide supporting evidence or small snippets from your past work to show how you’d handle the situation or one particular aspect.

Overall, while you’re answering, think about Nadella’s words and Microsoft’s framework and try to create a structure that hits the Model, Coach, Care pillars. As one senior Prepfully coach who has worked at Microsoft for over 20 years and is a Principal engineer there said:

This round is all about how you execute and deliver results. Interviewers will also want to see how you influence others (people you’re managing or people you have no authority over) to execute. Along with your people and technical skills, your ability to influence is a big theme for Microsoft. 

Again, questions here could be about your past experience or how you’d handle a hypothetical scenario.

Microsoft EM candidates have been asked:

• Imagine a scenario where there’s a communication pipeline in place already, but you’re still getting questions from cross-functional partners about project deliveries and stuff. Basically, how do you bridge those gaps in the communication pipeline?
• Tell me about a time you had to deliver bad news to the leadership.
• Tell me about a time where you had to change your communication style to fit the needs of your audience.
• Tell me about a time you had to make a decision without having all the necessary information, or a time you had to deal with an ambiguous situation.

When you’re going through the STAR structure, be sure to discuss people who disagreed or stakeholders you had to manage, what changes you made, and any possible costs of whatever you put in place. So, if you add a new process or procedure maybe it slows the team down, or adds more work for your engineers and how would you handle that situation.

This final round could be scheduled right after or a couple of weeks after your onsite. You could have a 45 to 60 min (a few candidates have reported nearly 2 hours) long conversation with a senior leader. For EMs this leader can be the Principal EM or a Director from outside the hiring team.

This round is known as the “As Appropriate” (AA) round, since it’s typically only scheduled if the feedback for your interviews was positive. The AA round is totally dependent on how your previous rounds went. By that, we mean if any previous interviewers had cause for concern or just wanted to evaluate you on an additional parameter, they will note down in your feedback file. Your AA interviewer will go through all the feedback and decide what to ask you. So this round could be technical and you might be asked to code or do some system design or it could entirely be focused on cultural fit.

AA interviewers have asked Microsoft EM candidates these questions:

• Design the data model, storage format and network API for a TV program information guide system.
• If you could change one thing about your past place of employment, what would it be? Why?
• Talk about a scenario where somebody gave you the most difficult feedback. How did you take it?

Total comp for Software Engineering Managers ranges from $279K at level 64 (the first EM level) to $1.09M at 69, according to data from Levels.fyi.

RSUs typically vest evenly at 25% over 4 years.