Microsoft Software Engineer Interview Guide
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The role of a Microsoft Software Engineer
The Microsoft software engineer interview is unlike any other tech interview. Microsoft transformed under Satya Nadella from a competitive "know-it-all" culture to a collaborative "learn-it-all" philosophy. This shift shows up in their interviews. They do screen technical ability as any FAANG firm, however, they also are very concerned with growth mindset, your capacity to learn through mistakes, taking risks, and valuing teamwork than competition.
Microsoft's interview process stands out in a few ways. Most notably: the AA (As Appropriate) round, which is your final interview with senior leadership and only happens if earlier rounds go well. Getting invited to the AA round is a strong signal you're likely to get an offer. Microsoft also asks questions like "What's your favorite Microsoft product?" because they want people who genuinely care about their mission.
The whole process takes 4-8 weeks from application to offer. Our guide walks through the experiences that recent Microsoft engineering candidates have told us they encountered during their loop, and the insights we were able to distill from them into tactics you can use during your own prep.
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The Microsoft Interview Process: Round by Round
The process has 4 stages. However, we've heard from multiple candidates now that it's not followed very exactly, especially at the onsite stage.
At Microsoft, for IC3 you want to target two medium problems in a 40 minute window. That would be ideal. If you can solve one easy and one hard then that would be ideal. But at least two mediums I think is good. If you can solve three mediums or two mediums and one easy, then you get bonus points, essentially. But the expectation is to solve two medium problems in 40 minutes.
Relevant Guides
Round 1: Recruiter Screening (45 minutes)
Overview
This first call verifies your background, the reason you are interested in joining Microsoft and what teams you might be interested in. The recruiter will enquire of your interest in Microsoft, rather than in technology in general. They are referring you to the appropriate team and ensuring that the level of role is appropriate to your experience.
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Round 2: Technical Assessment
Overview
You'll face one of two paths here:
Codility Online Assessment (60-90 minutes): Microsoft uses Codility for a lot of candidates. You get 2-3 coding problems at medium to hard difficulty. The assessment is auto-graded and screen-recorded. You need to score 60% or higher to move forward, which usually means completing most problems with passing test cases. A surprising number of candidates told Prepfully this stage was harder than they expected, even those who've done 100+ LeetCode problems say the time pressure and difficulty caught them off guard.
Technical Phone Screen (45-60 minutes): Some candidates skip the online assessment (usually with referrals or certain experience levels) and go straight to a phone screen via Microsoft Teams. You'll solve 1-2 coding problems in a collaborative editor without syntax highlighting or autocomplete. The interviewer will also mix in behavioral questions throughout.
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Round 3: Onsite Loop (4-5 hours, virtual on Teams)
Overview
This is the main event: 4-5 back-to-back one-hour interviews, usually with breaks between sessions. What you'll face:
3-4 Coding Rounds: Medium difficulty LeetCode is normally pretty common, with some medium-hard problems to senior applicants (Level 62+). Topics include arrays, strings, linked lists, trees, graphs and dynamic programming. Each round has a combination of behavioral questions.
1-2 System Design Rounds: This is done only when interviewing on the Level 61 or more. Junior engineers (Level 59-60) do not normally receive system design or receive a highly simplified version. The questions of the system design are targeted at such Microsoft products as OneDrive, Teams, or Azure services.
Behavioral Questions Throughout: Unlike companies that isolate behavioral assessment, Microsoft weaves it into every technical round. They're constantly checking for growth mindset and culture fit.
Round 4: AA (As Appropriate) Round
Overview
This final interview only happens if your earlier rounds went well. The AA interviewer is typically a senior leader like a Principal Engineering Manager or higher. They have two roles:
If earlier interviews left questions about your skills, the AA round probes those gaps. If you crushed the technical rounds but behavioral fit seems unclear, expect more behavioral questions.
If you're a strong candidate, the AA round shifts to "selling Microsoft", the interviewer highlights opportunities, team impact, and why you should join.
Getting invited to the AA round means you're very likely to receive an offer if you perform well. One Amazon SDE2 candidate on Blind asked: "do they invite you to the last round even if you don't do good on the last rounds? More specifically, what are the chances to get an offer if I am invited to the last round?" The community response confirmed that AA round invitation is indeed a strong signal.
Candidates who've been through it say the AA interviewer can override earlier feedback, as one put it: "The result can override existing results." This round matters a lot because of this overriding ability, even a really good loop can get "undone" if you don't pull this off masterfully.
After the AA round, you usually hear back in 1-2 weeks, though some candidates report waiting longer.
What Happens in Each Interview Type
Coding Interviews
Most positions at Microsoft require solving median LeetCode problems and tougher problems at senior levels. The most frequent ones that are reported by candidates include:
- Arrays and strings (36% of questions)
- Linked lists (29%)
- Trees and graphs (20%)
- Dynamic programming (10-15%)
- Sorting and searching (6%)
Real Microsoft software engineer interview questions candidates faced:
- LeetCode #146 (LRU Cache) - extremely common, multiple candidates report this
- LeetCode #210 (Course Schedule II) - graph problem
- LeetCode #295 (Find Median from Data Stream) - heap problem
- String manipulation problems (rotation, substring matching)
- Tree traversal variations (inorder, preorder, path sums)
What matters: thinking aloud, explaining your approach before coding, handling edge cases, and optimizing solutions. Microsoft uses CoderPad or Teams without syntax highlighting, so you need to write clean code without IDE help.
It's extremely important to be able to actually solve the problem. There's a myth that your "way of thinking" or communication can carry you through without solving it - that's not true. You need to solve it correctly. However, Microsoft does value clear communication and the ability to explain your reasoning, especially when making trade-offs or choosing between different approaches.
System Design (Level 61+ Only)
System design at Microsoft focuses on their actual products and Azure services. Real questions:
- Design OneDrive file sync system (with conflict resolution and delta sync)
- Design Teams chat service (real-time messaging, presence, message ordering)
- Design Azure API Gateway (routing, rate limiting, authentication)
- Design data aggregation for Azure tenants with rate limit handling
What's different at Microsoft: They focus on cloud-first architecture, cost efficiency, security and compliance. In the case of Azure-oriented jobs, one should be familiar with Azure services (EC2, S3, Lambda, Cosmos DB). Older candidates claim to have been asked questions regarding actual problems at Microsoft, such as scaling collection of data of thousands of Azure tenants without violating rate limits.
Ahmed Sabbour, Principal PM Lead for Azure Kubernetes Service, regularly publishes on the Azure Engineering Blog about distributed systems challenges Microsoft engineers actually solve, multi-region architectures, traffic management at scale, fault-tolerant storage. Reading these gives you a window into the architectural thinking Microsoft evaluates in system design rounds.
Junior engineers (Level 59-60) rarely get system design questions. If you do, the bar is much lower.
Behavioral Interviews
Microsoft uses the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) and focuses heavily on growth mindset. Core competencies they assess:
- Learning from failure
- Collaboration across teams
- Customer focus
- Adaptability to change
- Influence without authority
Some of the questions Microsoft candidates reaffirmed they were asked in their Prepfully debriefs:
- "Tell me about a time you learned something completely new"
- "What's your favorite Microsoft product and why?"
- "Describe your biggest failure and what you learned"
- "Tell me about a time you influenced without authority"
- "Why Microsoft?"
The Prepfully Microsoft EM coaches told us that demonstrating a growth mindset in these questions matters a great deal. Show that you:
- Embrace challenges rather than avoid them
- See failure as a path to learning
- Value feedback and coaching
- Prioritize team success over individual achievement
- Stay curious and keep learning
Some candidates who did well technically still got rejected for behavioral reasons. One candidate on Reddit reflected: "I think during the behavioral interview, I might have focused more on my ability to learn quickly rather than emphasizing my current experience" - despite acing the technical round and getting told "congratulations" by the interviewer.
The balance you need to strike: showing you can learn while also demonstrating you already have enough relevant experience for the role.
The AA Round
This round happens with a senior leader and serves as the final decision point. If you have technical gaps, expect more technical questions. If you're strong technically, expect strategic discussions about your past projects, impact, and how you think about large-scale problems.
The AA interviewer can override negative feedback from earlier rounds or confirm a hire decision. Candidates who've been through this round say it focuses on project deep-dives, with questions like "Why did you make that technical decision?" and "How did you measure impact?"
If the interviewer starts talking about team opportunities and what you could work on, that's a great sign, they're selling you on Microsoft.
Want to practice Microsoft-style interviews? Schedule a mock interview with a Microsoft engineer on Prepfully
→ Schedule nowHow to Prepare for Your Microsoft Interview
Timeline: 4-6 Weeks
Most candidates who get offers spend 4-6 weeks preparing for the Microsoft software engineer interview, focusing on all areas.
Coding Practice
Do 100-150 LeetCode problems before your interview. Focus on:
- 30% Easy problems
- 60% Medium problems
- 10% Hard problems
Key topics: arrays, strings, linked lists, trees, graphs, dynamic programming, and sorting/searching.
Practice without IDE autocomplete since Microsoft's interview environment is bare-bones. Use LeetCode's Microsoft company tag to see frequently asked problems and common Microsoft software engineer interview questions. Candidates who got offers report solving 50-100 problems works well, one person did 68 problems (24 easy, 44 medium) over 31 days and got a Level 63 offer. For additional practice with similar coding interview formats, check out the Amazon Software Engineer interview guide which follows a comparable structure.
From a benchmarking POV - Sneha Tuli, Principal Product Manager at Microsoft, detailed on the Microsoft Developer Blog how Microsoft processes over 600K pull requests monthly with rigorous code review standards. That same emphasis on clean, maintainable code shows up in interviews, your solution needs to work, but it also needs to be readable and follow best practices that would survive a real Microsoft code review.
System Design (If Level 61+)
Study Microsoft-specific scenarios:
- OneDrive file storage and sync
- Teams chat architecture
- Azure services and cloud infrastructure
- Distributed caching
- URL shorteners with security requirements
Read the Microsoft Tech Blog and go through Azure architecture center to understand how they actually build systems. Microsoft built Azure as their cloud platform and uses it for everything, knowing Azure architecture matters.
Key concepts: microservices, APIs, databases (SQL vs NoSQL), caching, load balancing, multi-region deployment, security, compliance, and cost optimization. If you're also interviewing at other companies with similar system design expectations, the Google Software Engineer interview guide offers valuable insights into how top tech companies evaluate distributed systems thinking.
Preparing for Behavioral Questions: Growth Mindset is Non-Negotiable
Prepare 5-7 STAR stories covering:
- Learning from failure (essential for growth mindset)
- Adapting to unexpected changes
- Collaborating across different teams
- Going above and beyond for customers
- Technical challenges you overcame
Research Microsoft products. Use Teams, try Azure, explore GitHub (Microsoft-owned). Have thoughtful answers ready for "Why Microsoft?" and "What's your favorite Microsoft product?"
Show you value learning over knowing, collaboration over competition, and feedback over defensiveness. Microsoft moved away from competitive stack ranking to collaborative performance management.
Mock Interviews
Candidates who did mock interviews say behavioral practice really helps. As one of Prepfully’s recent users put it (she did 6 sessions on the platform!): "Behavioral interviews are tricky and I didn't know how good or bad I was. After mock practicing with coaches, it changed the whole game."
Practice explaining technical decisions out loud. Microsoft interviewers want to hear your thought process, not just see correct code.
Compensation and Levels
Microsoft uses levels 59-70+ for software engineers. Here are 2025 compensation ranges based on what candidates actually report:
Level 59 (SDE I - Entry): $162K total ($126K base, $22K stock, $14K bonus)
Level 60 (SDE I - 1-2 years experience): $184K total ($142K base, $29K stock, $13K bonus)
Level 61 (SDE II - 2-5 years): $197K total ($151K base, $27K stock, $19K bonus)
Level 62 (SDE II - 4-6 years): $207K total ($165K base, $31K stock, $12K bonus)
Level 63 (Senior - 6-10 years): $249K total ($150-200K base, higher stock/bonus)
Level 64 (Senior/Staff): $276K total
Level 65-67 (Principal): $321-540K total
Higher levels exist (68-70+) with compensation reaching $1M+ for Partner-level engineers.
What to know:
- Stock vests over 4 years at 25% annually for your initial grant
- Annual refreshers vest over 5 years at 20% per year (much smaller than initial grant)
- This creates a "compensation cliff" after 4-5 years when your initial grant finishes
- 401(k) match: 50% up to IRS limit ($11,500 employer match if you max out)
- Sign-on bonuses: $10-30K for junior levels, $50-150K+ for principal levels
- Location adjustments: Bay Area and NYC get 10-15% premium over Seattle baseline
Level 63 is the "career level", you can stay there without promotion pressure. From what we've heard from candidates and employees, most engineers reach Level 63 in 3-5 years, though some take 6+ years.
The Microsoft SWE Interview tl;dr
What to remember about the Microsoft software engineer interview:
- Growth mindset matters as much as technical skills
- AA round is a strong signal but you still need to perform well
- Codility assessment filters many candidates, practice timed problems
- You must solve the problems correctly - communication helps but doesn't replace solving it
- System design for Level 61+ focuses on Azure and cloud thinking
- Behavioral questions test culture fit heavily in every round
- "Why Microsoft?" needs genuine product knowledge and interest
- Prepare for 4-6 weeks, practicing all areas
- Compensation is competitive but 30-50% below FAANG at similar levels