Microsoft Engineering Manager (EM) Interview Guide
Updated by Microsoft candidates
Written by Graham Carlson, Senior Technical ContributorThis guide focuses on interviewing for levels 64 (Microsoft's entry-level EM) through 67 (senior director), but it also applies to other levels.
This guide was written with the help of engineering manager interviewers at Microsoft.
tl;dr
Microsoft is a multinational tech corporation invested in everything from software to security services, cloud computing, and even AI. It’s half a century old and boasts nearly a quarter of a million employees. Although it’s known primarily for its operating system and suite of software products, Microsoft has maintained an interest and investment in cutting-edge technologies by engaging in major acquisitions, allowing it to branch out into social media (LinkedIn) and software development tools (GitHub). More recently, Microsoft has emerged as a leading player in the generative AI space, thanks to an extensive licensing and investment partnership with OpenAI.
Because they offer such a wide range of products and services, applicants to engineering manager positions at Microsoft could be working on anything from cloud infrastructure to email servers. Microsoft favors employees and managers who exhibit a growth mindset, and who are eager to learn and understand both the high-level and granular details of everything they work on. Although there is no specific set of cultural traits they require, having a flexible, learning-based approach is critical.
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What does a Microsoft Engineering Manager do?
The exact nature of an EM role at Microsoft is team- and product-dependent, but generally speaking, Microsoft Engineering Managers act as coordinators, advocates, and high-level planners for their team. In addition to setting goals and benchmarks for the team’s work, they also act as facilitators—they work cross-functionally with other teams, push for resources from higher-level managers, set budgets, and find ways to help each member of their team do their best work.
Microsoft EMs are known to be much more hands-on than at other companies, contributing directly by writing code and building out tools to help them assess their team’s progress. They’re also expected to incorporate questions about scale into their process. Again, encouraging your team to embrace a growth mindset is important at Microsoft. Being able to adapt and put effort into continuous learning is a point of emphasis.
Before you apply
- Research and learn as much as possible about the product or role your team plays in the organization, as many—if not all—of the questions you will face will be specific to that product. This is a great opportunity to think about scale, particularly if you don’t have a background working at a company as large as Microsoft.
- Practice some basic coding skills relevant to the subject area of your team. Although coding will not be a major focus during your interview rounds, Microsoft EMs are expected to be fairly technical and should have at least a moderate grasp of their technical responsibilities.
- Research and understand the growth mindset concept, and think of examples of how you have (or haven’t) incorporated this into your work in the past.
- Go back through some past projects that are relevant to the role you’re applying for. Think about how you managed each project, including how you led your team, and how you worked with stakeholders and upper management to ensure you were properly resourced to complete the task.
- Check out recently asked questions for EM candidates at Microsoft.
- Get feedback from Microsoft interviewers to help you speak with more clarity and confidence about your past achievements and what you learned.
Interview process
The interview process will depend on the level of role you are applying for. For Microsoft EMs between levels 64–67, you’ll go through 6–7 interviews:
- Recruiter screening call
- Hiring manager screen
- Technical screening call
- Final round, typically composed of these 4 rounds:
- Coding round
- System design
- Behavioral assessment
- As Appropriate (“As App”) interview focused on culture fit
First round
1. Recruiter screen
As with most screening calls, this conversation with a recruiter will focus on your resume, experience, and interest in the role. These calls generally result in declining 90% of the applicant pool, choosing only the 10% of applicants who have the requisite management experience, a good amount of domain expertise, and demonstrate a clear understanding of the importance of scale when working at Microsoft.
Some of the questions you might hear in this round are:
Asked at - Why do you want to work at Microsoft?
- What’s your experience working on a product like this?
- What kind of experience do you have building products at scale?
2. Hiring manager screen
This call will focus on some of your past projects, particularly those that had you in a management role. The interviewer will want to know more about your experience as a manager and what kind of approach you bring to the table. Generally speaking, it’s far better to be honest about your experience, even if you’re worried that it’s too limited for the role. Microsoft values team members who bring a new and necessary background and set of skills, and might favor that over someone who has more experience but “adds” less to the team. As with the recruiter screen, this call will remove about 90% of the remaining applicants from the process.
Some example questions you might get are:
Asked at 
Asked at 3. Technical screen
Despite the name, this will be a much more conversational interview than a hands-on one. The primary feature of this round is an exploration of your expertise in the product and domain of the team you are applying to. For example, if you were applying to work on a team within the Azure organization, you would be asked to discuss the elements of cloud computing you have worked on in the past and a fairly in-depth discussion about those projects. Applying to the AI team, the interviewer might ask about the elements of the LLM or AI projects you have worked on, how you worked with inference pipelines, and other parts of an AI service or tool.
Some questions you might be asked include:
Asked at Uber • - What are the key components of the (domain) product you work on?
- What’s the biggest challenge about running a (domain) product at scale?
Final round
4. Coding round
This round will be a more hands-on demonstration of your skills, but is unlikely to be very complex or involved. Because EMs with technical knowledge are preferred, you should practice some common coding challenges with a language you feel confident in. Most basic questions will deal with interacting with data in arrays and strings. Some rounds may even involve more direct, discipline-specific questions, involving a discussion with the interviewer about how you might approach a technical problem your team is facing.
Some questions you might see are:
Asked at Apple, Intuit, JP Morgan Chase + 6 more 5. System design
This will be the most involved and domain-specific element of the final round, as it will focus on a problem specific to the team you are applying to manage. Some interviewers may also choose a question that is specific to your background in the domain—for example, if you have a background in cloud security and compliance, they may ask you to design an automated monitoring and alerting system to alert your team of any issues and improve the team’s security posture.
One of the key elements you’ll need to think through during this round is scale. Because many of Microsoft’s products have users in the millions, you’ll need to display an ability to think ahead to the way your system will handle ballooning user counts, API calls, or security alerts. In the above example, how would you optimize your alerting system to triage the alerts and prioritize them most efficiently? How would you think through large-scale losses of cloud infrastructure, such as migrating services as seamlessly as possible from one region to another?
Some system design prompts you might see include:
- Design a cloud security and compliance monitoring system.
6. Behavioral interview
This interview, which will focus on your management and interpersonal skills, is a common place where many candidates get “tripped up”. The questions can be fairly open-ended, and are intended as a prompt for a larger discussion about your skills and experience dealing with challenging situations, such as a conflict between team members or a time when you had to fire someone. Your willingness to engage in conversation, take accountability for your answer, and speak to the things you learned or feel you could have done better will help your assessment, as will taking the time to review and discuss your career in detail.
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For example, discussing a case where you fired someone will depend on the circumstances that led to that. Was it simply a matter of the employee underperforming, or were there other underlying issues? Did you attempt to resource them, train them, and give them a chance to improve their performance, or did you fire them quickly? This is a conversational round because there isn’t one “right” answer in this situation, so showing your reasoning and process is important. If you feel that you fired someone too quickly, what would you have done differently?
Another key focus will be how you’ve used your position to collaborate with other teams and defend your team’s work, your process, and justify the need for further resources. This is not simply acting as a “middle man” between your team and others, but demonstrating that you can identify the most pressing problems, come up with a solution, and work cross-functionally on it, all while explaining your process to leadership.
Some example questions they might ask to start the conversation are:
- Have you ever helped someone on your team level up their skills? How did that work?
- How do you achieve buy-in on your team, across teams, and with your managers?
Asked at 
Asked at 7. “As App” Interview
“As Appropriate” interviews are designed to allow the team to follow up on subjects that weren’t substantively addressed in the prior rounds, either because they didn’t have enough time or the interviewers want the candidate to answer in more detail. Whether or not this final interview is deemed appropriate will depend on the level of management you’re applying for, and the level of growth the organization you are applying for is experiencing. For example, an AI team, as part of a rapidly growing element of Microsoft’s business, may choose not to conduct one, simply in the interest of moving faster.
For EM rounds, this interview will typically go deeper into culture fit, more specifically “culture add”, focusing on your unique experience and what you might bring to your team that isn’t already there. Typically this involves asking you for an example of your past work, an example of a mistake you made, a limitation or issue your team continually hit, or a failure you had to address. Other topics might be specifically about your team’s product and subject area and how you see it changing in the coming years. For example, if you’re applying to be an EM in the security organization, how will AI impact your day-to-day work and priorities? How will it hurt or help with your organization’s goals?
Some example questions you might get are:
- How would you use AI to change and improve your team’s workflows?
Additional resources
- Microsoft’s blog
- Microsoft Developer blog
- Culture at Microsoft
- Microsoft Candidate COC and interview guide
- Harvard Business School: Growth Mindset Versus Fixed Mindset
FAQs about the Microsoft Engineering Manager interview
How should I prepare for a Microsoft Engineering Manager interview?
Start by learning as much as you can about the team and organization you’re applying for, especially their products and customers. You can also start working on common EM and basic coding questions. Then get feedback from Microsoft EM interviewers. You should set aside some time to learn about or review your understanding of the growth mindset, as this is a major component of Microsoft’s culture and approach.
How much do Microsoft Engineering Managers make?
According to Levels.fyi, Microsoft EMs make the following (this uses Microsoft’s job coding system, with 64 roughly correlating to L4, or the first level of management):
- 64: $274,000
- 65: $350,000
- 66: $389,000
- 67: $534,000
- 68: $784,000
- 69: $1,090,000
How long is the Microsoft Engineering Manager interview process?
The amount of interviews and process will vary based on your experience and the role you are applying for, but will likely take between 3 to 8 weeks.
What kind of management experience do I need to work as an EM at Microsoft?
This is level-dependent, but levels 66 and 67 are generally expected to have managed a team of 5–10 people. For some lower roles, experience as a technical lead could be sufficient, as long as you are forthright about your experience and can speak to your process and approach at the times when you performed management and leadership tasks.
Do I need to have worked at another large company to apply for this role?
It does help to have some hands-on experience working on projects that scale to the level of many Microsoft products, but you don’t have to have worked at a large organization to be seen as a good candidate. If you only have experience working at SMBs, you can improve your chances by learning what the team you’re applying to works on and researching how scale can impact those projects and tools.
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