Microsoft Entry-Level Software Engineer Interview Guide

tl;dr

Founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Microsoft is one of Big Tech’s OG Big Five. With over 228,000 global employees and product offerings spanning hardware, software, social media, gaming, productivity, VR, IoT, and AI/ML, it’s hard to find a facet of modern life where this trillion-dollar company isn’t innovating.

Because of Microsoft’s many differing verticals, interview loops are completely independent, so each team’s interview questions and cadences vary. However, what remains true throughout the teams is that Microsoft tends to prefer entry-level software engineering candidates with demonstrated proficiency in at least some of the following:

• Critical thinking and communication
• Data structures and algorithms
• Thinking systematically and about business and user impact
• Incorporating feedback quickly and with agility

What does a Microsoft entry-level software engineer do?

Microsoft invests in the long-term growth of Software Engineers. You could be working on designing, developing, debugging, or delivering any of Microsoft’s hundreds of product offerings, but what will remain standard is that your curiosity and ability to respond to feedback will be nurtured and rewarded. Microsoft’s culture prioritizes the “growth mindset,” or the idea that anyone can learn as part of a Microsoft team.

The average total compensation across software engineering levels at Microsoft are:

• (Entry-level) Software Engineer:$157K
• Software Engineer: $191K
• Senior Software Engineer: $254K
• Principal Software Engineer: $344K

Before you apply

• Narrate your coding. Microsoft interviewers want to hear every step of your process.
• Practice using pseudocode since you may be asked to use it in coding rounds, and hiring managers mention rejecting candidates who are uncomfortable with it.
• Research the recent interview questions asked at Microsoft.
• Flex your growth mindset. Get ready to show curiosity and take feedback quickly.

Interview process

Though Microsoft teams have differing processes, applicants generally describe three interview stages:

• Recruiter phone screen to ensure you meet the minimum requirements for the role
• Hiring manager interview to discuss projects and assess your thinking
• Technical screen to test your coding comfort
• Onsite interview subdivided into four phases:
  • Two additional coding rounds of comparable difficulty
  • Hiring manager interview focusing on behavioral
  • “As-App” final round focusing largely on culture fit

Recruiter

There may be some light technical questions on this 30 to 40-minute call, but generally, the focus is on behavioral questions and typical logistics questions.

Be ready to talk about your previous work history and skills as they relate to the job description and why you’re passionate about scalability, and the specific focus of your team’s product offerings (aka “why Microsoft”).

Sample questions include:

• Walk me through your resume.
• Why Microsoft?
• What are you looking for in your next role?
• Tell me about a time you failed. How did you fix it?
• What kinds of projects have you worked on so far?

Hiring Manager interview

Unusually for larger tech companies, you’ll meet your hiring manager more than once throughout the interview loop at Microsoft. In your first hour-long conversation, your hiring manager will informally get a sense of your technical background. Unlike tech companies of comparable size like Meta, this interview will likely feel more conversational and unstructured. Your hiring manager may ask about past projects, but no matter what they ask, they’re assessing you on the overarching metric of “can this person grow here?”

At the entry level, hiring managers want to see you demonstrate soft skills and interpersonal competency just as much, if not more, than coding proficiency. Syntax and language can be taught, but a good teammate with curiosity and abstract problem-solving skills is hard to find. In all your interviews at Microsoft, make sure you’re also showing that you have perspective about your place on a team—hiring managers have disqualified highly skilled coders who have more ego than curiosity.

When discussing your projects, hiring managers want to see your initiative and eye for scalability, as well as thinking about the user. Microsoft product offerings are made to be used, so if your project has a ton of fancy code but users can’t navigate it, you likely won’t pass this interview. Great candidates at this stage show they thought strategically about their project’s impact (i.e., how many users, what infrastructure to support them, etc.).

Technical screen

During this round, you’ll have an hour-long call with another engineer, usually on the team you’ll be joining, at a higher level. Unique to Microsoft, the “formula” for coding interviews is typically:

1. A behavioral question as a warm-up.
2. An open-ended, knowledge-based question to test your general understanding. a. This question will generally pertain to the focus of your role, so study the job description closely.
3. More traditional coding problems to assess your algorithms and communication.

This model is used because Microsoft hiring teams want to see potential to become a successful engineer, rather than a fully-polished candidate. They’ll be looking for a candidate who can think reflectively, take feedback on the fly, and explain their thinking and choices, rather than a silent “keyboard cowboy” who can regurgitate memorized solutions without knowing why they work. Uncommunicative entry-level candidates are often rejected at this stage.

Comparing the philosophy of technical rounds, Microsoft and Google primarily care about your thought process (the “how” and “why”), whereas Meta and Amazon care mainly about your results (the “what”). Further setting Microsoft apart is the ability for you to take your time. In interviews with companies like Meta and Amazon, you’re given five distinct problems to solve in 50 minutes, but at Microsoft, expect to go in-depth about one or two related questions, with a focus on process and communication.

Topics include:

• Coding
• Searching Graphs and Trees
  • Particularly BFS and DFS
• String manipulation
• Data Structures

Sample questions include:

• Number pool—return contiguously increasing number from a number pool
• Convert an integer to a roman numeral
• Given a stack of integers, design a special stack such that the maximum element can be found in O(1) time and O(1) extra space.
• Tell me about the difference between a thread and a process.
• Tell me about a time you had conflict. What did you do to resolve it?
• How would you describe the term 'multi-threading' to a five-year-old?
• Check if a given string is a palindrome.
• Explain the difference between classes and objects to a five-year-old.

Onsites

These interviews are typically scheduled back-to-back on the same day, and are designed to test your ability to collaborate, communicate, and solve ambiguous problems, as well as assess your culture fit at Microsoft.

You’ll have two coding rounds and a hiring manager round, scheduled for 3-4 hours in total. If you pass those, you’ll get the very last step: the “as-app” interview. Despite the name, most applicants were able to complete these over Zoom.

a. Two more coding rounds

The 60-minute coding rounds are similar in difficulty level to the tech screen. Your interviewer will be a senior data engineer on your prospective team. Expect follow-up questions and more theoretical questions throughout, as well as the same formula as your tech screen. You’ll be asked:

1. A warm-up behavioral question
2. An open-ended technical question relevant to the job description
3. A more traditional coding question

Unlike companies like Instacart, Microsoft technical interviewers are very invested in your processing and communication, so explain your thinking and ask good questions.

At this phase of interviewing, your interviewers are especially looking for candidates who know enough about programming to think critically and speak clearly, and who aren’t just silently regurgitating “the right answer.” Hiring teams want to see candidates who are open, coachable, collaborative, and friendly, so treat these interviews like conversations.

Your interviewers will want to give you feedback in the moment, ask about your choices, and generally interact with you as if you’re on a team together. That makes these interviews feel a little more approachable than similar stages at other companies. That said, this phase of Microsoft’s interview loop is the one most commonly failed by candidates, so take your time, and make sure you’re communicating clearly. Common disqualifications for entry-level candidates include:

• any candidate using AI/LLMs on coding problems
• any candidates who jump right into the problem without speaking or considering trade-offs of potential solutions

Topics Include:

• Linked lists
• Graphs/Strings
• Trees
• Dynamic Programming

Sample questions include:

• Tell me about a time you had to give someone feedback. What was it, and what was the result?
• Tell me about a time you’ve had to teach a colleague a complex operation. What was it, and what was the result?
• Given an array of blocks where each cell represents the height of the current block, we have two frogs starting on the same block. The frog can only jump to another adjacent block if it is higher or equal to the one it’s already on. Return the max distance that can be between the two frogs if they can start together on any block.
• Tell me about your favorite Microsoft product offering, and what you’d do to improve it.
• Copy a linked list with pointers to a random element.
• Given the hour and minute on an analogue clock, give an equation to calculate the angle between the hour and minute hand accurately to the second.
• Given an NxN boolean array of ships’ locations where a "true" cell indicates a ship or a part of a ship is in this cell. Find the number of ships in the array, noting that two different ships or parts of ships cannot be adjacent to each other.

b. Hiring Manager interview

The questions asked during this 40–50 minute conversation will be more traditional “interview” questions than the previous time you met with the hiring manager. They’ll ask questions to assess not just what you’ve done, but what you’re excited about, including non-technical hobbies.

Expect to talk through a past project end-to-end, speaking in detail about technical challenges and quantifiable business impact. You can also expect questions in this round to have a strong emphasis on your communication and collaboration styles.

Sample questions include:

• Walk me through a project you worked on from start to finish.
• What are you most curious about in our stack?
• What is a recent challenge you had to overcome as a team?

c. “As-app” interview

This hour-long conversation will be your final interview. An “as-app” (short for “as appropriate”) interview, is comparable to a final c-suite interview at a mid-size startup. Although it shares timing with Amazon’s bar-raiser interview, it’s less focused on how you work under pressure, and more focused on how you’d fit in as part of a team.

Your interviewer will typically be a director or skip-level, so they’ll be asking more abstract questions, from a more business-impact perspective than your previous interviewers. This interviewer will have veto power over your application, and will be looking for your soft skills and growth mindset.

You may be asked some technical questions this round, so be familiar with the job requirements, since the questions in this round are more “thought experiments” about the team’s work. For example, a recent candidate for an entry-level security team role was asked, “how would you stop a DDOS attack?” You can go as deep or as broad as you feel best answers the question, but make sure you emphasize how you’d work as a team, and what you need to grow your skills.

Additional Resources

• Take our software engineering course to level up your coding.
• Get coaching and actionable feedback from software engineers at the level you aspire to land an offer for.
• Practice with mock interviews on the most common types of problems.

FAQs

What can I expect from my interview at Microsoft?

You can expect a traditional recruiter call, and multiple points of contact with the hiring manager. You’ll have three coding rounds in total (one as a screener, two onsite) with a similar formula, and one “as-app” interview, all of which will be looking for a candidate who can take feedback, reflect, and demonstrate potential rather than perfection.

On average, how much do Microsoft Software Engineers typically make?

The average total compensation across software engineering levels at Microsoft are:

• (Entry-level) Software Engineer:$157K
• Software Engineer: $191K
• Senior Software Engineer: $254K
• Principal Software Engineer: $344K

How long is the Microsoft interview process?

Typically, the entire interview process takes around four weeks.

How should I prepare for an entry-level software engineering interview at Microsoft?

• Research the Microsoft growth mindset, and practice demonstrating it in your interview answers.
• Familiarize yourself with the tech stack and relevant questions of your potential role, since you’ll be asked role and team-specific questions during your onsite interviews.
• Practice verbally analyzing potential solutions to coding problems as you solve them, with a particular emphasis on the tradeoffs of each option.
• Familiarize yourself with data structures and algorithmic problem solving, and be ready to slow down and demonstrate your curiosity.

Will I have in-person interviews?

Microsoft interviews are largely done over Zoom, but you may be asked to return to office if you get a job offer.

What happens if I get rejected?

If you get rejected for one role, Microsoft is one of the few tech companies that doesn’t have a “cooling off” period for applicants, or a limit on how many roles you can apply for. You can apply for another role right after, and that rejection won’t affect your next application. Since recruiting loops are independent of each other, you can even interview for multiple roles simultaneously.