Microsoft interview questions

211 coding problems in the Placed library have been reported in Microsoft software engineering interviews, along with 6 behavioral questions. Every one can be run as a timed mock interview with a voice interviewer and a scored report.

Patterns that come up most

• Two pointers19
• Dynamic Programming15
• Simulation15
• DFS12
• Hashing10

Problems to start with

• Two SumEasy
• Valid ParenthesesEasy
• Reverse Linked ListEasy
• Best Time to Buy and Sell StockEasy
• Longest Substring Without Repeating CharactersMedium
• 3SumMedium
• Container With Most WaterMedium
• Longest Palindromic SubstringMedium
• Word SearchMedium
• Merge K Sorted ListsHard
• Trapping Rain WaterHard
• N-QueensHard

That is 12 of 211. Pro adds a company filter to the full library. See pricing.

Behavioral questions

• Dealing with Ambiguity

  Describe a time you had to choose between two architectural approaches with real trade-offs and no clear winner. How did you make the call? How did you communicate the reasoning so the team understood why it wasn't arbitrary?

• Collaboration & Influence

  Describe a cross-team project where you were responsible for coordination but not the direct manager of the people doing the work. How did you keep momentum? How did you handle it when someone else's priorities drifted away from yours?

• Conflict & Disagreement

  Tell me about a technical disagreement with a peer that got heated. What was it about? How did you separate the idea from the ego, and where did you end up?

• Impact & Outcomes

  Tell me about a project where the impact took a long time to materialize — six months or more after you shipped. How did you stay motivated in the interim? How did you measure whether you were on the right track before the results landed?

• Self-Awareness & Growth

  Describe something you were consistently bad at a few years ago and have genuinely improved on. What did the improvement curve look like — deliberate practice, one insight, new habits? How do you know it's actually changed and not just masked?

• Judgment in Context

  Describe a time you had to decide whether to escalate an issue. What made you pause? What factors tipped the decision one way or the other, and how did you communicate once you'd decided?

Practice a behavioral round and the interviewer asks follow-ups on your answers.

Company tags come from publicly shared interview reports. They are not confirmed by Microsoft and do not imply affiliation or endorsement.