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Interview Questions
Practice 9403 coding, system design and machine learning questions from 546 companies, sorted by role, topic and interview round. Every question has step-by-step hints, a code runner that supports 8 languages and an AI mentor; members also get the full solution walkthrough.
- 9403
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- 546
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- 11
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Showing 5581–5610 of 9403 results
- MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerIdentify the Extra Directed Edge
This question evaluates understanding of graph theory concepts—directed trees, parent-child constraints, and cycle detection—and measures competency in reasoning about how a single extra directed edge can violate rooted-tree properties.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerImplement Calendar, Tokenizer, and Meeting Optimizer
This problem tests your ability to parse structured meeting request strings into interval objects and then identify the largest subset of non-overlapping meetings that can be scheduled within a fixed workday.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsiteIntervalsParsingGreedy - MicrosoftMediumMachine Learning EngineerImplement K-Means and Detect Divisible Subarrays
This question evaluates a candidate's ability to implement an iterative clustering algorithm (K-means) and to reason about subarray sums modulo k, testing competencies in numerical computation, centroid management, edge-case handling, and efficient algorithm design.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerImplement Matrix Move and Logger
This problem tests in-place array manipulation for submatrix coordinate transformations and the implementation of a thread-safe, time-windowed rate limiter using a sliding window approach.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsiteArraysHash TableSliding Window - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerImplement Memory Allocation and In-Memory Records
This problem tests your ability to manage a block of contiguous memory via a free-list and maintain a hierarchical data structure for user records.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsiteMemory ManagementData StructuresGraphs - MicrosoftMediumMachine Learning EngineerImplement SFT Sample Packing
This problem tests your ability to efficiently pack variable-length sequences into fixed-length blocks for training, ensuring padding tokens do not influence the loss calculation.
Coding & AlgorithmsHR ScreenNLPData PreprocessingArrays - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerImplement SQL Table and DNA Ordering
This question evaluates a candidate's skills in robust input parsing, in-memory data modeling, API design, and sequence reconstruction from linked fragments, covering string handling, edge-case handling for CSV, and graph-like ordering of sequence fragments.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerImplement a Bounded Per-Key Ordered Task Executor
Design and implement a thread-safe, bounded task executor that guarantees sequential execution per key while enforcing a global concurrency limit across all keys.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screenconcurrencymultithreadingsystem-design-basics - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerImplement a Priority Queue from Scratch with Custom Ordering and Stable Ties
Data structures question that asks you to build a priority queue from scratch with insert, peek, remove-top and size operations, a caller-supplied ordering and stable ties. It tests the choice of underlying structure, invariant-preserving insertion and removal, complexity analysis and edge-case handling.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOther - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerImplement a Snapshot Set Iterator
This problem tests your ability to design a data structure that maintains point-in-time consistency for an iterator despite subsequent modifications to the underlying collection.
Coding & AlgorithmsTechnical ScreenData StructuresDesignIterator - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerImplement a Thread-Safe Per-Key Ordered Executor
Implement per-key FIFO task execution with thread-safe submission, bounded global concurrency, ready-key scheduling, and exception-safe slot release.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerImplement a rate limiter at scale
This problem tests your ability to implement an efficient, thread-safe rate limiter using a sliding window algorithm to ensure a request quota is enforced across a distributed environment.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsiteConcurrencyData StructuresDistributed Systems - MicrosoftHardSoftware EngineerImplement a sliding-window rate limiter allow()
This problem tests your ability to implement a thread-safe rate limiter using a sliding window algorithm to ensure a service stays within specified traffic constraints.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsiteConcurrencyRate LimitingHash Map - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerImplement a type-based mutex for tasks
This problem tests knowledge of synchronization primitives, dictionary-based locking mechanisms, and the ability to manage resource contention based on dynamic categorization.
Coding & AlgorithmsTechnical ScreenConcurrencySynchronizationMultithreading - MicrosoftHardSoftware EngineerImplement array and tree traversal tasks
This problem tests your ability to optimize an array-based trading algorithm using a greedy approach and your mastery of level-order tree traversal to extract a specific view of a binary tree.
Coding & AlgorithmsTechnical ScreenGreedyBFSDFS - MicrosoftMediumMachine Learning EngineerImplement cache and merge intervals
This question tests the ability to implement a fixed-capacity Least Recently Used (LRU) cache using hash maps and doubly-linked lists, followed by a classic interval processing algorithm to merge overlapping segments.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsiteLRU CacheIntervalsHash Map - MicrosoftHardSoftware EngineerImplement concurrent structures and debug queue code
This question evaluates data-structure implementation and concurrent programming competencies by testing construction of an LRU cache, a custom hash map, a quadtree spatial index, and debugging of a producer-consumer queue.
Coding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerImplement four data-structure/string geometry tasks
This problem tests foundational skills in string arithmetic, parsing, coordinate geometry, and segment tree-based range queries.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsiteStringsGeometryData Structures - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerImplement greedy decoding and beam search
This question evaluates understanding of autoregressive decoding strategies—greedy decoding and beam search—including cumulative log-probability scoring, beam maintenance, EOS handling, and sequence expansion logic; it is categorized under Coding & Algorithms for Software Engineer roles.
Coding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen - MicrosoftHardSoftware EngineerImplement idempotent request handling with idempotency keys
This problem tests your ability to design a thread-safe idempotency layer that ensures an API endpoint processes identical requests exactly once, even in the presence of concurrent execution.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsiteConcurrencySynchronizationSystem Design - MicrosoftHardData ScientistImplement lower_bound on unknown-size sorted array
This question evaluates ability to design efficient search algorithms for unknown-length non-decreasing arrays accessed via a limited get(i) API, emphasizing correctness proof and tight query/time complexity bounds.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - MicrosoftMediumData ScientistImplement rotated array binary search with duplicates
This question evaluates algorithm design and analysis skills, focusing on binary-search variants, handling duplicates in rotated non-decreasing arrays, rotation-index reasoning, and rigorous edge-case analysis; domain: Coding & Algorithms, specifically search algorithms and array manipulation.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerImplement the Linux cp Command, Then Explain Its OS and C++ Internals
A low-level engineering exercise to implement the Linux cp command in C++ and then explain what happens beneath it. It tests system calls, short writes and error handling, the page cache and kernel-assisted copying, and RAII-based management of file descriptors.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerImplement tree traversals, BFS, and subsets generation
This question evaluates proficiency with fundamental data structures and algorithms—binary tree traversals (preorder, inorder, postorder), breadth-first search on unweighted graphs, and power-set/subset generation—emphasizing implementation choices between recursive and iterative approaches and required time and space complexity reasoning.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerIn-Memory URL Shortener: Encode and Decode
Design an in-memory URL shortener class supporting fast encoding and decoding between original long URLs and compact short URLs using hash maps.
Coding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screenhash-tabledesignstring - MicrosoftMediumApplied ScientistInsert Spaces to Rebuild a Sentence from Dictionary Words
A coding question that asks you to insert spaces into a string that lost them so that every piece is a dictionary word, returning the smallest valid sentence or None when no split exists. It tests string segmentation with dictionary lookups, handling of impossible inputs, and a canonical tie-breaking rule.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerIntroduce yourself and explain 'Why us?'
This question evaluates behavioral and leadership competencies—communication, decision-making under ambiguity, stakeholder alignment, technical leadership, mentorship, and impact articulation—within the Category: Behavioral & Leadership for a software engineering role.
Behavioral & LeadershipTechnical Screen - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerKeep Stable Unique Column Names Across Schema Changes
Maintain stable case-insensitive unique column names across additions, removals, reordering, reappearance, and natural suffix collisions, with independent table histories.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerList Point Pairs Spanning Non-Degenerate Boxes in N Dimensions, Sorted by Volume
A coding problem that takes points in two or more dimensions, finds every pair whose axis-aligned box has non-zero volume, and returns those pairs with their volumes in a strict order. It tests careful pair enumeration, handling of flat or degenerate boxes, and deterministic sorting with tie-breaks.
Coding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen - MicrosoftMediumSite Reliability EngineerLive troubleshooting: diagnose and mitigate very high CPU on a public-facing service
Live troubleshooting scenario for a senior reliability role: a public-facing service shows very high CPU, and you must keep answering what you would check next. It tests impact-first triage, separating traffic growth from per-request regressions, profiling, and weighing rollback, scaling, throttling and asynchronous queueing.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
Microsoft