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Software Engineer 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.
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Showing 1441–1470 of 2336 results
- MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Ticketmaster-like ticketing system
This problem tests your ability to design a high-concurrency reservation system that prevents overbooking while ensuring fairness and low latency during peak traffic.
System DesignOnsiteConcurrencyDistributed SystemsScalability - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a URL Shortening Service
This question tests the ability to design a distributed, scalable system for mapping long URLs to short aliases, focusing on hash generation, storage strategy, and performance optimization.
System DesignOnsiteScalabilityHashingCaching - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Voice and Chat AI Receptionist Platform
Design a multi-tenant voice/chat AI receptionist with approved knowledge, authorized actions, interruption handling, and real human conversation takeover.
System DesignOnsite - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Windows App Notification System While Working With an AI Assistant
A system design exercise to design the Windows notification platform that lets many applications post, update and display notifications, completed with an AI assistant. It tests component design, isolation between apps, user controls and load handling, plus how well the candidate prompts, refines and critically evaluates AI output.
System DesignOnsite - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a cloud console main page
This question evaluates a candidate's understanding of designing a secure, multi-tenant cloud console main page, emphasizing authentication, authorization/permissions (including RBAC and scoped roles), audit logging, end-to-end request flow, and scaling for low-latency and high availability.
System DesignOnsite - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a high-scale URL shortener
This problem tests your ability to design a distributed, highly available URL shortening service that manages massive read-heavy traffic and ensures low-latency redirection.
System DesignOnsiteScalabilityCachingDistributed Systems - MicrosoftHardSoftware EngineerDesign a job scheduler ETL pipeline system
This question tests the ability to design a distributed, fault-tolerant job orchestration system capable of handling complex task dependencies, retries, and high-throughput data processing.
System DesignOnsiteDistributed SystemsETLScalability - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a live sports score search feature with near-real-time score updates
A system design exercise for a sports app's search feature that returns matching games with live, continuously updating scores. It probes requirement precision such as an explicit update-delay target, relational versus NoSQL storage choices, live update delivery, and high availability during traffic spikes.
System DesignOnsite - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a pipeline that ingests a live data stream and powers real-time charts
A high-level design question about ingesting a continuous stream of timestamped events and showing it on dashboards whose charts update live. It examines stream processing, aggregation and downsampling, late-event handling, storage for recent and historical data, and the ability to present a design clearly without a diagram.
System DesignOnsite - MicrosoftHardSoftware EngineerDesign a simple API rate limiter
This problem tests the ability to design a distributed rate-limiting service that maintains low latency and high accuracy across multiple application server instances.
System DesignOnsiteScalabilityCachingDistributed Systems - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerDesign an Event Booking System
This question tests the ability to design a high-concurrency booking system, focusing on preventing double-bookings, managing seat availability, and ensuring atomic transactions.
System DesignOnsiteConcurrencyDistributed SystemsDatabase Modeling - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerDesign an Online Tic-Tac-Toe Service with REST-Only APIs, Matchmaking and Multi-Region
Design an online two-player Tic-Tac-Toe service where clients may only use REST APIs, with online matchmaking, scalability and expansion to multiple regions. It tests server-authoritative game state, propagating moves without server push, race-free player pairing, and deciding which data stays region-local.
System DesignOnsite - MicrosoftHardSoftware EngineerDesign an image upload/download service
This question evaluates a candidate's competency in system design, distributed storage and processing, API design, scalability, security, reliability, and observability for production-grade services.
System DesignOnsite - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerDesign read-heavy org chart subordinate counts
Evaluates understanding of tree/graph data modeling, dynamic indexing, and consistency and concurrency control for maintaining aggregate subordinate counts under updates; Category/Domain: System Design.
System DesignOnsite - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerDiscuss mutexes, memory alignment, polymorphism, idempotency
This question evaluates understanding of concurrency control (mutexes and synchronization), memory alignment and layout, object-oriented polymorphism, and idempotent operations, encompassing key Software Engineering Fundamentals and systems-level concepts.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerExplain Platform Evolution, Ownership, and Career Motivation
Explain a platform’s evolution, your exact ownership, the trade-offs behind changes, and a concrete, professional motivation for the next role.
Behavioral & LeadershipOnsite - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerExplain Python, Java, and Memory Management
This question tests your understanding of language runtimes, memory management strategies, and the trade-offs between managed environments like Python and JVM-based languages like Java.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsiteJavaPythonGarbage Collection - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerExplain the Most Complex Project You Have Delivered
Explain a complex engineering project through personal ownership, constraints, alternatives, execution challenges, measurable evidence, and lessons learned.
Behavioral & LeadershipOnsite - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerFind shortest substring with n unique letters
This question evaluates proficiency in string processing, frequency management, and algorithmic optimization for locating constrained contiguous substrings. Commonly asked in the coding & algorithms domain because it reveals how candidates reason about character distinctness and efficiency trade-offs, it targets practical application of algorithmic techniques rather than purely conceptual theory.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - MicrosoftMediumSoftware EngineerFind the Most Visited Track Position
Determine the most frequently visited track position given a series of sprint endpoints by efficiently tallying overlapping intervals.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsitearraysprefix-sumdifference-array - MicrosoftEasySoftware EngineerHandling a Deadline You Will Miss, and Why Adding Engineers Late Backfires
A behavioral question about realizing that a task you own will miss its deadline and what you do next, followed by a probe on why adding more people close to delivery tends to backfire. It tests early escalation, framing options and trade-offs, ownership, and an understanding of ramp-up and coordination costs.
Behavioral & LeadershipOnsite - 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 - 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 - 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 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 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
Microsoft