practice a little every day, paws crossed ♡
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
- Questions
- 546
- Companies
- 11
- Topics
- 8
- Languages
Showing 2281–2310 of 3640 results
- MicrosoftMediumData ScientistEvaluate a Product Change That Adds More User Options
This question tests the ability to design an A/B test for a feature introducing choice-overload, specifically focusing on metric selection, trade-off analysis, and decision-making frameworks when metrics diverge.
Analytics & ExperimentationOnsiteExperimentationA/B TestingProduct Metrics - 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 - MicrosoftMediumMachine Learning EngineerExplain a project deeply
This question assesses the candidate's depth of ownership over a previous machine learning project, specifically testing their ability to articulate system design choices, technical trade-offs, and operational resilience.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsiteSystem DesignMLOpsArchitecture - 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 - MicrosoftMediumApplied ScientistFewest Distinct Values to Delete So at Least Half the Array Is Removed
A coding question that asks for the fewest distinct values whose complete deletion removes at least half of an integer array. It tests reasoning about how often each value occurs, proving that a choice is minimal, and the exact meaning of half when the array length is odd.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - 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 - MicrosoftMediumSite Reliability EngineerFind where two singly linked lists merge, given each as a sequence of node ids
Coding practice question: two singly linked lists that may merge into a shared tail are given as sequences of node ids, and you must return the id of the node where they first meet, or -1. It tests reasoning about linked list structure, linear-time traversal, and edge cases such as no shared node or one list being the other's tail.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - MicrosoftMediumMachine Learning EngineerHandle Cross-Team Dependencies and Scope Conflicts
This question evaluates competency in cross-team collaboration, stakeholder management, conflict resolution, prioritization, and influencing without formal authority in a Machine Learning Engineer context.
Behavioral & LeadershipOnsite - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 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 - 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