I applied through a recruiter. The process took 5 days. I interviewed at Microsoft (Research Triangle Park, NC) in Feb 2015
Interview
It was an entire day meeting with managers from a variety of teams. The interview was quite grueling, but fair. They are extremely focused on ensuring that they hire top talent, so they understandably want to be thorough about it. Be prepared to do a LOT of whiteboard coding. You need to be able to explain performance characteristics, code testability, feasibility of algorithms in a production environment, etc.
There will be quite a lot of conversation about CS fundamentals, data structures, and algorithms. Strongly recommend pulling out some college textbooks or going through some interview preparation material if you don't feel confident about these things. Some of the problems are designed to be almost impossible to solve in the time provided - they are more interested in seeing your thought process, so don't get too frustrated during the process.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
Implement a queue in any language backed by an array. Explain how to test.
HR screening, one technical interview with the hiring manager then three interview loop which covered two system design and one dsa round.
System design was intensive and challenging.
It took them 5 weeks to come back with an offer. Background check was completed in a week, got joining date after 3 days.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a system for a startup company that let users post various types of content and get a unique url which can be shared with others to access the content
I applied online. I interviewed at Microsoft (Bengaluru) in Jun 2026
Interview
I got call via microsoft HR. She informed there will be 4 rounds of technical interviews all eliminator. Round 1 interview was a mid level graph question. The interviewer was actively involved, understood my logic, approach, challneged my assumeptions, did a dryrun at end, good experience. Round 2 inteviewer was extremely lazy and passive. It was a bad experience. He gave a problem statement of sliding window and disappeared. Wasn't intrested in hearing approach or even reading code. He came after 30 minutes , did a dry run and final output wasn't exactly correct. I identified a logical bug and started correcting it. He said there is no need , just finished the interview after that. The code i had written was optimal code but he didn't care to read that also. And there was still 20 minutes left. It gave me impression that interviewer in not at all interested in taking interview and they have been pushed my management. HR called next day to say i am not selected.