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Microsoft interview guide

Builds Azure, Windows, Office, GitHub, Xbox and Copilot. Loops are medium LeetCode coding, often an LLD round, plus a senior as-appropriate final interviewer. Updated October 2026.

Microsoft at a glance
Category Big Tech
Intern level Software Engineering Intern (unleveled). First and second years: Explore program (12 weeks US, 8 weeks India). Rising first-years: Discovery (4 weeks, Redmond or Atlanta).
New grad level 59 or 60 (IC2, title Software Engineer; Levels.fyi shows 59 as 'SDE' and 60 as the next step). India new grad offers in 2026 report 'SDE 1 (L59)'.
0 to 3 years 59 to 60 (Software Engineer, IC2) for 0 to about 2 yrs; 61 to 62 (Software Engineer II, IC3) for roughly 2 to 5 yrs. Senior starts at 63 (IC4).
Online assessment HackerRank (most 2025 to 2026 reports, including 'Microsoft Global Talent Acquisition' invites); Codility in early 2025 and earlier cycles : Usually 2 coding questions in 60 to 110 minutes (India campus intern OA: 75 minutes; L60 India OA: 110 minutes). Feb 2025 Redmond SDE II OA on Codility: 3 questions in 60 minutes. No separate behavioral or work-style section reported.
Coding rounds Interns: 2 (3 for AI SWE and CoreAI tracks). New grad and 59/60: 2 to 3 coding rounds inside a 3 to 4 round loop. 61/62: 2 to 3 coding rounds plus LLD or HLD.
Behavioral Microsoft culture (growth mindset, customer obsessed, diverse and inclusive, One Microsoft) and the values respect, integrity and accountability. Official interview tips ask for STAR(R): Situation, Task, Action, Result, Reflection. Core competencies listed in prep guides: collaboration, drive for results, customer focus, influencing for impact, judgment, adaptability.
Timeline Interns: postings open from early August; the Fullstack track takes applications in the first week of each month through February, while CoreAI processes applications on an ongoing basis September to April; Explore windows October to December; Microsoft allows up to 90 days for a decision. Aced (formerly Exponent) says student processes can take up to two months and up to nine interviews. Reported examples: US Summer 2027 intern applied Sep 1, OA about 2.5 weeks later, interview invite about 3 days after the OA, interview about 2 weeks after that (Sep 2026); India on-campus OA to interview invite in 3 days; off-campus intern applied Nov 27, OA Dec 27, interview Jan 29, rejection Feb 8 (2024 to 2025 cycle); US SDE II recruiter call Mar 2, OA Mar 5, loop pushed to April; US SDE II offer the day after the final interview (Jul 2025). Team matching for full-time can stall: one candidate sat in the matching pool for 32 days after passing all interviews (Dec 2025).
New grad pay Levels.fyi US software engineer data (page read Oct 4, 2026): level 59 'SDE' about $161K total comp (base $128K, stock $24K/yr, bonus $9.7K); 60 about $191K (base $141K); 61 'SDE II' about $195K; 62 about $202K. India (Levels.fyi USD figures at the site rate of about 94.5 INR/USD): 59 about 27 lakh INR, 60 about 32 lakh, 61 about 49 lakh. Reported 2026 India new grad offer: SDE 1 (L59) base 18.05 lakh INR, $35K stock over 4 years, 4.51 lakh sign-on, 0 to 20% bonus. US interns (official Summer 2027 postings): $5,690 to $11,210 per month ($7,410 to $12,250 in SF Bay Area and NYC); Explore $25.96 to $47.77 per hour ($37.58 to $54.04 in SF Bay Area and NYC). The us-intern-pay page itself does not list figures; they are in each posting. Ranges vary by location and level.
Official links Careers, Students, Official interview prep, Values

Interview process

New grad

  1. Apply (referral optional). Apply on apply.careers.microsoft.com (new portal; the old portal was retired in late 2025 per candidate reports). Official intern page: referrals are not required and all candidates get equal consideration. Postings stay open a minimum of 5 days and accept applications on an ongoing basis until filled.
  2. Online assessment. HackerRank in most 2025 to 2026 reports (Codility in early 2025 and before). Usually 2 coding questions, one easier and one medium or hard, in 60 to 110 minutes. OA rules (Explore OA, Dec 2025) say copying code, pasting external content or switching tabs is flagged, recorded and can disqualify you.
  3. Recruiter screen. 15 to 30 minute call on background, role interest and logistics (US SDE II report, Mar 2026: a 15 minute call that ran about 20 minutes, with the HackerRank OA sent right after). Some US candidates get a 60 minute technical phone screen instead: half behavioral, half two easy DSA questions explained verbally with no IDE (US SDE II report, Jul 2025).
  4. Final loop (virtual). 3 to 4 interviews of 45 to 60 minutes on Microsoft Teams, often on one day or across two days. Each round usually opens with behavioral questions, then coding in a HackerRank or Codility live editor where code must compile and pass your own test cases. One round may be LLD or design. India loops: DSA, LLD, then an 'AA' (as appropriate) round with a senior manager that is mostly behavioral and detailed project discussion.
  5. Decision and team placement. Official: candidates are first assessed for a functional role, then the final round is for a specific role within an organization; Microsoft allows up to 90 days for a decision. Offers sometimes come the same or next day after the loop; other candidates wait 2+ weeks with no update.

Intern

  1. Apply to a track posting. Summer 2027 US university SWE intern postings are track-based (Fullstack Product, Cloud and Distributed Backend, AI/ML and LLM, Data Platform/Analytics, Security and Identity, CoreAI), all in Redmond. The Fullstack Product posting accepts applications during the first week of each month from August through February, or until filled; the CoreAI posting instead says Microsoft processes applications and offers on an ongoing basis through the academic calendar (September to April). Explore (second-year) windows: first week of each month October to December. Postings stay open a minimum of 5 days. You need at least one semester or term remaining after the internship.
  2. Online assessment. HackerRank. US Summer 2027: a recruiter email says the HackerRank link appears in your careers portal; one applicant got the OA about 2.5 weeks after applying on Sep 1 and an interview invite about 3 days after finishing it, others waited a month or heard nothing (Sep 2026 threads). India on-campus 2027: 2 questions (basic plus intermediate) in about 75 minutes. Extern (secondary) reports 60 to 90 minutes, 2 to 3 LeetCode mediums, and that referrals may skip the OA.
  3. Screen round. Official: virtual, assessed for a functional role (for example software engineer) across all teams hiring that role.
  4. Final round (2 or 3 interviews). US Summer 2027 SWE tracks: 2 back-to-back 45 minute interviews with a 15 minute break. Sep 2026 reports from that thread: one candidate got two LeetCode-style questions explained on a whiteboard with many edge-case questions; another had a system design and behavioral-heavy first interview and an easy-medium LeetCode second, and says the invite mentions system design may come up. AI SWE intern: 3 back-to-back 45 minute interviews in one day. CoreAI intern: the invite listed one live coding interview, one AI-assisted coding interview and one system design or behavioral interview (Sep 2026). India campus reports add OOP pillars, OS (paging, page faults), DBMS modelling and a detailed resume discussion.
  5. Team match and offer. Final round is for a specific role in an organization; interests you share with recruiters influence placement. Up to 90 days for a decision (official). India campus: interview invites 3 days after the OA; Round 2 link sent 20 minutes after Round 1 (Sep 2026 report).

With 1 to 3 years of experience

With 1 to 3 years you interview for 60 (India 'SDE 1 L60' loops often require 1 to 2 YOE) or 61/62 (Software Engineer II). Typical 61/62 flow: recruiter call, HackerRank OA with 2 questions (one medium, one hard), 60 minute phone screen, then a loop of 3 to 4: two coding rounds (trees, graphs, DP), an LLD round (message queue with producer-consumer and locking, cache with pluggable eviction, notification module, cart system) and an AA round. US SWE II 'hiring events' run 4-round loops of 3 DSA plus 1 system design (Jan 2026 reports); HLD prompts include Instagram feed. Some loops are batched to the next month ('I will reach back out when April loops open up', Mar 2026).

Online assessment

  • Platform: HackerRank (most 2025 to 2026 reports, including 'Microsoft Global Talent Acquisition' invites); Codility in early 2025 and earlier cycles
  • Format: Usually 2 coding questions in 60 to 110 minutes (India campus intern OA: 75 minutes; L60 India OA: 110 minutes). Feb 2025 Redmond SDE II OA on Codility: 3 questions in 60 minutes. No separate behavioral or work-style section reported.
  • Notes: Passing all visible tests does not guarantee an interview: an SSE candidate solved both questions twice and was still 'Not Selected' (Feb 2026), and new grad applicants report long silences after the OA. Proctoring rules prohibit copying code, pasting external content and switching tabs.

Prepare with How to pass an OA and compare formats in OA formats by company.

Coding rounds

  • Rounds: Interns: 2 (3 for AI SWE and CoreAI tracks). New grad and 59/60: 2 to 3 coding rounds inside a 3 to 4 round loop. 61/62: 2 to 3 coding rounds plus LLD or HLD.
  • Style: LeetCode easy to medium with some hards, often wrapped in practical framing (calendar booking, session overlap, API response parsing, safe path in a string). Expect follow-ups (in-place, MxN, one-pass, allow one blocker). Trees, strings, arrays, linked lists, graphs and sliding window dominate; DP appears occasionally. interviewing.io: 'Tree questions are most popular'.
  • Environment: Microsoft Teams video plus HackerRank live interview or Codility live editor; several 2025 to 2026 US reports say code had to compile and run against test cases you write. Some screens are verbal with no IDE. Pick a language you know well; interviewing.io notes C#, Java or Python are easiest for interviewers.
  • Graded on: Correct, clean, bug-free code; testing your own code with edge cases; time and space complexity; implementation speed (an L60 candidate was rejected with feedback to improve implementation speed); communication. Official tips: show your reasoning, ask clarifying questions, state assumptions.
  • Reported focus topics: Arrays and strings (sliding window, two pointers, one-pass constraints), Trees and BSTs (traversals, insert and delete, construction), Linked lists (copy with random pointer, reversal), Graphs (BFS/DFS, topological sort, grids), Intervals and scheduling (calendar booking, concurrent sessions), Binary search on the answer, LLD in code: LRU cache, notification service, message queue with concurrency, CS fundamentals for India intern loops: OOP, OS paging, DBMS, Microsoft-tagged LeetCode, last 3 months (snehasishroy/leetcode-companywise-interview-questions, 8.2K stars, data as of July 12, 2026): Two Sum, Add Two Numbers, Longest Palindromic Substring, Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters, Trapping Rain Water, Search in Rotated Sorted Array, Merge Intervals, LRU Cache, Number of Islands, Subarray Sum Equals K, Sliding Window Maximum, Jugal's 60-day company-wise DSA plan tags Microsoft with trees (Diameter of Binary Tree, Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree), DP (Partition Equal Subset Sum, Longest Common Subsequence, Edit Distance), Single Element in a Sorted Array and LRU Cache: https://jugaldb.substack.com/p/company-wise-dsa-patterns

Run every practice problem through the 45-minute framework and the code quality rubric.

What they ask (data)

Based on 455 distinct problems tagged to Microsoft in the last 6 months (76 in the last 30 days, 221 in the last 3 months, 1343 all-time) across two open datasets of LeetCode company tags. Tags are user-reported, so treat frequency as a signal, not a promise.

Difficulty mix (last 6 months): Medium 55%, Easy 29%, Hard 16%

Most tagged topics (share of problems): Array 56%, String 23%, Dynamic Programming 21%, Hash Table 20%, Sorting 15%, Math 14%, Depth-First Search 13%, Two Pointers 12%, Breadth-First Search 12%, Binary Search 9%

Most frequent problems

Ranked by frequency, weighted toward the last 30 days. Classics like Two Sum sit near the top of almost every company's list because users tag them everywhere. Solve those fast. The signature list below is more specific to this company.

# Problem Difficulty Last seen Topics
1 Two Sum Easy 30 days Array, Hash Table
2 Longest Palindromic Substring Medium 30 days Two Pointers, String, Dynamic Programming, Manacher
3 Add Two Numbers Medium 30 days Linked List, Math, Recursion
4 Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters Medium 30 days Hash Table, String, Sliding Window
5 Maximum Subarray Medium 30 days Array, Divide and Conquer, Dynamic Programming
6 Trapping Rain Water Hard 30 days Array, Two Pointers, Dynamic Programming, Stack
7 Container With Most Water Medium 30 days Array, Two Pointers, Greedy
8 3Sum Medium 30 days Array, Two Pointers, Sorting
9 Remove Duplicates from Sorted Array Easy 30 days Array, Two Pointers
10 Merge Intervals Medium 30 days Array, Sorting, Quicksort
11 Search a 2D Matrix Medium 30 days Array, Binary Search, Matrix
12 Longest Common Prefix Easy 30 days Array, String, Trie
13 Letter Combinations of a Phone Number Medium 30 days Hash Table, String, Backtracking
14 Valid Parentheses Easy 30 days String, Stack, Bracket Sequences
15 Valid Anagram Easy 30 days Hash Table, String, Sorting
16 LRU Cache Medium 30 days Hash Table, Linked List, Design, Doubly-Linked List
17 Maximum Average Subarray I Easy 30 days Array, Sliding Window
18 Fibonacci Number Easy 30 days Math, Dynamic Programming, Recursion, Memoization
19 Median of Two Sorted Arrays Hard 30 days Array, Binary Search, Divide and Conquer
20 Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock Easy 30 days Array, Dynamic Programming
21 Longest Consecutive Sequence Medium 30 days Array, Hash Table, Union-Find
22 Rotting Oranges Medium 30 days Array, Breadth-First Search, Matrix
23 Next Permutation Medium 30 days Array, Two Pointers
24 Rotate Array Medium 30 days Array, Math, Two Pointers
25 Product of Array Except Self Medium 30 days Array, Prefix Sum
26 Majority Element Easy 30 days Array, Hash Table, Divide and Conquer, Sorting
27 Coin Change Medium 30 days Array, Dynamic Programming, Breadth-First Search, Knapsack Problem
28 Merge Strings Alternately Easy 30 days Two Pointers, String
29 Balanced Binary Tree Easy 30 days Tree, Depth-First Search, Binary Tree
30 Move Zeroes Easy 30 days Array, Two Pointers
31 Minimum Edge Reversals So Every Node Is Reachable Hard 30 days Dynamic Programming, Depth-First Search, Breadth-First Search, Graph Theory
32 Merge Two Sorted Lists Easy 30 days Linked List, Recursion
33 Sliding Window Maximum Hard 30 days Array, Queue, Sliding Window, Heap (Priority Queue)
34 Roman to Integer Easy 30 days Hash Table, Math, String
35 Pascal's Triangle Easy 30 days Array, Dynamic Programming
36 Minimum Size Subarray Sum Medium 30 days Array, Binary Search, Sliding Window, Prefix Sum
37 Top K Frequent Elements Medium 30 days Array, Hash Table, Divide and Conquer, Sorting
38 Sort Characters By Frequency Medium 30 days Hash Table, String, Sorting, Heap (Priority Queue)
39 All Nodes Distance K in Binary Tree Medium 30 days Hash Table, Tree, Depth-First Search, Breadth-First Search
40 Unique Paths Medium 30 days Math, Dynamic Programming, Combinatorics
41 Reverse String Easy 30 days Two Pointers, String
42 Single Number Easy 30 days Array, Bit Manipulation
43 Spiral Matrix Medium 30 days Array, Matrix, Simulation
44 Concatenation of Array Easy 30 days Array, Simulation
45 Rotate Image Medium 30 days Array, Math, Matrix
46 Set Matrix Zeroes Medium 30 days Array, Hash Table, Matrix
47 Capacity To Ship Packages Within D Days Medium 30 days Array, Binary Search
48 Diameter of Binary Tree Easy 30 days Tree, Depth-First Search, Binary Tree, DP on Trees
49 Reverse Nodes in k-Group Hard 30 days Linked List, Recursion
50 Set Mismatch Easy 30 days Array, Hash Table, Bit Manipulation, Sorting

Signature problems

Problems where Microsoft accounts for a large share of all recent tags across companies. These are the most Microsoft-specific questions in the data.

# Problem Difficulty Last seen Topics
1 Minimum Edge Reversals So Every Node Is Reachable Hard 30 days Dynamic Programming, Depth-First Search, Breadth-First Search, Graph Theory
2 Wildcard Matching Hard 30 days String, Dynamic Programming, Greedy, Recursion
3 Intersection of Two Linked Lists Easy 30 days Hash Table, Linked List, Two Pointers
4 Set Mismatch Easy 30 days Array, Hash Table, Bit Manipulation, Sorting
5 Reverse Vowels of a String Easy 30 days Two Pointers, String
6 Flood Fill Easy 30 days Array, Depth-First Search, Breadth-First Search, Matrix
7 Invert Binary Tree Easy 30 days Tree, Depth-First Search, Breadth-First Search, Binary Tree
8 Partition Labels Medium 30 days Hash Table, Two Pointers, String, Greedy
9 Count Subarrays With Majority Element I Medium 30 days Array, Hash Table, Divide and Conquer, Segment Tree
10 Maximum Number of Events That Can Be Attended Medium 3 months Array, Greedy, Sorting, Heap (Priority Queue)
11 H-Index Medium 3 months Array, Sorting, Counting Sort
12 Binary Search Tree Iterator Medium 3 months Stack, Tree, Design, Binary Search Tree
13 Two Sum IV - Input is a BST Easy 3 months Hash Table, Two Pointers, Tree, Depth-First Search
14 Find All Numbers Disappeared in an Array Easy 3 months Array, Hash Table
15 Greatest Common Divisor of Strings Easy 3 months Math, String, Euclidean Algorithm, Greatest Common Divisor
16 Partition Array According to Given Pivot Medium 3 months Array, Two Pointers, Simulation
17 Concatenate Non-Zero Digits and Multiply by Sum I Easy 3 months Math
18 The Skyline Problem Hard 3 months Array, Divide and Conquer, Binary Indexed Tree, Segment Tree
19 Minimum Cost to Cut a Stick Hard 3 months Array, Dynamic Programming, Sorting
20 Find Eventual Safe States Medium 3 months Depth-First Search, Breadth-First Search, Graph Theory, Topological Sort

Reported in 2025 to 2026 interviews

Questions candidates said they got, each linked to the post where it was reported.

Question Role When Source
Find the k smallest distinct elements in an array (edge-case questions such as why k cannot be negative) SWE intern, Summer 2027 (US, 2 x 45 minute final round) 2026-09 post
Check whether a tree is 'good' (equal counts of A and B nodes) without using a helper function SWE intern, Summer 2027 (US, 2 x 45 minute final round) 2026-09 post
Asteroid Collision (OA intermediate question) SWE intern 2027, on-campus (India inferred: CGPA shortlist, hostel) 2026-09 post
Word Search (Round 1) SWE intern 2027, on-campus (India inferred: CGPA shortlist, hostel) 2026-09 post
Racer results given as (A before B) tuples: is the data valid, is it complete, who finishes first and last (topological sort) SWE intern 2027, on-campus (Round 2, Principal Engineer; India inferred) 2026-09 post
Rearrange Array to Maximize Prefix Score (OA) SWE intern 2027, on-campus OA (country not stated) 2026-08 post
Build a regex of at most 25 characters that matches N given strings and rejects M others (OA) SWE intern 2027, on-campus OA (country not stated) 2026-08 post
Copy List with Random Pointer, follow-ups on cycles and a recursive version SWE II, US hiring event 2026-01 post
Palindromic Substrings, then optimize SWE II, US hiring event 2026-01 post
Design Instagram feed (HLD) SWE II, US hiring event 2026-01 post
Calendar with addMeeting(start, duration) and canSchedule(start, duration) (My Calendar I variant), run with test cases SDE II, US 2026-01 post
Maximum number of sessions active at the same time (Meeting Rooms II variant) SDE II, US 2026-01 post
Longest substring without repeating characters in a single pass SDE II, US 2026-01 post
Explain a BST, then write insert and delete SDE II, US 2026-01 post
Longest safe path: longest substring of letters with '#' as blockers; follow-up allows one '#' (sliding window) SDE 1 (L60), India, 2 YOE 2025-11 post
LLD: design a cache with SOLID principles and a strategy pattern for eviction, implement and run LRU SDE 1 (L60), India, 2 YOE 2025-11 post
Heaters (binary search on radius) L60 (location not stated) 2026-02 post
Count perfect pairs with sorting and two pointers (likely LeetCode 3649 Number of Perfect Pairs) L60 (location not stated) 2026-02 post
LLD: notification module other services call to notify targeted users L60 (location not stated) 2026-02 post
Alien Dictionary (HackerRank live coding, 45 minutes) Software Engineer II (L61) 2026-08 post
LLD: producer-consumer message queue with detailed questions on mutex vs semaphore and deadlock prevention SE II (L61), Hyderabad 2026-02 post
Rotate Image, then in place, then extend to MxN L60, Bengaluru 2025-03 post
Implement a min heap from scratch SDE 1 (L60), Xbox, India, 1.8 YOE 2025-08 post
Median of Two Sorted Arrays; implement heap sort; Longest Ideal Subsequence SWE intern (2024 internship cycle; location not stated) 2025-01 post
Design a data structure where users belong to many groups: get groups of a user and users of a group, first without a HashMap SDE intern (LinkedIn referral; location not stated) 2026-01 post
Codility OA: minimum adjacent swaps to group all red balls; count letters whose lowercase all appear before uppercase; maximize a number by turning up to k digits into 5 SDE II, Redmond 2025-02 post
Longest safe path in a string of letters and '#' blockers, then allow one '#' (sliding window); 3 DSA questions in Round 1 L60 (location not stated) 2026-05 post

Beyond LeetCode

LLD in runnable code (LRU cache with pluggable eviction, notification service, message queue with locks, cart service, min-heap from scratch). India intern loops include a CS fundamentals viva (OOP pillars, C vs C++ vs Java, paging and page faults, DBMS modelling). The AA (as appropriate) round is a senior leader interview that is mostly behavioral plus detailed project discussion. US SWE II hiring events run a 4-round loop (3 DSA plus 1 HLD). Some US rounds are practical API tasks the interviewer does not expect you to finish (Jan 2026). New in the Summer 2027 cycle: the CoreAI intern loop includes an AI-assisted coding interview alongside live coding and a design or behavioral round (Sep 2026).

System design

Interns and fresh 59 hires: usually no full HLD, but expect OOP or data-modelling discussion (users and groups data structure, DBMS case study); one Summer 2027 US intern candidate says the invite mentions system design may come up and had a design and behavioral-heavy interview (Sep 2026), and the CoreAI intern loop lists a system design or behavioral round. 60 with 1 to 2 years: an LLD round is common in India loops, sometimes with runnable code (cache with strategy-pattern eviction, notification module, cart backend with REST APIs). 61/62: LLD (message queue with concurrency) and HLD (Instagram feed, autocomplete for millions of users). interviewing.io says Microsoft design rounds have a penchant for compliance and auditing topics (centralized logging), and that Microsoft runs domain-specific rounds tied to the team's area (cloud networking, big data) more often than other big tech companies.

Start with who needs system design, then the framework.

Behavioral

Framework: Microsoft culture (growth mindset, customer obsessed, diverse and inclusive, One Microsoft) and the values respect, integrity and accountability. Official interview tips ask for STAR(R): Situation, Task, Action, Result, Reflection. Core competencies listed in prep guides: collaboration, drive for results, customer focus, influencing for impact, judgment, adaptability. (official page)

What they look for:

  • Growth mindset: learning from failure and seeking feedback
  • Collaboration and 'One Microsoft' behavior, not blaming teammates
  • Customer focus and empathy
  • Clear ownership of your individual contribution to projects
  • Reflection: what you would do differently (the extra R in STAR(R))
  • Prepared questions for the interviewer (official interview tips: prepare questions to ask during your interview)

Questions to prepare:

  • What was the most challenging part of your project and how did you solve it? (L60 loop, Feb 2026)
  • What exactly did you build on this project, and what was the measurable impact?
  • Tell me about your hackathon experience (AA round, L60, Nov 2025)
  • Tell me about a time you resolved a conflict with a teammate
  • Tell me about a project that failed and what you learned
  • Give an example of when you showed a growth mindset
  • Why Microsoft, and why this team?

Build your answers with the story bank. Company detail: behavioral guide.

Tips

  • Apply early in the cycle: the Fullstack Product SWE intern posting takes applications only in the first week of each month (August through February), CoreAI accepts them on an ongoing basis September to April, and Explore uses first-week windows October to December.
  • Pick the 1 or 2 intern tracks that match your projects (Fullstack, Cloud backend, AI/ML and LLM, Data, Security, CoreAI); the CoreAI posting lists experience with AI tools such as GitHub Copilot, Claude Code and Microsoft Roo Code as a preferred qualification, and a Sep 2026 CoreAI intern loop included an AI-assisted coding interview.
  • Write code that compiles and runs in the live editor, and test it with your own cases before the interviewer asks.
  • Prepare STAR(R) stories with a Reflection line; Microsoft's own interview tips add the extra R.
  • For 60 to 62 loops, practice one LLD in working code within 35 to 45 minutes: cache with eviction strategies, notification service, producer-consumer queue.
  • Treat the final AA round as a senior-leader behavioral and detailed project discussion: know your exact contribution, numbers and trade-offs.
  • In the OA, never switch tabs or paste external code; Microsoft's HackerRank OA rules say both are flagged, recorded and can disqualify you.
  • Prepare real questions for your interviewers; Microsoft's official interview tips tell you to prepare questions to ask during the interview.

4-week plan for Microsoft

Do this after you finish a core list like Grind 75 or NeetCode 150.

  • Week 1: Solve problems 1 to 20 from the most frequent list. Time-box each at 30 minutes.
  • Week 2: Solve problems 21 to 40. Re-solve any you failed in week 1 without looking.
  • Week 3: Solve the signature problems and every reported question above. Do 2 timed mock interviews.
  • Week 4: Write 8 stories for the Microsoft culture (growth mindset, customer obsessed, diverse and inclusive, One Microsoft) and the values respect, integrity and accountability. Official interview tips ask for STAR(R): Situation, Task, Action, Result, Reflection. Core competencies listed in prep guides: collaboration, drive for results, customer focus, influencing for impact, judgment, adaptability. round. Do 2 full mock loops. Review the online assessment and system design notes above.

Sources

Watch out: Public 2025 to 2026 reports for US new grad (59/60) loops are sparse; most detailed reports are India campus, India L60, and SWE II (US and India). The US new grad description combines official pages with US SWE II reports and is an inference for new grads. The Codility to HackerRank shift is inferred from candidate reports (Feb 2025 Codility, Aug 2025 onward HackerRank), not announced by Microsoft. Loop shape varies by org (Azure, Xbox, Office, CoreAI) and by country. Extern figures (about 300 Explore seats, about 85% return offers, 37 days average process) are secondary and unconfirmed. [UNVERIFIED] Glassdoor snippets seen only in search results: a 2025 new grad loop of 'code screen from Codility, resume/HR round, and 3 interview onsite' and '1 behavioral round and 2 technical rounds'; Glassdoor pages could not be fetched. Reported question URLs on LeetCode Discuss were confirmed through LeetCode's GraphQL API because the pages block automated browsers; Reddit threads were read through Reddit's RSS feeds. US Summer 2027 intern loop shapes (2 x 45 minutes; 3 x 45 for AI SWE; CoreAI with an AI-assisted round) come from single Reddit posts in Sep 2026 and may vary by track. Simplify's claim (cited elsewhere in this research) that a referral cannot be attached after applying was not found on the Simplify Microsoft FAQ page; the official page says referrals are not required. Fact-check Oct 4, 2026: application windows differ by posting (Fullstack uses first-week-of-month windows August to February; CoreAI processes applications on an ongoing basis September to April), confirmed through the postings' full text. Removed an unsourced claim that some OAs run camera-on, an unsupported 'EU data rules' attribution to interviewing.io, and an official 'do not say nothing' tip that is not on Microsoft's pages. Several LeetCode posts (L60 Feb 2026, intern Jan 2025 and Jan 2026) do not name a country, so their roles now say 'location not stated'.

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