Microsoft interview questions

Design an LLD of Splitwise

Design the low-level design (LLD) of a system like Splitwise, which allows users to track shared expenses and settle debts. The system should support features…

Companies: Microsoft, Amazon, Uber

Last reported Jun 2026

Design of an Elevator System

Companies: Microsoft, Box

Last reported Jun 2026

Minimum Edge Reversals So Every Node Is Reachable

Given a directed graph whose underlying undirected graph is a tree, compute for every node the minimum number of edge reversals required so that starting…

Companies: Microsoft, Salesforce, Uber

Breadth-First Search · Depth-First Search · Dynamic Programming · Graph Theory

Last reported Jun 2026

Basic Calculator

Evaluate a string expression containing integers, '+', '-', parentheses and spaces (with unary '-' allowed) and return its numeric result without using eval. The core…

Companies: Microsoft, Flex

Last reported Jun 2026

Design a Notification System for Marketing Campaigns

Design a notification system that can handle large-scale marketing campaigns for enterprises, supporting features like message targeting, delivery scheduling, and campaign…

Companies: Microsoft, Amazon, Clevertap, Trustpilot

Last reported Jun 2026

Design a Retrieval-Grounded Local Sports News Recommender

Companies: Microsoft

ML System Design

Last reported Jun 2026

Minimum Deletions to Make Character Frequencies Unique

Given a string s, find the minimum number of character deletions required so that no two different characters have the same (nonzero) frequency. This reduces…

Companies: Microsoft, Freshworks

Last reported Jun 2026

Next Greater Element I

Given nums1 as a subset of nums2, for each element in nums1 return the first greater element that appears to its right in nums2 (or…

Companies: Microsoft, Flipkart

Array · Hash Table · Monotonic Stack · Stack

Last reported Jun 2026

Experimentation Platform: Sync vs Async Validation, Latency Budgets and Health Checks

Companies: Microsoft

System Design · System Design Fundamentals

Last reported Jun 2026

Give me an example of a time when you were able to deliver an important project under a tight deadline.

Companies: Microsoft, Amazon, Capital One, Pinterest +2

Last reported Jun 2026

Rectangles Area

Given a set of axis-aligned rectangles, compute the total area covered by them without double-counting overlaps; the core challenge is correctly handling overlapping regions…

Companies: Microsoft

Last reported Jun 2026

Shortest Path to Get All Keys

Find the minimum number of moves from the start to collect all keys in a grid containing walls and locks (locks are passable only if…

Companies: Microsoft

Last reported Jun 2026

Tell me about a time when you pushed back on a decision or request.

Companies: Microsoft, Amazon, Checkout, Kaluza +3

Last reported Jun 2026

Tell me about a time when you received constructive feedback and how you responded to it

Companies: Microsoft, Amazon, Anduril, Checkout +4

Last reported Jun 2026

Tell me about a time you had to insist on a course of action or decision despite pushback from others

Companies: Microsoft, Amazon

Last reported Jun 2026

Wildcard Matching

Check if the entire string s matches pattern p where '?' matches any single character and '*' matches any sequence (including empty). The core challenge…

Companies: Microsoft, Meta

Last reported Jun 2026

Design a URL Shortener (High-Level and Low-Level Design)

Companies: Microsoft

System Design · System Design Fundamentals

Last reported Jun 2026

Design a distributed key-value store

Partitioned storage with replication: durable writes, availability during partitions, ownership changes, and convergence after failures.

Companies: Microsoft, Airbnb, Apple, Avalara +4

consistency · failure-recovery · hot-keys · partitioning

Last reported Jun 2026

Design a Metrics Ingestion Pipeline

Companies: Microsoft

Observability · System Design

Last reported Jun 2026

Design a To-Do List Service (CRUD, Auth, Rate Limiting, Caching & API Versioning)

Companies: Microsoft

API Design · System Design · System Design Fundamentals

Last reported Jun 2026

Externally Sort a 500 GB CSV by One Column with 16 GB of RAM

Companies: Microsoft

System Design

Last reported Jun 2026

Binary Tree Maximum Path Sum

Find the maximum sum of any non-empty connected path in a binary tree (nodes used at most once), where the path can start and end…

Companies: Microsoft, Amazon, Datadog, DoorDash +4

Binary Tree · Depth-First Search · DP on Trees · Dynamic Programming

Last reported Jun 2026