Microsoft interview questions

Candy Crush

Given an m×n board of integer "candies," repeatedly find and remove any horizontal or vertical runs of ≥3 identical candies, let the remaining candies fall…

Companies: Microsoft, Meta, Roblox

Array · Matrix · Simulation · Two Pointers

Last reported Feb 2026

Design a Logger System

Design a logger system that receives messages with timestamps and only prints each message if it hasn't been printed in the last 10 seconds, with…

Companies: Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google

Last reported Feb 2026

Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters

Find the length of the longest contiguous substring that contains no repeated characters. This is a classic sliding-window / two-pointer problem where you track seen…

Companies: Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Autodesk +12

Hash Table · Sliding Window · String

Last reported Feb 2026

Describe your most impactful project

Companies: Microsoft, Airbnb, Amazon, Anduril +22

Project Deep Dive

Last reported Feb 2026

Find All Anagrams in a String

Given strings s and p, return all start indices of substrings in s that are anagrams of p; the core challenge is to detect equal…

Companies: Microsoft, Amazon, Databricks

Hash Table · Sliding Window · String

Last reported Feb 2026

Insert into a Sorted Circular Linked List

Companies: Microsoft, Meta, Moengage

Last reported Feb 2026

Shuffle an Array

Design a class that stores an integer array and supports reset (returning the original configuration) and shuffle (returning a uniformly random permutation so that all…

Companies: Microsoft, Uber

Array · Design · Math · Randomized

Last reported Feb 2026

Design chat and online chess

Companies: Microsoft

Real-Time Systems · System Design

Last reported Feb 2026

Design a URL shortening service

Companies: Microsoft, DoorDash, OpenAI

API Design · Caching · System Design · System Design Fundamentals

Last reported Feb 2026

Design an Event Booking System

Companies: Microsoft

System Design

Last reported Feb 2026

Design a ticket booking system like Ticketmaster

Contention on scarce inventory: seat holds with TTL, locking/optimistic concurrency, payments, flash-sale traffic and virtual queues.

Companies: Microsoft, Agoda, Airwallex, Amazon +15

concurrency · idempotency · load-shedding · locking

Last reported Feb 2026

Design a global distributed sensitive data query system for analysts to create spam and malware detection queries, focusing on security and GDPR compliance

Companies: Microsoft

Last reported Feb 2026

Design a Queue using 2D Matrix

Design a queue data structure implementation using a 2D matrix, allowing users to enqueue and dequeue elements while maintaining FIFO ordering within the matrix structure.

Companies: Microsoft

Last reported Feb 2026

Design ChatGPT

Design a conversational AI system similar to ChatGPT that allows users to have natural language conversations and receive intelligent responses. Focus on a simple version…

Companies: Microsoft, Kikoff, Modular, OpenAI +2

Last reported Feb 2026

How do you use AI in your work or personal projects?

Companies: Microsoft, Amazon, Bloomberg, Capital One +3

Last reported Feb 2026

All Nodes Distance K in Binary Tree

Given a binary tree and a target node value, return all node values at distance K from the target. The challenge is to traverse both…

Companies: Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, TikTok

Binary Tree · Breadth-First Search · Depth-First Search · Hash Table

Last reported Feb 2026

Design a Feature Flag Service

Design a feature flag service that allows software teams to enable/disable features dynamically without code deployment, supporting targeted rollouts to user segments (by…

Companies: Microsoft, Amazon, Rubrik, Stripe +1

Last reported Feb 2026

Design Asynchronous Message Queue with DLQ

Design an asynchronous message queue system that supports message publishing, acknowledgment-based processing, and retry mechanisms with configurable max retry counts. The…

Companies: Microsoft, Canva

Last reported Feb 2026

Sliding Window Maximum

Given an integer array and a window size k, return the maximum value for each contiguous subarray (sliding window) as it moves one step to…

Companies: Microsoft, Amazon, Bloomberg, D. E. Shaw +7

Array · Heap (Priority Queue) · Monotonic Queue · Queue

Last reported Feb 2026

Subsets

Return the power set of a unique-element integer array by enumerating all 2^n subsets (typical solutions use backtracking/DFS or bitmask iteration), noting the exponential…

Companies: Microsoft, Amazon, Docusign, Meta

Array · Backtracking · Bit Manipulation

Last reported Feb 2026

Design a restaurant menu system

Design a restaurant menu management system that allows customers to browse menu items, view prices and descriptions, and enables restaurant staff to update menu offerings…

Companies: Microsoft

Last reported Feb 2026

Design a Social Media Feed Generation System

Design a social media feed system that generates and populates personalized feeds for users on platforms like Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

Companies: Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Atlassian +5

Last reported Feb 2026