System designLast reported Aug 2026
Design an Event-Driven Notification System
Design a reliable multi-channel notification platform with durable event handoff, safe consumers, provider isolation, and recoverable poison messages.
Open practiceMicrosoft interview practice
Microsoft Interview Questions: Coding and System Design Start with verified evidence.
Practice from 126 Microsoft-tagged public coding problems, organized only by the stage, topic, difficulty, and recency metadata FastPrep can verify. The broader public catalog also includes 8 system-design exercises, 2 low-level-design exercises.
- Catalog
- 136 public practice assets (126 coding)
- Start here
- Use the stage named in your invitation
- Evidence
- OA · Phone · Onsite metadata, shown in context
OA practice path
Online Assessment
Build a timed implementation rhythm from prompt to edge cases. Problems are ranked by repeated public catalog sightings.
93 Microsoft-tagged Online Assessment problems available.
| Company | Problem | Difficulty | Public evidence | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
MIMicrosoft | Authentication SystemHash TableDesign | Medium | 4 public reportsLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Minimum Fuel Cost Between CitiesGraphShortest Path | Hard | 3 public reportsLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Maximum Reward PointsArrayGreedy | Medium | 3 public reportsLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | XOR MultiplicationBit ManipulationMath | Medium | 3 public reportsLast reported Jul 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Maximum String OperationsStringGreedy | Medium | 2 public reportsLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Maximum Score with Prime JumpsArrayDynamic Programming | Medium | 2 public reportsLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Minimum Cost K-Capable ModelsArrayGreedy | Medium | 2 public reportsLast reported Jul 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Neural Network Subnetwork StrengthTreeDepth-First Search | Hard | 2 public reportsLast reported Jul 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Maximum Escape Game ScoreArrayHash Table | Medium | 2 public reportsLast reported Jul 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Maximum Number PossibleStringGreedy | Easy | 2 public reportsLast reported May 2025 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Minimum Swaps Required to Group All Red Balls TogetherArraySliding Window | Medium | 2 public reportsLast reported May 2025 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Side Largest Square 🟧MathBinary Search | Medium | 2 public reportsLast reported Feb 2025 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | K Most Recent Unique Request IDsArrayHash Table | Easy | 1 public reportLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Maximum Decrypted ScoreArraySliding Window | Medium | 1 public reportLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Minimum Team Size From Every StartArraySliding Window | Medium | 1 public reportLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Minimum Length Good SubarrayArrayHash Table | Medium | 1 public reportLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Roll the StringStringArray | Medium | 1 public reportLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | 0/1 KnapsackDynamic ProgrammingArray | Medium | 1 public reportLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Minimum Jump CostArrayDynamic Programming | Medium | 1 public reportLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Enumerate Valid Clock TimesArrayBacktracking | Easy | 1 public reportLast reported Jul 2026 | Practice |
Phone practice path
Phone Screen
Practice solving while explaining assumptions, tradeoffs, and complexity. Problems are ranked by repeated public catalog sightings.
| Company | Problem | Difficulty | Public evidence | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
MIMicrosoft | Arithmetic Expression EvaluatorStringStack | Hard | 2 public reportsLast reported Sep 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Infer a Lexicographically Smallest Alien AlphabetStringGraph | Hard | 2 public reportsLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Retain Top K ValuesArraySorting | Easy | 2 public reportsLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Employee Hierarchy Cycle and Depth AnalysisGraphDepth-First Search | Medium | 1 public reportLast reported Sep 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Most Visited String SectorsArraySimulation | Easy | 1 public reportLast reported Sep 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Suffix Maximum Frequency QueriesArrayDynamic Programming | Easy | 1 public reportLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Sorted Subsets of a StringStringBacktracking | Medium | 1 public reportLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Rank Open BusinessesArraySorting | Easy | 1 public reportLast reported May 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Deterministic K-Means AssignmentsArrayMath | Hard | 1 public reportLast reported Feb 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Three Partition ArrayArrayTwo Pointers | Easy | 1 public reportLast reported Dec 2024 | Practice |
Onsite practice path
Onsite
Practice complete solutions and defend the choices behind them. Problems are ranked by repeated public catalog sightings.
| Company | Problem | Difficulty | Public evidence | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
MIMicrosoft | Infer a Lexicographically Smallest Alien AlphabetStringGraph | Hard | 2 public reportsLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Least Recently Used CacheHash TableDesign | Medium | 2 public reportsLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Filter Anagrams of a TargetArrayString | Easy | 1 public reportLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Maximum Stock Profit with At Most Two TransactionsArrayDynamic Programming | Medium | 1 public reportLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Subtract Forward-Order Linked-List NumbersLinked ListStack | Medium | 1 public reportLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Minimum Time to Rot All OrangesArrayMatrix | Medium | 1 public reportLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Binary Tree Zigzag Level Order TraversalTreeBreadth-First Search | Medium | 1 public reportLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Generate a Spiral MatrixMatrixSimulation | Medium | 1 public reportLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Palindrome Linked List with RestorationLinked ListTwo Pointers | Medium | 1 public reportLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Spiral Matrix TraversalMatrixSimulation | Medium | 1 public reportLast reported Aug 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | In-Memory SQL with CSV InitializationDesignParsing | Hard | 1 public reportLast reported May 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Order Records by Matching Start and EndHash TableLinked List | Easy | 1 public reportLast reported May 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Inorder Successor in a Binary TreeTree | Hard | 1 public reportLast reported Mar 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Recover Corrupted Master Page | Unrated | 1 public reportLast reported Feb 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Generate ParenthesesStringBacktracking | Medium | 1 public reportLast reported Feb 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Group AnagramsStringArray | Medium | 1 public reportLast reported Feb 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Unique Digit Permutations Without Leading ZeroStringMath | Medium | 1 public reportLast reported Feb 2026 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Diagonal Matrix IteratorArrayMatrix | Medium | 1 public reportLast reported Nov 2025 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Merge IntervalsIntervalsSorting | Medium | 1 public reportLast reported Nov 2025 | Practice |
MIMicrosoft | Reverse a Singly Linked ListLinked ListRecursion | Easy | 1 public reportLast reported Aug 2025 | Practice |
01 · Preparation plan
Connect algorithm correctness to service behavior.
The Microsoft catalog is broad enough to reward deliberate rotation. Start with a parser, move to a dependency problem, and then reason about state over time. Use the separate design collection to extend those implementation choices into service boundaries; do not treat the largest stage group as a prediction of your interview. This is a suggested practice sequence, not the employer's interview process. Your invitation and recruiter guidance remain the source of truth.
- 01
Parse before calculating
Use the expression evaluator to separate token recognition from operator precedence. A clear grammar makes nested input easier to reason about than a collection of special cases.
- Trace parentheses and unary signs before implementing evaluation.
- Keep tokenization, precedence, and error handling separate.
- Compare stack depth with the length of the expression.
- 02
Make dependency failures explicit
The employee hierarchy exercise is useful for distinguishing a valid tree from malformed reporting relationships. Explain why cycle detection must happen before computing a reliable depth.
- Identify roots, disconnected components, and missing parents.
- Use visiting states to distinguish cycles from completed work.
- State which depth convention your result uses.
- 03
Test state over time
Treat the authentication-system exercise as a contract for issuing, renewing, and expiring state. After implementation, use the public service-design exercises to discuss where that state belongs.
- Define behavior exactly at an expiry boundary.
- Test repeated renewal and unknown identifiers.
- Separate storage cleanup from authorization correctness.
02 · Broader technical practice
Practice beyond standalone coding questions.
These public Microsoft-tagged exercises cover additional technical formats. They are included only when a verified catalog record and a crawlable practice page both exist.
System designLast reported Aug 2026
Design a Ticket Context and System Status Platform
Design a high-concurrency service that connects a support ticket to related user tickets and the affected system's historical status.
Open practiceSystem designLast reported Aug 2026
Design an Authenticated Shopping Platform
Design a single-retailer shopping API whose login, session, cart, and order boundaries remain secure and retry-safe at scale.
Open practiceSystem designLast reported Aug 2026
Design a Multi-Tenant One-Time Password Service
Issue, deliver, and verify short-lived one-time passwords while isolating tenant policy, abuse, and data.
Open practiceSystem designLast reported Aug 2026
Design a Web Crawler and Inverted Index
Continuously crawl an allowed web corpus and build a fresh, deduplicated inverted index for keyword search.
Open practiceSystem designLast reported Aug 2026
Design a Distributed Expiring LRU Cache
Design a partitioned cache with concurrent access, per-entry expiration, and approximate local recency eviction.
Open practiceLow-level designLast reported Aug 2026
Desktop Notification Center
Design a desktop notification center with ordering, dismissal, and per-application state.
Open practiceSystem designLast reported Aug 2026
Nearby Restaurant Search Service
Design a location search service that returns nearby restaurants in stable distance order.
Open practiceLow-level designLast reported Aug 2026
Design a Library Circulation System
Model titles, physical copies, members, loans, holds, and extensible circulation policies.
Open practiceSystem designLast reported Jul 2026
Design a Real-Time Multiplayer Game
Design a multi-region multiplayer game that matches players and runs low-latency authoritative sessions.
Open practice03 · Evidence boundary
What “Microsoft interview questions” means here.
It means practicing transferable implementation, testing, and technical reasoning with public catalog assets FastPrep tags to Microsoft. It does not mean FastPrep has access to the company's assessments or any private interview bank.
Repeated public sightings and last-reported dates can help you prioritize practice, but they cannot predict the questions, format, or platform in a specific interview.
- Only Microsoft-tagged FastPrep catalog problems appear above.
- Stage labels and report dates remain visible as context.
- No official, private, leaked, or proprietary questions are claimed.
04 · Plain answers
Microsoft interview practice questions, answered plainly.
This page owns technical-practice intent for Microsoft. Hiring activity, timelines, and market signals remain on the separate hiring-insights page.
01Should I prepare only Microsoft assessment questions?
No. The available practice spans timed coding, explanation-heavy problems, and design exercises. Use assessment-labeled records for implementation rehearsal, then switch to dependencies and stateful APIs when your role calls for discussion. This is a software-engineering study path, not a guide to every Microsoft role or a fixed sequence of rounds.
02Is FastPrep affiliated with Microsoft?
No. FastPrep is an independent interview-preparation product and is not affiliated with Microsoft. The page uses FastPrep's public practice catalog and does not claim official, private, leaked, or proprietary employer questions.
03How are Microsoft problems assigned to interview stages?
Stage labels come from FastPrep's public problem metadata. A problem can carry more than one reported stage, and hiring processes can change by role, level, location, and date. Treat the labels as preparation context, not a guarantee.
04Which Microsoft interview stage should I practice first?
Start with the stage named in your invitation or recruiter message. If no stage is known, use the largest available set to build general problem-solving fluency, then rehearse explanation and testing separately.
05Does this page predict the Microsoft interview process?
No. Public catalog counts, stage tags, and last-reported dates can help prioritize practice, but they cannot predict a specific interview's questions, sequence, timing, or platform.
Your next stage, made concrete
Pick a problem. Solve it end to end.
Start with the stage named in your invitation, then use public evidence as context—not as a promise of what you will be asked.
Open the practice set