Microsoft · Software engineer · SDE II / Senior

Design Round (OOD / System Design)

A spoken, whiteboard-style discussion with no coding

What they actually ask

The question shapes this round uses. Larpy does not read these out. It builds each one from your own resume, because the generic version is the one you have already rehearsed.

“Design a parking lot (classes, entities, and interactions).”
“Design a library management system.”
“Design a messaging / chat application that scales.”
“Design a review-and-listing platform (TripAdvisor-style).”
“Design an Instagram-like feed.”
“Design the backend and API for a running / fitness app.”

What this round is judged on

Requirement scoping · clarifying constraints before designing
Entity / component modeling · clean, extensible structure
Trade-off reasoning · justifying storage, caching, queues, APIs
Scalability · identifying and addressing bottlenecks
Communication · continuous narration and back-and-forth

Where this round sits

Microsoft’s published process. Lime marks the stage this round runs.

01
Recruiter / HM screen
02
Online assessment (Codility) and/or technical phone screen
03
Onsite loopthis round
04
As Appropriate (AA) round
05
Debrief / hiring committee

What happens in each stage›

Recruiter / HM screen: 20-30 min phone or Teams call on background, motivation, team fit, and level calibration; light or no technical content.
Online assessment (Codility) and/or technical phone screen: 60-90 min auto-graded coding assessment (2-4 problems) and/or a ~30-45 min shared-editor coding screen with 1-2 easy-to-medium problems.
Onsite loop: Four to five back-to-back ~1-hour interviews: 3-4 coding rounds plus 1-2 design rounds (design standard at SDE II and above), with behavioral questions woven throughout.
As Appropriate (AA) round: Final interview with a senior leader (often a skip-level) to close doubts and sell the candidate; common but not universal, varies by org, level, and region.
Debrief / hiring committee: Interviewers submit written hire/no-hire feedback; a debrief reconciles it, then offer and negotiation.

Sources

Built from what Microsoft publishes about its own process and from real interview data. No leaked question lists. The questions you get are generated against your own resume, so they are not from anyone else's interview.

companyMicrosoft Careers - How we hirecareers.microsoft.com
Overall hiring stages and official interview-prep framing.
companyMicrosoft - About / mission and valuesmicrosoft.com
Official mission statement and stated corporate values used in the behavioral round.
datalevels.fyi - Microsoft software engineer levelslevels.fyi
SDE ladder and internal level codes (SDE 59, SDE II 61, Senior SDE ~63/64, Principal up to 67).
dataTech Interview Handbook (yangshun, MIT)techinterviewhandbook.org
Algorithm topic priorities and difficulty framing for the coding rounds; 403'd the bot but human-readable.

Sources last checked August 10, 2026. Hiring loops change, so this date is the honest limit on everything above.

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