InterviewCompany

Microsoft Interview Questions

Product-minded engineering, APIs, data systems, and cloud-scale design practice.

4 questions
Microsoft

How would you design a collaborative document editor?hard

Type
scenario
Topic
how-would-you-design-a-collaborative-document-editor
Frequency
common
Answer

Use conflict resolution, presence, versioning, and reliable sync.

Explanation

Mention operational transforms or CRDTs, offline edits, permission checks, storage snapshots, and low-latency collaboration channels.

Follow-upHow do you resolve concurrent edits?

How do you explain REST vs GraphQL?medium

Type
scenario
Topic
how-do-you-explain-rest-vs-graphql
Frequency
common
Answer

REST exposes resource endpoints; GraphQL lets clients request the exact data shape.

Explanation

Discuss caching, versioning, over-fetching, under-fetching, schema governance, and operational complexity.

Follow-upWhen is REST still better?

How would you secure a public API?medium

Type
scenario
Topic
how-would-you-secure-a-public-api
Frequency
common
Answer

Use authentication, authorization, validation, rate limits, logging, and secret hygiene.

Explanation

A complete answer covers OAuth or tokens, least privilege, input validation, abuse protection, TLS, monitoring, and incident response.

Follow-upWhat belongs in API logs?

How do you test a machine learning feature in production?medium

Type
scenario
Topic
how-do-you-test-a-machine-learning-feature-in-production
Frequency
common
Answer

Use offline validation, shadow testing, guarded rollout, and A/B experiments.

Explanation

Explain model metrics, business metrics, drift checks, rollback plans, and responsible AI checks when user impact is meaningful.

Follow-upHow do you monitor drift?
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