Microsoft's DSA rounds draw heavily from graphs/BFS, dynamic programming, sliding windows, and classic data-structure design questions — interviewers frequently mix in a second, harder problem even within a single round. The three problems below are real, recently reported (2025) Microsoft questions with full solutions.
Given two sorted arrays of possibly different sizes, find the median of the combined dataset without fully merging the arrays, aiming for logarithmic time.
Implement regular expression matching supporting '.' (any single character) and '*' (zero or more of the preceding element) against a full input string.
Given a grid of fresh and rotten oranges, determine the minimum time for all fresh oranges to rot, given that rot spreads to orthogonally adjacent cells each minute.
Input: grid = [[2,1,1],[1,1,0],[0,1,1]]
Output: 4
More DSA questions Microsoft has asked recently
These topics were reported in verified 2025 Microsoft loops. Full problem statements, solutions and explanations for these are part of the Placement-Ready PYQ Kit.
12 more verified DSA questions with full solutions in the full Placement-Ready PYQ Kit
Includes every round they were asked in, from the Online Assessment through the DSA rounds.