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Updated weekly · Last refresh Oct 17

Microsoft Data Scientist Interview Questions

The questions to prepare for a Microsoft Data Scientist interview. Questions from real interview reports rank first. Updated daily.

50questions
~7htotal time
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1
Product SenseStart here. 6 questions · ~49 min
Metrics for Bing SearchHard

Define and validate metrics that measure Bing Search relevance and recommendation quality, then use them to guide product improvements.

Metricsfeature evaluationproduct improvementMicrosoft
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2
System Design6 questions · ~49 min
Matrix Factorization for RecommendersMedium

Derive how matrix factorization models user preferences for a Netflix-style recommender system.

designcomputational costMicrosoft
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3
Metrics6 questions · ~49 min
Career Risk FactorsHard

Identify leading factors of employee career risk and design a measurable, actionable risk metric.

Leading Indicatorsdiagnostic processEngagement MetricsMicrosoft
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4
A/B Testing & Experimentation6 questions · ~49 min
False Negatives PriorityHard

Design an experiment where minimizing false negatives is the priority, with recall as the primary metric and precision as a guardrail.

MDEGuardrail Metricsprimary metricsMicrosoft
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5
Machine Learning6 questions · ~49 min
Array Deviations from MeanMedium
Recently asked

Implement a reliable feature transformation that computes each array element's signed and absolute deviation from the sample mean.

data preprocessingFeature EngineeringArraysMicrosoft
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6
Model Evaluation6 questions · ~49 min
Precision and Recall from Flaky Top-KHard
Recently asked

Compute precision and recall when a top-k API returns inconsistent predictions across repeated calls.

evaluation metricsPrecisionRecallMicrosoft
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7
More topics14 questions · ~115 min
7-Day Rolling Retention SQLHard
Practice
Recently asked

Calculate 7-day cohort retention and flag cohorts with a week-over-week relative decline greater than 10%.

Lag/Leadsql queryuser retentionMicrosoft
Fraud Detection Batch vs StreamingMedium
Recently asked

Design a fraud pipeline that compares batch, streaming, and hybrid architectures for 120K tx/sec with sub-300 ms decisions and reconciled hourly tables.

Stream ProcessingETLBatch ProcessingMicrosoft
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Hands-on SQL practiceWrite and run real queries in the editor. 2 drills · ~20 min
7-Day Rolling Average Excluding WeekendsHard
Practice
Recently asked
Practice drill

Calculate weekday-only 7-day rolling revenue averages per product while excluding weekends and ignoring missing dates.

missing valuesDate Functionssql queryMicrosoftAmazon Web Services
Flag and Remove Duplicate CustomersMedium
Practice
Recently asked
Practice drill

Use a CTE and ROW_NUMBER to identify duplicate customer records, keep one row, and flag the rest.

Window FunctionsData WranglingCTEsMicrosoft
The finish line: interview-readyComplete all 50 questions plus 2 hands-on drills to finish this plan.