Microsoft’s AI-assisted coding interview: what candidates report

Published 4 November 2026 · 3 min read

Some Microsoft loops now include an AI-assisted coding round, and some early-career online assessments have an AI-assisted part. Microsoft hasn’t described the round publicly, so this guide is built from six candidate reports between March and October 2026. The details vary by team and level.

Where it shows up

• Onsite loops. An SDE2 candidate had a loop of 5 rounds, one of them AI-assisted coding (r/leetcode). A CoreAI intern’s final loop had a traditional coding round, an AI-assisted coding round and a system design plus behavioural round (r/csMajors).
• Phone screens. A new grad was told by the recruiter to use an IDE with AI for a 30-minute technical screen. Another SDE2 candidate on a CoreAI team was told one of four loop rounds would be AI-assisted, with VS Code and GitHub Copilot as the setup (r/leetcode).
• Online assessments. An early-career (IC2) candidate described a 90-minute HackerRank assessment with an AI-assisted portion that, in their words, was really only there to check syntax (r/leetcode).

The rest of the loop is usually still classic: candidates describe regular coding, system design and behavioural rounds without AI.

What the task looks like

The reports point to two kinds of task, both closer to design than to a debugging puzzle:

• A low-level design problem. One answer on LeetCode Discuss describes the round as a regular low-level design problem: you write the whole design in comments first, with pseudocode for the core parts, clear enough for an AI to follow, and only then ask the AI to write and run the code (LeetCode Discuss). A June candidate also got a low-level design problem (r/leetcode).
• A LeetCode-style problem. The SDE2 candidate got a simple load balancer problem and was asked not to paste the whole question into the AI. They paraphrased it and told Claude which approach to use (two min-heaps).

Which tools you can use

Unlike rounds with a built-in assistant, Microsoft candidates mostly bring their own setup:

• The SDE2 candidate could use any IDE and switched to Claude. The recruiter had said any AI tool was allowed.
• The June candidate could use any tool and model, with their screen shared.
• The design-first answer says there’s no provided IDE, so have VS Code with Copilot ready on your own machine.

Ask your recruiter which tools are allowed and whether you share your screen. Set the editor up and test the AI before the call.

What interviewers watch

• Your design before the code. In the design-first format the interviewer signs off on your plan before the AI writes anything.
• How you prompt and how well you understand the output. The June candidate said this mattered beyond the usual design signals.
• Questions, debugging and re-prompting. The SDE2 interviewer cared most about the candidate’s questions, spotting errors in the AI’s code and correcting it.
• Extra credit for debugging the AI’s code and saying what you’d do differently.

Passing this round isn’t the whole story. The CoreAI intern was told their AI use matched what the interviewer wanted, and was still rejected after small deductions in other rounds.

How to prepare

1. Practise low-level design out loud: classes, interfaces and the core algorithm, written as comments before any code.
2. Paraphrase, don’t paste. Tell the AI the approach you chose, in your words, then check what it writes.
3. Rehearse in your own editor with the assistant you’ll use on the day, under a timer. Our free practice projects give you a codebase, a bug, a feature and a speed-up, with tests.
4. Keep classic prep going. The other coding rounds are still no-AI.

Read every Microsoft report we have, with sources, on the Microsoft reports page.

Sources

• LeetCode Discuss thread, March 2026: the design-first answer
• r/leetcode thread, April 2026: SDE2 loop, load balancer task
• r/leetcode thread, April 2026: new grad screen and CoreAI SDE2 setup
• r/leetcode comment, June 2026: low-level design round
• r/leetcode comment, September 2026: IC2 online assessment
• r/csMajors thread, October 2026: CoreAI intern final loop