A powder bed fusion laser technique (PBF-LS) was used to fabricate 316L stainless steel specimens for characterization of microstructures and micromechanical properties under uniaxial loading in-situ in a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Correlations between the microstructure, deformation mechanisms and mechanical properties were investigated. The results show that the morphology of the microstructure is very different when the sample building orientation was altered. In tensile test specimens that were machined from horizontally oriented rectangular beams, smaller grains and a more deformed microstructure were observed. Under uniaxial loading the yield strength and initial work hardening rate was highest in the horizontally built specimens. The uniform and total elongation was better for tensile test samples that were machined from vertically built rectangular specimens. Slip and twinning were the dominant deformation mechanisms with correlation to the observed texture. The observed anisotropic mechanical behavior can be explained by the differences in the distribution of deformed and sub-structured microstructures along the strain path.