I applied through an employee referral. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Nov 2012
Interview
I had two phone interviews. Those went really well and the interviewers were pretty friendly. I had a little bit of trouble understanding the second interviewer who had an thick accent. But highly knowledgeable and gave me fun program to solve. After the initials phone screening the recruiters coordinated with me with flight tickets and hotel arrangements in Seattle, Wa.
The on site interview was not pleasant for me. The reason for that was I was very tired after a six hours flight cross country. When I reached Seattle, WA I could not sleep that night with a little bit of nerves and expectation. I really wanted the job but after the lunch my interview went into a downward spiral and the last interview I think I totally flunked and wasted the interviewer's time which was the most important as he mentioned he was from outside the group that I was being interviewed for (Or so called Amazon's Bar raiser).
Overall people are so friendly and the problems are not difficult. You can solve them with your eyes closed given time and in an relaxed environment. But if you succumb to pressure and easily stressed things can go wrong and will go wrong as I found out.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Nothing was too difficult, just usual data structure/Algorithms and fundamental CS stuff. I have written no disclosure agreement so can't disclose anything here. But every one looking forward to work there must emphasis on recursion and Tree structure.
Loop — 4 rounds, all on the same day
Round 1 — Coding (DSA)
Interviewer was a senior SDE, very friendly.
Warm-up + behavioral: "Tell me about a time you took ownership of something outside your responsibilities."
Main question: Given a list of meeting intervals, find the minimum number of conference rooms required. I used a heap. He then asked a follow-up: what if meetings could be reassigned to minimize total idle time? We discussed approaches but didn't fully code it.
He cared a lot about how I talked through edge cases out loud.
Round 2 — Coding + Problem Solving
LP question: "Describe a situation where you disagreed with a teammate."
Coding: LRU Cache implementation from scratch. I used a hashmap + doubly linked list. He pushed on thread-safety and what happens at capacity 0.
Round 3 — Behavioral (Bar Raiser)
This was the toughest round — no coding, all Leadership Principles, very deep STAR-format probing.
Questions I got:
"Tell me about a time you failed and what you learned."
"A time you had to deliver something with a tight deadline and limited information."
The bar raiser kept drilling: "What was your specific contribution?" "What would you do differently?" "What data did you use?" Have 6–8 strong stories ready with metrics.
Round 4 — Low-Level Design
Design: Design a parking lot system (classes, vehicle types, spot allocation, pricing). Then he asked me to code the findSpot() and releaseSpot() methods.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Most coding questions were LeetCode Medium. Common themes: graphs, heaps, sliding window, hashmaps, and LRU/design., system design,
Great interview process with three rounds, including a technical assessment and a technical interview. The interviewers were professional and supportive throughout the process. The questions mainly focused on DSA, problem-solving, and core technical concepts. The discussions were engaging and provided a good opportunity to demonstrate technical skills. Overall, the process was well-structured, smooth, transparent, and a very positive experience.
I applied through college or university. I interviewed at Amazon (Dublin, Dublin)
Interview
Online techincal assessment. Had to screen share and complete basic coding tasks similar to Leet Code. Could choose a language of your choice. Overall a very fair system and judged based on merit.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Technical assessment so a basic leet code style question about reversing the orders of long numerical strings.
