I applied through college or university. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Jun 2014
Interview
The entire process was very enjoyable for me. Before the interview, I was informed on the topics they would ask so I could better prepare myself for it. I had back-to-back interviews with 45 minutes each. The interview didn't delve too much into my past experience and just went straight to the technical questions. I answered 2 questions for each interview. The questions were about data structures and algorithms, if you know the Cracking book pretty well then it should be no problem. The interviewers were nice and guided me with the right directions to answer the questions. I was given an offer a week later and was provided with very detailed information about the internship. Overall it was a very positive interviewing experience for me.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Very expected questions. For every question, you are expected to explain your approach, step through conceptually, and then write the code, step through the code, and clean up the code. Although questions are not the most difficult, you need to be very accurate and precise with your thought process and code.
Surprisingly easy — I expected tougher questions, but the coding round felt more like a warm-up. The main challenge was a DSA problem about counting islands in a 2D grid, which led to a discussion on DFS versus BFS and handling large grids. Funny enough, I had revisited that exact type of question while prepping on PracHub, which made me feel more confident. The interview wrapped up with a behavioral round, and I accepted an offer, but ultimately decided to decline it for another opportunity. Overall, it was a smooth experience.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Number of Islands — given a 2D grid of '1's (land) and '0's (water), count the number of connected islands. Walk through DFS vs BFS, and discuss how to avoid revisiting cells (in-place mutation vs visited set) and what changes if the grid is huge and must stream from disk.
It started with an OA, and then after a few weeks, I got invited to four rounds of interviews: technical and behavioral at 3 of the 4, and behavioral only at one.
I applied online. I interviewed at Amazon (Calgary, AB) in Jun 2026
Interview
Online Assessment is the first step in the process. I didn’t have an HR phone screening and went straight to the OA after applying. It was sent to me about a week after I submitted my application.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The first question is LeetCode style algorithms question, and the second question gives a full stack repo (choice of Java, NodeJS, or Django) and asks to solve a backend issue which is causing a bug in the frontend. Unit tests must pass to pass the second question. You can run both backend/frontend indivdually or together