I applied through an employee referral. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Mar 2011
Interview
I'm a master's student in computer science and my advisor approached me about a possible opportunity with Amazon. One of her former students now works for the company and had told her they were looking for software developers. I submitted my resume via email and was scheduled for a phone interview within the week. A few hours before the interview I received an email stating they needed to postpone it until the next week.
I finally received the call after 7 days of waiting and proceeded with the phone screening. The interview was being conducted by one of their developers, so the expectation of technical knowledge was high. He was courteous and friendly but immediately got down to business with the first questions. The interview consisted of a few short-answer questions and several more open-ended problems dealing with algorithms and software design. The questions were fair and not overly difficult, and the interviewer offered a few hints and nudges in the right direction when I got stuck on something.
I've heard from others that there is something of an "Amazon culture" of cockiness and a general attitude of being the best at what they do (which certainly may be well deserved judging by the size and success of the company). I did get something of a sense of this when I was asking my questions at the end of the interview--when I asked the developer what his favorite part about working at Amazon was, he immediately replied that it was the confidence that he could solve virtually any problem posed to him, no matter how large. Again, he was polite and helpful through the entire call, but he wasn't much for smalltalk or joking around. From word of mouth and my conversation with this developer it seems like a pretty serious work environment.
Write an algorithm to output every possible string that can generated by a given 10-digit telephone number. (You know, how when you look at your phone's keypad the number 2 corresponds to A, B, or C, the number 9 corresponds to W, X, Y, or Z, etc.)
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.
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,
