I applied through college or university. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Mar 2012
Interview
I had a two sessions of 1:1 interviews with two interviewers ( software engineers from amazon).
Each one lasted 45 minutes and the interviews happened in my university . The questions were not trivial nor impossible to answer but they were tricky and you had to think clearly before you answer any question. The first interview session was on data structures in general ( arrays, lists, binary trees, bst , hash-tables). We really did go deep into hash-tables ( I think that's where i messed up). The second interview consisted of programming an algorithm ( design and coding). That part was easier for me. The second interview was really impressed by my performance and from his point of view, he was sure i was going to get an offer. But i think my flop in hash tables ( which I did not know in depth at the time) caused me to lose the offer. Hopefully next year will be better. One advice: prepare for the worse, don't expect anything to be easy. Never give an answer without looking at every angles.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
how do you make sure a hash-table is performing efficiently?
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,
