I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon in Jun 2012
Interview
At most three phone interviews and 1 on-site interview (with all expenses paid). Each phone interview is with a different person from a different department.
Studying the interview questions posted here on Glassdoor will help you.
Phone Interview 1:
Why do you want to work for Amazon?
What is the hardest engineering problem you've faced? (Prepare for them to question you a lot about details)
How would you improve the Amazon website?
Questions about Java (difference between abstract and interface, etc.)
Write a program that computes the Fibonacci number that is less than or equal to a given number.
Phone Interview 2:
What is the hardest engineering problem you've faced? (Same as above, but different interviewer)
Do you know what a hash map is?
Big-O Questions (give an algorithm that is as time efficient as possible, no programming required)
1. How would you sort 1 million integers?
2. How would you make sure two lists had the exact same content with no regard to order?
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
Write a program that computes the Fibonacci number that is less than or equal to a given number.
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.
