I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Feb 2018
Interview
The whole process was very organized. The recruiter did an excellent job of keeping me in the loop of what to expect next. I was reached out to on LinkedIn. Shortly after that, I had two phone calls with project managers. After that, I had an in person interview. The in person interview was a 6 hour affair, consisting of 5 one on one interviews and one informal interview over lunch. The 5 one on one interviews were split into 3 behavioral and 2 skills based. I would recommend studying Amazon's core values for the behavioral interviews. Being prepared with "One example of my showing core value #1 was ..." will be very helpful. The 2 skills based were all verbal, no white boarding or anything. The only thing I did not like was 3 of the 5 interviews were video based. It felt a little disrespectful to have someone travel to an interview, but the interviewers couldn't be bothered to come into the interview room.
Looking back, I'm relieved I declined the offer, despite the intense experience. The interview process felt overwhelming, starting with some tough core ML concepts before diving into the LLM fundamentals. During the technical round, I recognized a tokenization question from a PracHub session I had done just a week before. It felt like a small win in an otherwise challenging interview. Ultimately, the pressure and expectations were high, but I felt it wasn't the right fit for me.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
LLM fundamentals: tokenization design and KL-regularized SFT
There are three rounds in total. The process begins with a coding round, followed by the main interview loop, where you will meet the team and discuss technical skills, experience, and fit.
First round is fun, second round, which is also the final round involved 5 sessions, with different focus. For some sessions, not be able to present my story completely, time was tight, and interviewers were rushing.