I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Jun 2017
Interview
Contact by Amazon's internal recruiter, a online programming assessment is scheduled. The assessment is not terribly difficult but you need to budget your time wisely. I don't think I did terribly well in the assessment but I was asked to have on site interview in Seattle. The on site interview is set up quite comfortable but I was told the day before that they need to push back my interview from the morning to the afternoon on the same day. So you need to be very flexible with your schedule. Because of the reshuffling I only have four sessions during my on-site interview. I imagine there would be more if things worked out according to schedule. I wouldn't say the interview sessions are terribly difficult and I didn't do very badly, just not good enough and so I didn't get selected
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Because of the non disclosure agreement I signed I can't disclose the detail of the question, but there are some system design questions and some behavioral questions. Questions that have no absolute right or wrong answers but I guess you need to have conviction your response, so I would say spend some time in practicing your presentation skill
The recruitment process consisted of several stages:
Online coding – a one-hour session focused on solving programming problems and demonstrating practical coding skills.
Technical meeting – a two-hour in-depth discussion covering system design, problem-solving approach, and technical knowledge relevant to the role.
Soft skills meeting – a 90-minute conversation assessing communication skills, teamwork, and overall cultural fit.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
describe your current project, most interesting bug and feature.
the most important thing you are proud of.
slide-window algorithm, string parser
The technical round focused on a DSA problem about finding the closest points to the origin, where I was asked to explore multiple approaches like sorting, heaps, and quickselect. It felt straightforward, and I was ready for it thanks to the time I spent on PracHub brushing up on similar questions. The interview also included a behavioral section, but overall, I found the process to be very easy. Happy to say I received an offer, which I gladly accepted!
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
K Closest Points to Origin - given an array of points on the 2D plane and an integer k, return the k closest points to the origin (0,0). Walk through sort-by-distance O(n log n), heap-based O(n log k), and quickselect O(n) average; discuss when to prefer each based on the relationship between n and k.
Tough interview.
The Process: Automated Online Assessment (OA) with 2 coding questions and a system simulation, followed by a 4-round virtual Loop. Every single round started with 20 minutes of intense, behavioral behavioral questions diving into Amazon's Leadership Principles, followed by 25 minutes of technical coding or system design.
Amazon interviews are a test of mental endurance because you have to switch from deep behavioral storytelling straight into complex coding which can be so difficult. I used Apex Interviewer to practice the cognitive context switch. Running through their live-coding workspace helped me ensure my technical communication and architectural structures remained sharp and automatic, even after spending the first half of the interview defending my past project metrics. I fed the practice AI questions I extracted from glassdoor and gothamloop.
In the end, the offer was way lower than I hoped.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design the backend inventory tracking and placement service for a global fulfillment network, ensuring strict transactional consistency across multiple regional warehouses during peak shopping events.
