Amazon.com Senior Software Engineer Interview Questions & Reviews
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Updated May 23, 2012 – Interview questions and reviews posted anonymously by interview candidates.
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Difficulty Rating [?] Based on 42 ratings 
“Average” Interview
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Interview Experience [?] Based on 42 ratings
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| 31–40 of 42 Amazon.com Interviews | Sort by |
Senior Software Engineer at Amazon.com
Posted Aug 25, 2010
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3.0
Average Interview
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Overall Neutral Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Aug 2010 in Seattle, WA (took 3 weeks)
1st phone interview just happened and I got the 2nd confirmation. I was asked about Hashtable behavior and sorting methods, plus one practice of finding pairs in 2 given arrays. Interviewer is nice.
Interview Questions
Other Details
I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Senior Software Engineer at Amazon.com
Posted Aug 27, 2010 — 0 of 1 people found this helpful
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3.0
Average Interview
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Overall Neutral Experience
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Received and Declined Offer
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Interviewed Jun 2008 (took a day)
2 interview experiences: exp #1: phone interviewed w/ 2 people, onsite visit, job offered. Phone interview was mainly algo questions (no puzzles) and 1 offline coding. onsite was 3 algo interviers and 2-3 design discussion interviewers. I was interviewed for 2 positions so was told that I'll face extra people, I can't remember if I was double teamed at some parts.
Questions: I don't remember the algo questions, but I think they weren't too hard because I was able to solve them (I can't solve hard ones at interviews). 1. discuss how to design server(s) to handle large amounts of traffic across the world (large geographic/network space). 2. How do I feel about Java vs C++ (I remember this especially because during lunch a manager mentioned he felt c++ is "crisp" and I liked that description.)
It took Amazon a while to reimburse my travel expenses (I think 2-3 weeks, while other companies gave a check within 1 week). Because they want to you take taxi, I was waiting in their building exit for my cab ride to the airport when everybody is leaving work. A few people came and said bye to me, but I can't remember their names (actually I didn't even remember talking to them). So, not wanting to offend any interviewer, I just smiled at everybody existing.
Interview Questions
Reason for Declining
Although Amazon work sounded interesting, I had better offers in terms of salary and location.
Other Details
The interview consisted of a Phone Interview and a 1:1 Interview.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Senior Software Engineer at Amazon.com
Posted Aug 11, 2010
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2.0
Easy Interview
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Overall Positive Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Aug 2010 in Seattle, WA (took 2 months)
It took quite some time (say six weeks) to get a response after I had submitted my resume, and the email came from a recruiter. The phone interview was for a position unrelated to the one for which I had submitted my resume.
Setting up the phone interview took a couple of emails and a phone call, and the software engineer from the team called me precisely on time. He spent about 30 minutes asking me questions and I spent about 20 minutes asking him questions.
The most technical questions were akin to:
* if you had to keep a list of numeric values, how would you search it for all pairs of values which add to a fixed value?
* give a back-of-the-envelope OO (class-level) design for a dictionary system
A respectable amount of time was spent asking me about a technical solution I was proud of or a great technical challenge I had overcome.
Interview Questions
Other Details
I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Senior Software Engineer at Amazon.com
Posted Jul 25, 2010
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3.0
Average Interview
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Overall Positive Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Jun 2010 in Seattle, WA (took 2 weeks)
I did 2 phone interviews with Amazon. The first interview was about OOP and pretty simple stuff. Then I got a second phone interview, which was harder and involved a lot of data structures. I received a rejection email about 1 hr after the second interview (which was still nice considering some companies don't even let you know).
Overall, the interviews were great, but I was looking for a more Jr. position and this was a Sr. position. I blame it on the recruiter.
Interview Questions
Other Details
I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Senior Software Engineer at Amazon.com
Posted Jul 17, 2010
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3.0
Average Interview
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Overall Neutral Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Jan 2010 in Seatac, WA (took a day)
3 phone interviews. The first guy is good. Second guy has strong Indian English accent, unable to catch the question. Failed. About c/c++ language features. Not difficult but need to know.
Interview Questions
Other Details
The interview consisted of a Phone Interview.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Senior Software Engineer at Amazon.com
Posted May 19, 2010 — 0 of 1 people found this helpful
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4.0
Difficult Interview
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Overall Positive Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Apr 2010 (took 4 days)
I contacted Amazon through a job listing. And a person from Amazon contacted me over the phone after 4 days. Initially, the interview seemed very tough, but the interviewer was kind and made me feel comfortable.
At first, the job description was given and I was explained my role in the company. Then, there followed a skills test and a technical round
Other Details
I got the interview through an Employee Referral and the interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Senior Software Engineer at Amazon.com
Posted Apr 20, 2010 — 3 of 3 people found this helpful
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3.0
Average Interview
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Overall Negative Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Apr 2010 (took a day)
After asking a couple brief questions about my resume, the interviewer gave a problem involving a merge sort of two arrays. This is the kind of problem given to people fresh out of school who don't have any experience. If encountered in the real world, its easily looked up in a book or on the Internet. Even if gotten wrong, its easily debugged. A design problem would've been more appropriate for a Sr. Software Engineering position since a design has bigger repercussions if gotten wrong. Its no wonder Amazon has a problem with high turnover of people who leave after 2 years because they don't like Amazon's policy of making them own a problem from start to finish. Amazon's interview questions get them people who're good programmers, but not good software engineers who realize programming's just a part of the software development life cycle. During the interview, I could hear the interviewer eating his lunch.
Interview Questions
Other Details
I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Senior Software Engineer at Amazon.com
Posted Feb 5, 2010
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4.0
Difficult Interview
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Overall Neutral Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Feb 2010 in Seattle, WA (took 2 weeks)
This was a set of three phone interviews where I was offered pop quizes on coding problems. A new grad would be more comfortable in this type of interview. It has been quite a long time since I have been quized on basic coding and algorithms.
While in my current role I constantly interface with my employees, customers, management and partners I am not thrown brain teasers, but I am asked relevant questions to the technology and product suites of the company I work for.
I found myself a "deer in the headlights" on very easy questions. My brain froze and I struggled to unlock it for even just a moment.
Interview Questions
shuffle an array in place in O(n)
Other Details
The interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a 1:1 Interview and a Skills Test.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Senior Software Engineer at Amazon.com
Posted Nov 28, 2009
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3.0
Average Interview
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Overall Positive Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Nov 2009 in Hyderabad (India) (took 1 week)
They asked me (1) reversing a single linked list (2) Implementing a queue with stack as the internal datastructure (3) Why OO programming (4) Most challenging project and why? (5)Polymorphism/overload/override concepts etc etc..
Overall I did well, but no response from them until now..I am still waiting..Just happened last week.
Interview Questions
Other Details
I got the interview through a Staffing Agency and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Senior Software Engineer at Amazon.com
Posted Sep 1, 2009
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3.0
Average Interview
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Overall Neutral Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Sep 2008 (took a day)
I came across an opportunity at Amazon for Senior Software Engineer through Dice.com and landed up with a phone interview. The interview was relatively short on algorithms and some trick questions. To my surprise, i had not cleared the interview and did not get any further communication through Amazon.
Interview Questions
Other Details
I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
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