Amazon.com Software Development Engineer Intern Interview Questions & Reviews

Interview Details – Amazon held a tech-talk on campus, which I attended. Afterwards, there were recruiters collecting resumes. I gave the recruiter my resume and waited to hear back. I heard back about one month later, and scheduled an on-campus interview.

There were two back-to-back 45 minute interviews, which both involved coding with a pen and paper. During the first interview, we talked a bit about my resume, then got into some tech questions. Nothing too difficult, just practice what you learned in class. Bit-shifting and data structures, mostly. Also, KNOW YOUR TIME/SPACE COMPLEXITIES. Seriously. Before you offer a solution, know what its time/space complexity is, because they will ask for it. Lastly, there was a general logic question, which I didn't have time to answer, but I emailed the interviewer the answer later. Then, I was able to ask the interviewer some questions. The second interview wasn't very hard, just two slightly longer questions. The solutions weren't difficult, but they had a lot of corner cases that you needed to watch out for. Be very cogniscent of that: If a question seems really easy, watch for corner cases. After that, same story, asked the interviewer some questions. Got the offer four days after the interview.

Some tips/notes:

1) Be yourself! Be friendly and nice. Don't be afraid to make a joke. Don't be awkward or nervous. Just relax. You've got this. It's very important to be well-spoken.

2) Know your time/space complexities.

3) Go over your data structures. Know them better than you know yourself.

4) Watch for corner cases.

5) If you slip up, just explain yourself and your mistake. They'll understand, we all do it.

6) Be VERY vocal about what you're thinking about. They care about how you arrive at the answer.

7) If they give you a question that you have heard before, tell them. They appreciate the honesty, and then you get a chance to talk a bit about the answer. I was given one question that I already knew the answer to, I simply told the interviewer that I was already familiar with this question, and gave him my solution. We talked about it, and then I was asked to come up with a different solution to the same problem.

8) Probably not something to stress about, but it probably helps to dress nice. Nothing amazing, I just wore a button-up and nice jeans. The point is, don't show up in a T-shirt and daisy dukes, or something. Dress like you care. You should care, after all.

9) If you've got an interview scheduled and you're reading this, like I was reading all of these before mine, you're probably stressing out like I was. Just calm down. Relax. Everything is going to be okay. You got the interview because they saw something in you. YOU'RE GOING TO DO FANTASTIC. I believe in you.

Negotiation Details – Internship, no negotiation.

Interview Details – There were 3 interview rounds. The first interview round started with basically explaining about my projects. Later he shifted his focus to basic Questions in java. The Questions were quite easy but he asked everything in details. He later gave me a shared editor and asked me to code for common parent in a binary tree. The second interview started in the same fashion, asking me regarding the projects. It was followed by again coding questions on the shared editor.The interviewer asked me to design a parking lot. He also asked me various stuff on External Sorting. The Third Interview was a bar raiser interview where there were certain tough questions to be tackled.

Interview Details – I started off by applying online on their website. Then, received an email for a phone interview, two of them. 45 minutes each with a 15 minute break in between. I gladly scheduled for a date and time.

The first interviewer was pretty cool, but I struggled with the question, there was not enough time to complete a implementation of a function (longest path in a tree). I answered all his previous questions with ease though.

The second interviewer also asked an algorithm question, which was about sorting numbers in two separate arrays. I thought I did pretty good, since I answered them correctly and gave optimal solutions. I explained every step of thinking and any alternative solutions. You should be able to go through your thought process well.

Know your Big-Oh notation and algorithms before you do the interview. There aren't really "trick" questions, but just tough questions.

I didn't hear back for two weeks, so I followed up. Surprisingly, I got email asking if I was interested in Fall internship position rather then Summer. But I have school, so I couldn't take it. Then, I got a email couple days later saying they needed interns in Toronto, Canada and asked if I was interested. I said yes, since I've visited Toronto before and wouldn't mind working there.

They prepared everything fast and even made the visa application process easy for me. The recruiter wasn't that fast in responding, but the second one is efficient. I really liked their hiring process.

Negotiation Details – I did not negotiate, it's an intern position and the pay is already great.

Interview Details – I applied several times so I do not know which one made me get the interview. But I think it took at least 3 month after my last application. I had 2 back to back phone interview. The questions are easy (cracking the code interview!!!), but I was too nervous. :(

Interview Details – selected for the phone call interview. two back to back phone interviews of 45 minutes each on single day with 15 minutes break. questions based on hashing, algorithms, c ,c++

Interview Details – Submit resume online and get contact thru email couple months later. Scheduled a back-to-back phone interview (45 mins each, total 90 mins). However, the interview is cancel due to conflict and scheduled another one which is one weeks later. Both interviewers asked question regarding my past experience and coding problems. They do want you to write code and explain to them line by line. However, the 2 interviewers ask approximately the same question. Both "find duplicate item from string" type question. The interview is too easy for company like amazon. So I guess that's why many people in my cs department who can't actually finish MPs get offer. One thing annoys me is that, when I get an offer, I went to spring break and the deadline is one week later. However, I get an email two days before deadline said that all SDE position is fulled in Seattle. And I can only choose to go to other place or be a SDET. Seriously? They are giving more offers than their positions? So finally I choose an external development center in california AWS team with a raised salary.

Negotiation Details – They raised my salary for $1000 a month and provides me a rent car thru my intern period.

Interview Details – The interview was on campus. There were total two technical interviews. The first one was not that difficult on technical stuff. Normal data structure, array operations questions. But the interview kind of judged me on the factors like communication skills, problem handling, presentation skills, etc. There were some questions about the problems faced in the real world scenario, and I was required to provide some efficient ways to solve that.
The second interview really tested the coding skills and logic development. But the questions were quite reasonable and I think that they were the fair tests for a personal who wants to get into a company like amazon. Overall, the interview procedure was impressive and quite fair.

Interview Details – A friend of mine submitted my resume to a hiring manager and I got a phone call about a week later to set up a phone interview. The phone interview involved two different people, both of whom went straight into the technical questioning. There was none of the typical interview banter or "what's your greatest weakness" sort of vagueness. The second guy didn't even have inflection in his voice. He was just a cold, hard, questioning robot... creepy!

About halfway through the phone call I was asked to sit down at my computer and log on to a website where the interviewer watched me write some code to solve a problem he'd specified (printing a series of numbers to a console in a spiral pattern). It was a bit difficult since every time I stopped to think he'd ask me what I was thinking. After several minutes of thinking out loud and typing nervously I managed to complete the problem.

After the online portion of the interview, I was given homework (see "Most Difficult or Unexpected Question"), and told to submit it to them by the end of the day! I had a hot date with tickets to a show that evening, but as the hours went by it became clear that I was going to have to cancel to work on the interview problem. Frustrated and bitter, I resigned to submit what I had by midnight along with documentation on the missing aspects of my solution.

A few days went by and I heard nothing. I still had some questions about the internship that I didn't have a chance to ask over the phone, so I e-mailed my recruiter. She replied the next day with a form letter telling me that they'd decided to pursue other candidates.

Interview Details – On campus interview.
2 back to back face to face interview each of 45 mins.
Reverse Linked List.
Write a method which generates a fibonacci series and returns nth fib num.
Find the number which is present odd number of times in an array.