Amazon.com Software Development Engineer Interview Questions & Reviews
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Updated Feb 15, 2012 – Interview questions and reviews posted anonymously by interview candidates.
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Difficulty Rating [?] Based on 212 ratings 
“Difficult” Interview
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Interview Experience [?] Based on 212 ratings
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| 11–20 of 210 Amazon.com Interviews | Sort by |
Software Development Engineer at Amazon.com
Posted Jan 29, 2012
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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 Jan 2012 in Cambridge, MA (took a day)
They were building a new site in Cambridge so they had the interview in Boston at a hotel. I waited in the lobby for the interviewers, who arrived in an elevator and then took you to be interviewed. Others also waited in the lobby to be interviewed. I was told there would be either 2 or 4 1:1 interviews, each about an hour.
The interview itself was primarily what my experience was, followed by questions about things I had done, followed by coding problems. Then I was asked if I had any questions for them.
I was already happily employed and would not have looked forward to driving to Cambridge. That day it took me 1.5 hours to arrive. Also I had read about carrying a pager here on glassdoor.com, and asked the interviewers about that. One said you carry it for a week every month; the next said you carry it for a week every 2 months.
I was told at the end of my 2nd interview that there would be just 2 interviews that day. I responded, "That must be a bad sign" with the response that it probably wasn't a good sign. Sure enough I did not get the job.
Interview Questions
Other Details
I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview and a Skills Test.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Software Development Engineer at Amazon.com
Posted Jan 28, 2012
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4.0
Difficult Interview
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Overall Positive Experience
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Received and Accepted Offer
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Interviewed Jul 2010 in Hyderabad (India) (took 1 week)
I got shortlisted for interview via university placement programme. I was called to their office for interviews. I had 4 rounds of an hour each. All rounds focused on skills like Problem Solving, Coding, Data Structures and Algorithms. There were some puzzles in one of the rounds. One thing i want to highlight about coding is they take it seriously. You need to avoid any logical error with even the minutest of edge case and the code needs to be what they call "production ready".
The questions were pretty standard and a quick google search would tell you most of them.
Interview Questions
Negotiation Details
No. Since this was an offer via campus placement, there was no negotiations.
Other Details
I got the interview through a College or University and the interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview and a Background Check.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Software Development Engineer at Amazon.com
Posted Jan 18, 2012 — 1 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 Oct 2011 in Seattle, WA (took 1 week)
I Applied Online and got a call for onsite interview. There was some interview event going on and so I did not have to appear for Phone interview prior to this interview. I was flied to Seattle and had four rounds of interview. All the questions were focused on Algorithms and Data Structures.
Questions were 1. "Solve a maze", you have a 2D matrix with 1's as blocked and 0's as path. Find a path from one corner to another, backtracking should be allowed.
2. Prove that tree is BST.
3. Ransom note problem - prepare a note(array) from a given magazine(array).
4. Keep track of history of users of Amazon site in pairs of 3 pages that they have consecutively visited.
Interview Questions
3. Ransom note problem - prepare a note(array) from a given magazine(array).
4. Keep track of history of users of Amazon site in pairs of 3 pages that they have consecutively visited.
Other Details
I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Software Development Engineer at Amazon.com
Posted Jan 27, 2012 — 0 of 2 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 Jan 2012 (took 3 weeks)
applied online, received phone interviews twice
Interview Questions
Other Details
The interview consisted of a Phone Interview.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Software Development Engineer at Amazon.com
Posted Jan 18, 2012
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1.0
Very Easy Interview
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Overall Negative Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Jan 2012 in Seattle, WA (took a day)
I was contacted by Amazon from linkedin. They want to know if I am interested to go to sydney for their hiring event. I said I can't go to sydney because I live in Brisbane and told them that my strength is in .Net and Amazon does not hire .Net programmer but she told me that it is ok. So I accepted to have the normal method of interview.
We had a few emails back and forth and the lady from Amazon was quick to respond my emails (usually a few hours). First step was a coding exercise. Usually initial coding exercises are easy and are designed to see if the interviewee can write code at all.
So she sent me the question and I had three hours to finish it. The question was: given an array of ints, find the sum of most common repeated number. For example {4,2,3,1,8,3} should return 3+3 = 6. I had to give two answers one with least time complexity and one with least space complexity. So I implemented the typical answers using a hashmap, or the naive one with O(1) space complexity and one extra using sort.
I unit tested and documented all my code properly, also had time to write a performance test and document how to parallelize any of the algorithms.
Its been a while since I sent them the answer but I received no response. The lady who was quick to reply to my emails also did not reply to my follow up email! It is really disrespectful, asking someone to sit for a test and totally ignoring him after that! Even if my code have been terrible and the guy has had a heart attack after seeing it they could tell me that sorry, we don't want to go further! It wasn't me chasing them after all.
After about a week and two follow ups, I have been said that they were trying to contact me trough another email. However I scheduled a phone interview and fingers crossed on that.
Interview Questions
Other Details
.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Software Development Engineer at Amazon.com
Posted Jan 17, 2012
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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 Dec 2011 in Seattle, WA (took a day)
Seemingly painless. Four 45 minutes interviews. Not particularly hard if you know your stuff. Big emphasis on memory and design questions. Each interviewer told me to tell them a little about myself, then asked various technical questions. Typical technical interview from a big company.
Interview Questions
Other Details
The interview consisted of a Skills Test and a Personality Test.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Software Development Engineer at Amazon.com
Posted Jan 17, 2012
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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 Nov 2011 (took 2+ weeks)
Had applied online and got a mail from them to set up phone interviews. Two interviews followed each other. Was a good experience.
Interview Questions
BST.
Other Details
I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Software Development Engineer at Amazon.com
Posted Jan 13, 2012
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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 Jan 2012 (took a day)
Amazon recruiter called me and set up the phone interview date. Phone interview was about 45 min long. First question was difference between Array and LinkedList. Second question was How do you insert node in LinkedList? they just asked me to explain it. I didn't have to code for that. Third question is very difficult for me. They told me to code the soduku game. Now amazon is using the shared white board. They will send you link exact on phone interview time and then you have to code on that shared white board.
Interview Questions
Other Details
The interview consisted of a Phone Interview.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Software Development Engineer at Amazon.com
Posted Jan 11, 2012
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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 2012 in Seattle, WA (took a day)
Short phone interview, only about 50 minutes long. All the questions were technical, but not too hard. You will also be asked to write some code up on a collaborative editing website where your interviewer watches as you type. You get a chance to ask questions of your interviewer at the end. Amazon is very data-driven, my interviewer worked in a small team doing manipulation and organization of employee and package data for higher ups. Know your data structures and algorithm analysis.
Interview Questions
Other Details
I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Software Development Engineer at Amazon.com
Posted Jan 8, 2012
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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 Dec 2011 in Seattle, WA (took 1 week)
I got a email from a recruiter after I posted my resume on Dice.com. Went through two phone interviews. After the first interview got a date for a second however it got rescheduled due to a scheduling error. Just my bit of advice from the experience so far, be confident of the answers you give even during coding.
Interview Questions
Given a node find all leaves belonging to its children.
Think of an organizational structure where each employee is reviewed and given points. Could be any integer. If doing good positive, if not negative, if neutral then 0.
Now find the node with the highest number of points when adding points belonging to it and all its children.
3
4 7
0 6 2 -50
In this case the answer is Node 4
Other Details
I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
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