AMAZON SDE INTERN EXPERIENCE
Sharing my Amazon SDE Intern on-campus interview experience
For our campus drive, only candidates who opted for Bangalore location were shortlisted for OA.
Selection Flow:
37 students were shortlisted for OA
7 students were shortlisted for Round 1
3 students were shortlisted for Round 2
No one got job offer
OA Pattern:
Frequency-based sorting question
(sort bug IDs based on frequency ascending, if same frequency smaller ID gets priority)
Array transformation + minimum cost problem
(greedy + observation based)
Apart from coding, OA also had:
Work Simulation Assessment (Amazon Leadership Principles based situations)
Feedback/workstyle survey
Round 1:
It was a 1-hour virtual interview with Zoom + live coding platform. The interviewer first introduced himself and then asked me for a quick self intro. After that he asked: “What language are you comfortable with?” I chose C++.
He expected:
brute force first
optimized solution
complexity explanation
dry run after coding
DSA Questions:
Q1: Shortest path in grid with obstacles
Follow-ups:
Why BFS not DFS?
Complexity?
How to avoid cycles?
Q2: Modified version of first question: minimum walls to break
Follow-ups:
Which data structure is suitable?
Can nodes revisit, if yes how may times?
Edge cases
Since I mentioned RAG/GenAI projects in intro, interviewer also asked:
Explain RAG
Hallucination verification
How would you semantically search huge log files with millions of lines and how do you optimize it?
Discussion involved: chunking, embeddings, vector DB, scaling
Round 2:
It was also a 1-hour virtual interview and was more behavioral + problem solving focused. Initially both interviewers introduced themselves and then asked me for a self introduction.
Behavioral questions were mainly based on Amazon Leadership Principles.
Tell me about a situation where a teammate had a different thought process
What problem did you solve in JPMC Code for Good?
Explain a time when you had to deliver something important under deadline pressure, What sacrifices/tradeoffs did you make to meet the deadline, What was the final impact/outcome?
Tech stack used in mentioned project and how you handled implementation challenges
Since time was ending, they asked only 1 DSA question in my Round 2.
Coding Question: Next warmer temperature in a circular array.
Example: temps = [73,74,76,71] Output: [74,76,-1,73]
Overall observation: Different panels followed different patterns.
Some people got: more behavioral/Amazon Principles questions, only 1 DSA, more GenAI discussion It mainly depended on time and interviewer style.
One important thing, They focused a lot on: communication, explaining thought process, handling follow-up questions and reasoning under pressure
Not just final answers.