I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Cape Town) in Feb 2019
Interview
I applied by referral though LinkedIn when one of the recruiters posted that they were looking for Cloud Support Engineers.
I went through one Phone Interview and received my result the next day. I was called for an on-site interview that I took two weeks after the phone interview. I was interviewed by 5 people; 3 in a management role and 1 in Analytics and 1 in Networks / OS. It took three days to get my results. I hear that they strive to let you know your results within five days. You may have to go through more phone interviews and perhaps even a written test. One of the guys I interviewed with said that he had to go through three phone interviews; but of course, don't be discouraged if this is you because that guy also got hired.
It is the best experience I have had in an interview process. It was very quick, very casual and more of a dialogue with them trying to note how deep you can dive into concepts and how critical you are in your thinking. Amazon Cape Town is also quite diverse; if you have been in the field for a decade or two, expect to be interviewed by talented people younger than you casually dressed in shorts, flops and trying to find out how talented you are and what you can contribute. You may be lucky to be bumped to Cloud Support Engineer II if you have been working for over 5 years.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I can not go into the specifics of the questions because I signed an NDA but depending on which role you are applying for you should expect to get a bar raiser in that field. Amazon Cloud Support Field has disciplines in Networks, Analytics, Operating Systems etc. Also note that bar raiser questions can come from that field but also expect to know adequately enough in the other fields. Concerning your preference of Operating Systems, you can specify your preferred OS and they normally accommodate that. No need to dive into Linux if you are a Windows expert or vice-versa.
I am sure you have heard of the Leadership Principles so make sure you have at least two examples per Leadership Principle. I would not advise memorizing them; I would highly recommend watching Dan Croitor's videos which explains and gives examples of how they would be phrased https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw0uQHve23oMWgQcTTpgQsQ. In the On-Site interview, it is also discouraged to reuse the same examples for different interviewers; the reason is they consolidate their work and it shows you live out the principle if you have multiple examples.
Glassdoor was very helpful in preparing for the interview as well.
It was a 4 round loop. The first two rounds focused on networking and troubleshooting, plus questions about your domain. The last two rounds are just answering questions using leadership principles in STAR format.
The interview was smooth. Recruiter reached out with an invitation to an online assessment, then a phone interview 1 hour and interview loop scheduled after that. It had 4 rounds
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Depends on the domain of the role. I had Networking domain, so most questions were on Linux and troubleshooting.
It was difficult , questions about os and computer network and one easy coding question , the coding question was prime number question, also asked behavioural questions which are to be answered in STAR format