I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Oct 2013
Interview
Amazon contacted me after receiving my resume through a conference database. They asked me to complete a 90 minute online coding assessment, where I was asked 3 different (relatively simple) coding problems (eg determine whether or not a LinkedList contains a loop). A little over a week later I heard back from HR saying that I had been selected to go to Seattle for an onsite interview.
The interview started at 11:45, and we were first brought into a room where we had lunch and casually talked to employees about Amazon and living in Seattle (there were about 30 of us, all students looking for post-graduation entry-level positions). Then we each were assigned an interviewer and brought to a small room with a whiteboard where I had 45 minutes to first talk about a project I had worked on/experience I'd had in school or internships. Then I was given a coding problem that I had to solve on the whiteboard. After I was finished, I had some time to ask questions of my own. There were four interviews just like this in total, in which I stayed in my room and interviewers came in and out. Two of my interviewers were very nice and helpful if I got stuck, one of them was kind of uncomfortable because I was confused about the problem and was struggling a little bit, and the other one seemed to really dislike me, looking at me like I was an idiot every time I said something or wrote something (he also tried to trip me up by saying that it was necessary to manually resize an ArrayList in Java, which I knew wasn't the case but it got me a little flustered and he told me I need to do some more research after the interview). That particular interviewer was stressful, but the other three didn't seem to want me to fail.
Overall I think that the people there were pretty nice, although maybe a little bit pretentious, but it is Amazon so I suppose they have a right to be, since many many people want to work there and they have the ability to select the best of the best candidates. It was also a little weird after the interview, since my last interviewer walked me to the lobby and left and there was no further discussion or convening. I also wish they had been courteous enough to give me a call telling me I did not get the job rather than sending me an email.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Give an example of a project where you failed.
Design a program that would select which elevator in a building would be the most efficient, based on where the elevator is located and headed and where the user is located and headed.
Loop — 4 rounds, all on the same day
Round 1 — Coding (DSA)
Interviewer was a senior SDE, very friendly.
Warm-up + behavioral: "Tell me about a time you took ownership of something outside your responsibilities."
Main question: Given a list of meeting intervals, find the minimum number of conference rooms required. I used a heap. He then asked a follow-up: what if meetings could be reassigned to minimize total idle time? We discussed approaches but didn't fully code it.
He cared a lot about how I talked through edge cases out loud.
Round 2 — Coding + Problem Solving
LP question: "Describe a situation where you disagreed with a teammate."
Coding: LRU Cache implementation from scratch. I used a hashmap + doubly linked list. He pushed on thread-safety and what happens at capacity 0.
Round 3 — Behavioral (Bar Raiser)
This was the toughest round — no coding, all Leadership Principles, very deep STAR-format probing.
Questions I got:
"Tell me about a time you failed and what you learned."
"A time you had to deliver something with a tight deadline and limited information."
The bar raiser kept drilling: "What was your specific contribution?" "What would you do differently?" "What data did you use?" Have 6–8 strong stories ready with metrics.
Round 4 — Low-Level Design
Design: Design a parking lot system (classes, vehicle types, spot allocation, pricing). Then he asked me to code the findSpot() and releaseSpot() methods.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Most coding questions were LeetCode Medium. Common themes: graphs, heaps, sliding window, hashmaps, and LRU/design., system design,
Great interview process with three rounds, including a technical assessment and a technical interview. The interviewers were professional and supportive throughout the process. The questions mainly focused on DSA, problem-solving, and core technical concepts. The discussions were engaging and provided a good opportunity to demonstrate technical skills. Overall, the process was well-structured, smooth, transparent, and a very positive experience.
I applied through college or university. I interviewed at Amazon (Dublin, Dublin)
Interview
Online techincal assessment. Had to screen share and complete basic coding tasks similar to Leet Code. Could choose a language of your choice. Overall a very fair system and judged based on merit.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Technical assessment so a basic leet code style question about reversing the orders of long numerical strings.