I applied in-person. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Oct 2014
Interview
It was a new graduate interview so candidates were divided and literately interviewed one to one by four interviewers. Apparently one of them was "bar raiser". The whole progress took near the whole day and most of them are algorithm questions. You need to write them on white board. Basically the interview was in an average difficulty. You need to practice the algorithm before interview and know how to analysis time / space complexity.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
As far as I remember, I had following questions. Write a function to implement Huffman encoding. Several principle of OOP in Java such as abstract vs interface, what is static function, how built-in java sorting implemented, etc. Reverse a singly lined list. Nearest ancestor node of binary tree. Write a function to shift array and the follow up was to analysis the possibility of each element got shifted. The last one was like, give you a function which is written in O(n^2), you need to figure out what is it doing for and try to use dynamic programming to optimize it. It is one in LeetCode.
It started with an OA, and then after a few weeks, I got invited to four rounds of interviews: technical and behavioral at 3 of the 4, and behavioral only at one.
I applied online. I interviewed at Amazon (Calgary, AB) in Jun 2026
Interview
Online Assessment is the first step in the process. I didn’t have an HR phone screening and went straight to the OA after applying. It was sent to me about a week after I submitted my application.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The first question is LeetCode style algorithms question, and the second question gives a full stack repo (choice of Java, NodeJS, or Django) and asks to solve a backend issue which is causing a bug in the frontend. Unit tests must pass to pass the second question. You can run both backend/frontend indivdually or together
I applied online. I interviewed at Amazon (Santa Clara, CA) in Jun 2026
Interview
Recruiter reached out and set up an onsite loop after the initial steps. Four back to back rounds in one day. Two coding heavy rounds run by senior engineers, one round with the hiring manager, and one behavioral round with a bar raiser. Mix of leadership principles and data structures throughout. Heard back within a week.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Standard BFS grid problem. Given a grid, find the time for all cells to reach a target state where the spread happens one layer at a time.
How did you answer: Clarified the constraints, walked through the approach, then coded a clean BFS from all starting points at once. Tracked the number of layers until everything was covered.