I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Oct 2016
Interview
Got an email inviting me to apply. Applied online. First round interview involved debugging and logic/reasoning test. The bugs were pretty elementary - i.e. index out of range.
Second round interview involved more coding. It started with a simulation of a day in the life at Amazon where you had to respond to emails and help prioritize tasks. Next were a bunch of coding questions. Had a live proctor watching me through my videocam which was kind of weird.
Final round, I flew out to Seattle and took part in a group interview. The only part we did as a group was analyzing time-complexity of some code and then the rest of the day we spent working on our own. We all worked on our coding in the same room, though. Throughout the day, we were called into interviews with current employees and asked about our code process and what we were going to do next, or what we could have done to make it better. There were a few other what-if scenarios where you tell them what part of your code you would enhance/change to make it work with the new constraints.
They said that we would find out if we received an offer within two business days. However, I did not hear for about two weeks.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I don't remember. Asked me how I could improve my code a lot and how I could make it more efficient.
Recruiter screen, followed by an online coding assessment and then a technical phone interview. The final round was a virtual onsite loop with multiple interviews covering data structures, system design, debugging, and Amazon Leadership Principles. The technical questions were practical but time-constrained, and the behavioural questions required specific examples using the STAR format.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a scalable URL shortening service and explain how you would handle high read traffic, collisions, database schema, expiration, and basic monitoring.
That moment when the interviewer asked about finding indices in an array for a target sum was wild — I had just tackled something identical while prepping on PracHub. The interview included a technical round with another question about designing an in-memory LRU cache and a behavioral question about meeting tight deadlines. After a smooth discussion, I was told I'd received an offer, which I happily accepted. Overall, the process felt pretty straightforward and not overly challenging.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
Given an array of integers return the indices of two numbers summing to a target
Interviewed for silicon team. Have only been asked about the domain specific knowledge in 1st round and system design in 2nd round and C coding in 3rd round.
The interviews were 50 mins each.