Amazon interview guide
Amazon software engineer interview: process, questions and prep
Amazon hires engineers who can code well and show its Leadership Principles in real stories. Every round asks about both. Here is how the process usually runs, the questions candidates report, and how to practice for it.
The process
The Amazon interview process
What candidates commonly report. Teams and levels differ, so ask your recruiter what your loop looks like.
- Online assessment
A timed test with two coding problems, plus a short survey about how you like to work. It is often the first step for new grads and SDE I roles.
- Phone screen
One hour with an engineer: a coding problem in a shared editor, and one or two questions about past work.
- The loop
Four or five interviews in one day. Each one mixes coding or design with two or three Leadership Principle questions. SDE II and above get a system design round.
- Bar Raiser
One interviewer comes from outside the hiring team. Their job is to keep the hiring bar high, and they often dig hardest into your stories.
Questions
Amazon Leadership Principles interview questions
One reported question for each of the 16 Leadership Principles. Expect three to five follow-ups on every story.
Tell me about a time a customer asked for one thing, but you found the real problem was something else.
A strong answer shows working backwards from what the customer actually needed.
Tell me about a time you took on a problem that was outside your area because nobody else was handling it.
A strong answer shows acting for the whole team or company, not just their own area.
Tell me about a time you made a complicated process or system much simpler.
A strong answer shows a simpler solution they came up with or found.
Tell me about a time you made a call based on your judgment, without much data, and it turned out to be right.
A strong answer shows sound judgment when data was thin.
Tell me about something you taught yourself recently, outside of what your job needed. Why did you learn it?
A strong answer shows real curiosity that drove the learning.
Tell me about a time you helped a teammate grow, through mentoring, feedback or a stretch task.
A strong answer shows investing time in someone else's growth.
Tell me about a time you kept improving something even though people said it was already good enough.
A strong answer shows refusing to settle for good enough.
Tell me about a time you pushed for a much bigger idea than what was being planned.
A strong answer shows a bold direction beyond the obvious next step.
Tell me about a time you took a calculated risk because waiting would have cost too much.
A strong answer shows moving fast on a decision that could be undone.
Tell me about a time you delivered something important with far fewer resources than you wanted.
A strong answer shows doing more with less instead of asking for more.
Tell me about a time you had to tell people something you knew they wouldn't want to hear.
A strong answer shows speaking candidly, even when it was awkward.
Tell me about a time you had to dig through several layers to find the real cause of a problem.
A strong answer shows staying close to the details instead of accepting the first answer.
Tell me about a time you strongly disagreed with a decision, but the team went the other way.
A strong answer shows challenging the decision with data, not just opinion.
Tell me about the hardest project you've delivered. What made it hard, and how did you get it done?
A strong answer shows focusing on the inputs that mattered most.
Tell me about a time you made your team a better place to work.
A strong answer shows noticing what was making work worse for people.
Tell me about a time you noticed a side effect of your work on people outside your team, like other teams or users, and acted on it.
A strong answer shows thinking about effects beyond their own goal.
Questions
Amazon coding interview questions
Coding problems candidates report from Amazon interviews.
Contains Duplicate
Sets for constant-time lookups
LRU Cache
Caching model responses, eviction order
Valid Palindrome
Pointers from both ends, skipping noise
Two Sum II - Input Array Is Sorted
Using sorted order instead of a hash map
Valid Parentheses
Matching pairs with a stack
Daily Temperatures
Monotonic stack in one pass
Binary Search
Loop bounds and off-by-one errors
Search Insert Position
Lower bound on a sorted log
Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters
Growing and shrinking a window
Maximum Depth of Binary Tree
Recursion on a binary tree
Binary Tree Level Order Traversal
Breadth-first search with a queue
Merge K Sorted Lists
k-way merge with a heap
How to prepare
How to prepare for Amazon
- Prepare two stories for each Leadership Principle. Many stories can cover more than one principle.
- Say “I”, not “we”. Interviewers want to know what you did yourself.
- Put numbers in your results: time saved, errors cut, money, users.
- In design rounds, talk about cost, who runs the system, and what happens when a part fails.
Questions.
How many rounds is the Amazon software engineer interview?
Candidates usually report an online test or phone screen, then a loop of four or five interviews. Each loop interview is about an hour.
What are Amazon Leadership Principles questions?
They are questions about real situations from your past work, like “Tell me about a time you disagreed with your manager.” Each one tests one of Amazon’s 16 principles. Expect follow-up questions on what you did, what data you used and what the result was.
How do I use the STAR method in an Amazon interview?
Tell each story in four parts: the Situation, your Task, the Action you took and the Result. Keep the situation short and spend most of the time on what you did. End with a number, like time saved or errors cut.
Does Amazon ask system design questions?
Yes, mostly for SDE II and above. Reported prompts include storage, queues, notifications and caches, with a focus on cost and running the system.
Can I practice a Amazon mock interview?
Yes. Orin runs Amazon-style mock interviews by voice, with Amazon’s reported questions asked first and follow-ups in its style. Company interviews are on the Pro and Max plans. Your first interview is free.
How does an Orin mock interview work?
You talk with Orin by voice, like a video call. It asks questions, listens and asks follow-ups based on what you said. Coding happens in a live editor and design on a live whiteboard. After the interview you get a report with quotes from your answers, what cost you points and what to practice next.
Practice your Amazon interview.
Talk through Amazon-style questions with follow-ups, then see exactly what to fix. First interview free.
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