Software Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Amazon with 3.3 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 48% positive. To compare, the company-average is 57.5% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Software Engineer roles take an average of 24 days to get hired, when considering 3,654 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Amazon overall takes an average of 28 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Amazon as a Software Engineer according to 3,654 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 30%
One on one interview: 18%
Skills test: 17%
Presentation: 10%
Personality test: 7%
Group panel interview: 6%
IQ intelligence test: 5%
Background check: 4%
Other: 2%
Drug test: 2%
Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Amazon (New York, NY) in Aug 2017
Interview
I had to sign an online NDA for the initial online coding test, so I cannot reveal the two specific questions that were asked on it. Answering only the first of the two questions correctly was sufficient for proceeding to the phone interview stage.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
What is a challenging technical problem that you faced and how did you face it?
Implement a function to return the symmetric difference of two sets. You can't use the builtin feature to return a symmetric difference, and must implement it manually. To explain, the returned set has elements from either input set but no elements that are in both sets.
Write a function to return the minimum number of squares whose sum equals to given positive integer. For example, for 17, the answer is 2 as it can be expressed as 1 + 16. For 12, it's not 4 due to 9 + 1 + 1 + 1; instead it is 3 due to 4 + 4 + 4.
I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Amazon
Interview
The process started with a brief 30-minute phone screening with a recruiter, focusing on my background and resume.
After that, I was invite to a technical video interview with a senior engineer. This round lasted about 60 minutes, starting with a brief introduction, followed by a live coding challenge on a shared editor, and ended with a few questions about system design basics and my past projects.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Implement a function to find the first non-repeating character in a string and discuss its time and space complexity.
I got a take home exam on HackerRank that I did not do great in. I did not perfectly solve every problem. Then it was another problem with "AI assistance" except the AI seemed programmed to be as useless as possible, it's genuinely better to just not use it. Somehow I got the next interview anyways, who also asked me some leetcode style questions and asked my to explain my experience and then next day they rejected me.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What is the most complex problem I have encountered?
The interview process was straightforward with no surprises — three coding rounds (LeetCode medium difficulty), a system design round, and a cultural fit conversation. The interviewers were pleasant and the overall atmosphere was positive.
That said, it's worth noting that this format feels dated. Even before the rise of AI, LeetCode-style assessments were a questionable proxy for real-world engineering ability and cultural fit. In today's environment, where AI can solve most of these problems instantly, continuing to use this framework raises the question of what signal it's actually measuring.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
For coding it was ask very similar to number of islands (2D grid search) with a twist.