I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA)
Interview
I was contacted by Amazon.com recruiter, and decided to speak to him out of curiosity (I already had a job and was happy there). There was no phone interview per se, in person interview look was quickly arranged.
I had five 1:1 interviews, one of which was a lunch where I was the one asking questions. Of course, they all count, no matter if I am answering or asking questions. Each of the other four interviews included a programming question, and having read GlassDoor reviews in advance, I knew almost all would include some sort of hash table. Two were developers, three were managers.
I received a call the next day that they would extend the offer. But I did not receive the offer for three weeks. When I did, it was not to my satisfaction. Attempt to negotiate was not successful, so I declined.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
One of the interviewers asked me to implement a file system. What was in particular frustrating is that he left is so open ended as to the level of detail required, yet expected a specific answer and was unhappy that I took a different approach.
The technical round focused on a DSA problem about finding the closest points to the origin, where I was asked to explore multiple approaches like sorting, heaps, and quickselect. It felt straightforward, and I was ready for it thanks to the time I spent on PracHub brushing up on similar questions. The interview also included a behavioral section, but overall, I found the process to be very easy. Happy to say I received an offer, which I gladly accepted!
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
K Closest Points to Origin - given an array of points on the 2D plane and an integer k, return the k closest points to the origin (0,0). Walk through sort-by-distance O(n log n), heap-based O(n log k), and quickselect O(n) average; discuss when to prefer each based on the relationship between n and k.
Tough interview.
The Process: Automated Online Assessment (OA) with 2 coding questions and a system simulation, followed by a 4-round virtual Loop. Every single round started with 20 minutes of intense, behavioral behavioral questions diving into Amazon's Leadership Principles, followed by 25 minutes of technical coding or system design.
Amazon interviews are a test of mental endurance because you have to switch from deep behavioral storytelling straight into complex coding which can be so difficult. I used Apex Interviewer to practice the cognitive context switch. Running through their live-coding workspace helped me ensure my technical communication and architectural structures remained sharp and automatic, even after spending the first half of the interview defending my past project metrics. I fed the practice AI questions I extracted from glassdoor and gothamloop.
In the end, the offer was way lower than I hoped.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design the backend inventory tracking and placement service for a global fulfillment network, ensuring strict transactional consistency across multiple regional warehouses during peak shopping events.
Initial screening call with recruiter followed by a 1 hr hacker rank question on DSA. The final round was a panel consisting of 4 interviews ranging from technical design, more DSA and behaviour questions.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Describe a time when you disagreed with your team and how you resolved it
