The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Amazon in May 2009
Interview
A recruiter from Amazon got my resume from Dice and called me. I did not have the exact skill sets for the job description for which I was to be interviewed but the recruiter informed that at Amazon they are looking for people with sound software engineering background and the exact skill set or experience in a particular programming language did not matter.
The recruiter setup a phone interview for an hour. I could not attend the interview as my daughter was sick. So, the interview was rescheduled with no problems.
The interviewer was very calm, giving me plenty of time to think and come up with an answer. He also gave me tips to lead me in the right direction. Overall the interview experience was very good. It was an hour long interview.
Questions asked:
1. How would you implement a hash map in java if for some reason you cannot use java.util.HashMap class?
2. Can any class be used with an enhanced for loop i.e. for each loop in java?
3. How would you implement threads in java. Go over all the details of join, wait etc.
4. Why do you want to work at Amazon?
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
How do you implement a HashMap in java if suppose there was no java.util.HashMap class available.
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
