Software Development Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Amazon with 3.2 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 61% positive. To compare, the company-average is 57.5% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Software Development Engineer roles take an average of 28 days to get hired, when considering 2,542 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 Development Engineer according to 2,542 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 29%
One on one interview: 21%
Skills test: 14%
Presentation: 11%
IQ intelligence test: 6%
Group panel interview: 6%
Personality test: 5%
Background check: 4%
Drug test: 2%
Other: 2%
Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (San Francisco, CA) in Jul 2010
Interview
45 minute phone screen describing related work experience. On-site interview consisted of five 45-minute interviews with a deep technical focus. Many coding and problem-solving questions were given. Difficulty increased to a fairly high level.
Areas included testing practices and testing experience, programming questions such as finding compiler errors, algorithm questions such as using hash tables, and design questions regarding client/server communication.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a client/server messaging protocol to facilitate a web-based spreadsheet program. What would the object model look like on the client side?
It started with an OA, and then after a few weeks, I got invited to four rounds of interviews: technical and behavioral at 3 of the 4, and behavioral only at one.
I applied online. I interviewed at Amazon (Calgary, AB) in Jun 2026
Interview
Online Assessment is the first step in the process. I didn’t have an HR phone screening and went straight to the OA after applying. It was sent to me about a week after I submitted my application.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The first question is LeetCode style algorithms question, and the second question gives a full stack repo (choice of Java, NodeJS, or Django) and asks to solve a backend issue which is causing a bug in the frontend. Unit tests must pass to pass the second question. You can run both backend/frontend indivdually or together
I applied online. I interviewed at Amazon (Santa Clara, CA) in Jun 2026
Interview
Recruiter reached out and set up an onsite loop after the initial steps. Four back to back rounds in one day. Two coding heavy rounds run by senior engineers, one round with the hiring manager, and one behavioral round with a bar raiser. Mix of leadership principles and data structures throughout. Heard back within a week.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Standard BFS grid problem. Given a grid, find the time for all cells to reach a target state where the spread happens one layer at a time.
How did you answer: Clarified the constraints, walked through the approach, then coded a clean BFS from all starting points at once. Tracked the number of layers until everything was covered.