Envié una solicitud electrónica. El proceso duró 3 días. Acudí a una entrevista en Amazon (Seattle, WA) en oct 2013
Entrevista
Applied for a intern position last year. Apparently all positions were full at the time and invited me to interview for a full time position this year instead.
Started off as 3 online technical questions. Know your basic data structures and algorithms in and out and it will be (and should be) a breeze. Remember to relax though.
If you pass they will invite you to a onsite interview. Amazon will take very good care of you during the interview process, flight, rooming, expenses will be all paid for (within reason).
The onsite interview will start off with lunch with a bunch of other candidates and some interviewers. Don't worry, you are NOT competing against each other, Amazon needs every smart person they can get.
After lunch they will move you to your testing room, where you stay and 4 interviewer will come in and out with various HR questions combined with the programming question.
Other --
Amazon will give you documents on what to expect during the interview. Honestly I think the process is very fair as they don't throw any curve balls.
Tips --
* Again, I cannot stress enough to know your data structures and algorithms (graph traversals, structures of dynamic programming, etc). They are the building blocks for solving any type of programming problem.
* Talk, no matter how stupid it sounds. Talk out what you're doing. Talk if you're stuck, talk if you have an idea, talk as you write down line for line.
* Always remember to smile this should be easy as you should be enjoying this. If not, you might be in the wrong field.
Complaints:
Being bombarded by 4 interviewers and while your brain is racing as fast as possible is exhausting. Amazon does not pay/reimburse alcoholic purchases. As many fellow interviewees genuinely wish to de-stress afterwards.
Preguntas de entrevista [1]
Pregunta 1
Honoring the NDA. If you want to be prepared, take a look at your old programming assignments. (Data structures, algorithms) can you do it from scratch? Most of it complete under an hour? What if they change it to another variant? Can you recognize it?
Loop — 4 rounds, all on the same day
Round 1 — Coding (DSA)
Interviewer was a senior SDE, very friendly.
Warm-up + behavioral: "Tell me about a time you took ownership of something outside your responsibilities."
Main question: Given a list of meeting intervals, find the minimum number of conference rooms required. I used a heap. He then asked a follow-up: what if meetings could be reassigned to minimize total idle time? We discussed approaches but didn't fully code it.
He cared a lot about how I talked through edge cases out loud.
Round 2 — Coding + Problem Solving
LP question: "Describe a situation where you disagreed with a teammate."
Coding: LRU Cache implementation from scratch. I used a hashmap + doubly linked list. He pushed on thread-safety and what happens at capacity 0.
Round 3 — Behavioral (Bar Raiser)
This was the toughest round — no coding, all Leadership Principles, very deep STAR-format probing.
Questions I got:
"Tell me about a time you failed and what you learned."
"A time you had to deliver something with a tight deadline and limited information."
The bar raiser kept drilling: "What was your specific contribution?" "What would you do differently?" "What data did you use?" Have 6–8 strong stories ready with metrics.
Round 4 — Low-Level Design
Design: Design a parking lot system (classes, vehicle types, spot allocation, pricing). Then he asked me to code the findSpot() and releaseSpot() methods.
Preguntas de entrevista [1]
Pregunta 1
Most coding questions were LeetCode Medium. Common themes: graphs, heaps, sliding window, hashmaps, and LRU/design., system design,
Great interview process with three rounds, including a technical assessment and a technical interview. The interviewers were professional and supportive throughout the process. The questions mainly focused on DSA, problem-solving, and core technical concepts. The discussions were engaging and provided a good opportunity to demonstrate technical skills. Overall, the process was well-structured, smooth, transparent, and a very positive experience.
Solicité el puesto a través de la escuela superior o la universidad. Acudí a una entrevista en Amazon (Dublín, Dublín)
Entrevista
Online techincal assessment. Had to screen share and complete basic coding tasks similar to Leet Code. Could choose a language of your choice. Overall a very fair system and judged based on merit.
Preguntas de entrevista [1]
Pregunta 1
Technical assessment so a basic leet code style question about reversing the orders of long numerical strings.