amazon | Software Engineer | Interview Experience
Interview Date: Not specified
Result: Not specified
Difficulty: Not specified
Interview Process
The interview process consisted of three rounds:
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First Round: A non-technical senior interview focused on behavioral questions, primarily centered around Amazon’s leadership principles. The structure included:
- Tell me a time when…
- Follow-up questions
- If you were back, what would you do differently
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Second Round: Followed immediately after the first, lasting two hours with a technical focus. The interviewer was from the Vancouver office, and there were some communication challenges due to accent and connection issues. The round included two questions:
- Question 1: Design a lottery system with a linear relationship between spending and winning; find k winners with the highest probability.
- Question 2: Write a validation function for an Amazon training courses catalog.
Several follow-up questions were asked, including inquiries about time and space complexity, as well as the differences between BFS and DFS.
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Third Round: One hour long, comprising half behavioral questions and half technical questions. The behavioral questions were similar to those in the first round. The technical question involved system design for a package installer system that respects dependency resolution, with a follow-up on handling payloads during installation.
Technical Questions
- Minimum Number of Refueling Stops (Priority Queue, Heap, Linear Relationships)
- Isomorphic Strings (Depth First Search, DFS, Topological Sort, Directed Graph, Cycle Detection)
- First Bad Version (Graph, Topological Sorting, System Design, Package Management)
Tips & Insights
- It is beneficial to prepare stories aligned with Amazon’s leadership principles to guide the conversation.
- During technical interviews, clearly explain your thought process while coding.
- Be prepared for follow-up questions that delve deeper into your solutions and concepts.