I applied online. I interviewed at Amazon (San Francisco, CA) in Jun 2017
Interview
Initial HR phone discussion followed by a call with an engineer, discussing my background and asking me a linked list related question to code in their online interactive IDE. Their HR typically takes a week to get back with you, but they tend to be prompt about hitting this deadline. Onsite interview with 4 engineers - half had behavioral questioning while all had a white board challenge. 3/4 of the whiteboards were algorithms, half were systems design or feature design.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Implement deep copy on a linked list where nodes also have a pointer to a random other node.
Recruiter screen, online assessment, technical interviews, and behavioral rounds focused heavily on Amazon Leadership Principles. The process was structured, with a strong emphasis on problem-solving, coding skills, and examples demonstrating impact and ownership.
Recruiter screen, followed by an online coding assessment and then a technical phone interview. The final round was a virtual onsite loop with multiple interviews covering data structures, system design, debugging, and Amazon Leadership Principles. The technical questions were practical but time-constrained, and the behavioural questions required specific examples using the STAR format.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a scalable URL shortening service and explain how you would handle high read traffic, collisions, database schema, expiration, and basic monitoring.
That moment when the interviewer asked about finding indices in an array for a target sum was wild — I had just tackled something identical while prepping on PracHub. The interview included a technical round with another question about designing an in-memory LRU cache and a behavioral question about meeting tight deadlines. After a smooth discussion, I was told I'd received an offer, which I happily accepted. Overall, the process felt pretty straightforward and not overly challenging.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
Given an array of integers return the indices of two numbers summing to a target