I applied online. The process took 2+ months. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Oct 2012
Interview
Applied online for open position. Received phone call approximately two weeks later to setup a phone interview. Phone interview with hiring machine occurred about a week later. The phone interview included "writing" small function and system design questions. A week after that I was contacted for a on-site interview, which was scheduled 3 weeks out. Onsite interview consisted 6 45-minute interviews, which included writing small programs and design questions. The interviewers appeared to take detail notes of all my answers. Received an offer two weeks after the interview.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Write a function to transform one word to another word, changing one letter at a time, using only valid words (e.g., cat -> dog: cat, hat, hag, hog, dog).
Surprisingly easy — I expected tougher questions, but the coding round felt more like a warm-up. The main challenge was a DSA problem about counting islands in a 2D grid, which led to a discussion on DFS versus BFS and handling large grids. Funny enough, I had revisited that exact type of question while prepping on PracHub, which made me feel more confident. The interview wrapped up with a behavioral round, and I accepted an offer, but ultimately decided to decline it for another opportunity. Overall, it was a smooth experience.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Number of Islands — given a 2D grid of '1's (land) and '0's (water), count the number of connected islands. Walk through DFS vs BFS, and discuss how to avoid revisiting cells (in-place mutation vs visited set) and what changes if the grid is huge and must stream from disk.
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
