Senior Security Engineer - Identity and Access Management
I had some doubts about my fit for the position, but figured the only way to find out was to interview. The first interview went very well, I was very confident that I had solid answers to the questions. Both the person interviewing me and the observer were security engineers, but on a different team. They gave me a go and Amazon decided to move forward to the next step: A set of five, one-hour interviews known as a loop. I still had doubts based on the job description if I was a good fit.
A different recruiter from AWS reached out to me about a solutions architect position soon after. I thought I would be a better fit for this and told the first recruiter that I did not want to move forward with the Amazon infosec engineer job. Soon after a senior Amazon recruiter called and disparaged the AWS solution architect position as low skill and much lower paying. She also shared the glowing feedback from that first interview I had. Amazon had won me back from AWS and I decided to do the loop. I never heard from her again.
Before the loop interviews the original Amazon recruiter booked a 45 minute meeting to prep for the loop. The recruiter, some kid in his 20s, read verbatim the 20 or so Amazon leadership principles (LPs) and explained what they meant and why they were important to the security engineer position. I zoned out after 4-5. He flagged 12 of them and said I should prepare 2-3 stories for each before the loop. That’s 24-36 stories to prepare.
The first interview was the most relevant for this job, authentication protocols. The interviewer was very talented and extremely strong in this area. I was hit or miss and hoped the other areas would buoy me. The interviewer showed no emotion and read questions to me and typed notes. Basically no verbal or non-verbal feedback. When the time was up he said the time was up.
The second interview was easy, Java code reading, and I aced it. Again, little verbal and non-verbal feedback.
The third was the bar raiser I think. The bar raiser asked only “tell me about a time when”. No matter what I answered he kept pressing for more details. “Then what did you say? Then what did he say? Then what did you say back. Then what did you say back?” and so on. It was tiresome and bizarre.
The manager interview was next. He was energetic and kind and I felt like we had a professional, friendly interview. You know, like a normal human being would have. He was obviously a very intelligent and confident leader.
The final interviewer asked a lot of architectural questions and I think I did well on these questions. He had a relaxed demeanor. After explaining a side programming project that I did to learn Java and networking said “I am trying to figure out why anyone would do that.” So yeah I left with the feeling this was not a supportive place.
Three days later my application was marked as no longer under consideration in teh Amazon jobs website. I emailed the recruiter and he did call me with feedback. As expected, the first interview was a deficit. They also told me my “LPs” were a problem and that I would not be considered for the solution architect position.
A few months later a first-level AWS recruiter reached out to me for a solutions architect position. I set an appointment in AWS Prelude with the second-level recruiter and received an invite in my gmail that he would call my cell. At the appointed date and time the recruiter was a no show. I checked my Google calendar, I had the right date/time/phone number. Then I checked the Prelude link, it was no longer valid, I am guessing deleted. I asked the first-level recruiter about it, she said she would check into that and hook me up with another recruiter. Never heard from her again.
Lesson one, do not prep stories for the LPs. Instead think about the nature/culture of the team you are on now, and the nature/culture of the team you are joining. I come from a consulting background and was interviewing with an infosec department. I think they had trouble understanding some of my LPs. One of the few human reactions I got in interview two was a jaw drop when I told about one consulting interaction.
Lesson two, seems like this is the kind of place where it pays well but has all the charm of some East German Stasi office. If you can grind it out in exchange for the extra money it can be a good place to learn due to the scale of operation.