The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Nov 2011
Interview
I was selected to bypass a phone screening and attend an on-site interview with a large group of other interviewees (though the interviews itself were on an individual basis). The interview day consisted of 4, 45 minute technical interviews each conducted by a different interviewer. Coding on the whiteboard is required (or sometimes on paper), and each of the interviews you are given a complex coding question that you must solve in front of them. These questions may be relatively simple if you remember all of your algorithm knowledge from college very well, otherwise you must go in with a significant knowledge of trees (binary and binary search, etc), data structures in general, searching and sorting algorithms, object oriented programming, just to name a few.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given two very large binary trees T1, with millions of nodes, and T2, with hun- dreds of nodes, create an algorithm to decide if T2 is a subtree of T1.
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