I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (San Jose, CA) in Jun 2012
Interview
My resume was part of their database for a different job, they saw a match for this new venture and suggested a potential fit for this position. Most of the communications was handled over email. The phone interview was a programming skills test for C++ done interactively with the reviewer/tester sharing a chat session. I wasn't notified until 5 minutes before we ended the session that it was timed and usually last only 40 minutes. The first question started with "create a merge sort algorithm" (online).
The interviewer had a calm demeanor with a heavy accent. Some questions had to be repeated.
Interviewed for silicon team. Have only been asked about the domain specific knowledge in 1st round and system design in 2nd round and C coding in 3rd round.
The interviews were 50 mins each.
First round with hr screening - 2 leetcode questions then hr manager screening then the loop which consists of 4 interviews each an hour long. The 4 interview questions they asked where three medium leetcode questions. And one system design interview question about how to shadow deploy a test software to millions of users.
Recruiter reaches out after applying through Amazon careers, no referral. Had an initial OA, then after a month had four rounds in two days - three coding one system design. Each round had 30 min behavioral and 30 min coding.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Questions were mainly hashmap, sliding window and interval related.