I applied through college or university. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Oct 2009
Interview
The interview was arranged through my university and occurred on campus.
I met with one an engineer. He was pleasant, but not extremely friendly.
The interview started by asking me a bit about my classes and previous work experience. We then talked about what exactly I was interested in doing at Amazon, things I liked about Amazon products, etc. I was asked what features I would want to approve on their website.
There were three technical questions. The first question asked how you was something like, how would you find the most common word in a string. It wasn't really that difficult, and after talking it through with the interviewer, I wrote code for it. He seemed happy with my answer.
Second, he asked me a question related to the first one but with about databases. I don't really have any database experience so I really struggled with this.
Last, he asked what happens when a person goes on the Amazon website, as in what happens between the person typing "www.amazon.com" and the page loading up. I answered pretty well, but needed a little help. He was nice and gave me a few hints which led me to the right answer.
Overall I felt positive about the interview except for the database question. The next day I received an email, however, saying that I hadn't been chosen for the next round. Oh well.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Describe what happens between the time a person types in "www.amazon.com" and they see the web page on their computer.
Loop — 4 rounds, all on the same day
Round 1 — Coding (DSA)
Interviewer was a senior SDE, very friendly.
Warm-up + behavioral: "Tell me about a time you took ownership of something outside your responsibilities."
Main question: Given a list of meeting intervals, find the minimum number of conference rooms required. I used a heap. He then asked a follow-up: what if meetings could be reassigned to minimize total idle time? We discussed approaches but didn't fully code it.
He cared a lot about how I talked through edge cases out loud.
Round 2 — Coding + Problem Solving
LP question: "Describe a situation where you disagreed with a teammate."
Coding: LRU Cache implementation from scratch. I used a hashmap + doubly linked list. He pushed on thread-safety and what happens at capacity 0.
Round 3 — Behavioral (Bar Raiser)
This was the toughest round — no coding, all Leadership Principles, very deep STAR-format probing.
Questions I got:
"Tell me about a time you failed and what you learned."
"A time you had to deliver something with a tight deadline and limited information."
The bar raiser kept drilling: "What was your specific contribution?" "What would you do differently?" "What data did you use?" Have 6–8 strong stories ready with metrics.
Round 4 — Low-Level Design
Design: Design a parking lot system (classes, vehicle types, spot allocation, pricing). Then he asked me to code the findSpot() and releaseSpot() methods.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Most coding questions were LeetCode Medium. Common themes: graphs, heaps, sliding window, hashmaps, and LRU/design., system design,
Great interview process with three rounds, including a technical assessment and a technical interview. The interviewers were professional and supportive throughout the process. The questions mainly focused on DSA, problem-solving, and core technical concepts. The discussions were engaging and provided a good opportunity to demonstrate technical skills. Overall, the process was well-structured, smooth, transparent, and a very positive experience.
I applied through college or university. I interviewed at Amazon (Dublin, Dublin)
Interview
Online techincal assessment. Had to screen share and complete basic coding tasks similar to Leet Code. Could choose a language of your choice. Overall a very fair system and judged based on merit.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Technical assessment so a basic leet code style question about reversing the orders of long numerical strings.