Amazon Senior Product Manager - Technical interview questions

This was a Sr. Technical PM position within AWS. In my experience the Sr. Technical PM positions within AWS need a lot more technical acumen from candidates compared to non-AWS TPM positions within Amazon. Therefore, all the reviews you read on Glassdoor for Amazon Sr.TPM positions will miss lead you in thinking that they will just test you on leadership principles and on a bit of technical stuff. In fact, I think if you are a developer/Sr. developer you have a better shot at clearing the interview compared to a Product Manager who basically works with developers to get products shipped. I am not sure why do the Amazon team asks Product Managers to interview for these roles. It's a total waste of time in my opinion. They should interview developers and teach them product management. Process: First Phone Interview - expect a call from hiring manager or a lead engineer. In either case they will ask you both technical and leadership questions to check your overall fit. The questions will be focused a lot around your current job. So do think about what you wrote in your resume. If in your experience you were making technical decisions such as which API (REST or GraphQL), system designs then you are good. But in case your engineers were coding and making those technical decisions, then you may or may not get the loop (2nd round) interviews. Loop Interviews - 5 or 6 depends on availability of the team members 1. Hiring Manager - Leadership Questions. Little bit technical. 2. Technical Leader / Engineering lead - This is the person you want to watch out for. He/She will grill you and ask you a lot of technical questions. They won't ask you to code but will expect you to basically explain the code or how it works. If you are not coding in your current job, then I would say the interviewing engineer will enjoy to see you struggle and keep throwing technical questions until you feel that why did I ever apply for this role. You will think didn’t you read my resume that I don’t currently code? Also, the technical questions may or may not be from the products you have worked on. He/She will ask you questions as if you are interviewing for a software developer role. 3. 3-4 of TPM interviews – These may be TPM/Sr.TPM from the group. These would be standard leadership principles-based questions. Your luck would matter here because some TPMs are really nice and would give you some positive energy back but others may make you feel that see I am at Amazon and you are not and I am the boss here. 4. Bar Raiser – In my experience this may be your last interview of the day. The biggest issue you may face in this interview is how not to repeat your examples. Repeating your examples is considered bad since it may lead the team to think that you don’t have a good breadth of experience. You may find this person a bit rude or questioning everything you say. Don’t get bothered by it. They may be expected to behave in this manner. Few Other tips – If you are applying to a role within AWS, a technical PM or even non-technical PM, expect a lot of technical questions. I mean a LOT. I think the teams within AWS should realize that they need engineers cum PMs not the other way around and they shouldn’t interview PMs and they can stop wasting time for themselves and for the candidates. Don’t repeat your examples Follow the star format. Do follow it really. Quantify every result. Very Important. Best of luck. It does matter who interviews you. If you are an engineer, you have a good shot. But if you are Product Manager, I will say try PM or TPMs outside AWS.

The interview had 4 back-back video conferencing rounds each of 50 minutes and a 10 minute break in between. The first two rounds were very behavioral questions based. I also got case questions in the 2nd and 3rd rounds. The 4th round was the toughest as it was with a "Bar raiser". Overall the interviews were exhilarating and they were thorough in gauging my understanding towards software and the industry and my capabilities in solving sample real-world problems.