This question sounds open-ended until you realize they want you to hit like four different dimensions: scale, ambiguity, cross-team stuff, and technical depth.
Choose a project that genuinely had multiple dimensions of complexity (technical, organizational, or scale) and structure your answer around the five sub-questions asked. Use the STAR method but emphasize the decision-making process and trade-offs rather than just the outcome. Keep it to 3-4 minutes, then invite follow-up questions.
Pro tip: Amazon interviewers score against Leadership Principles—explicitly tie your decisions to principles like 'Dive Deep,' 'Invent and Simplify,' or 'Deliver Results' without naming them awkwardly. Quantify impact wherever possible (latency reduced by X%, cost saved $Y, users served Z).
In 2-3 sentences, describe the project, your role, the team size, and the business goal. Avoid deep technical detail here—just enough for the interviewer to follow.
Explain what made it hard: ambiguous requirements, legacy systems, scale, cross-team dependencies, tight deadlines, or novel technology. Be specific about why it wasn't routine.
Walk through how you broke the problem down, prioritized, and chose between alternatives (e.g., build vs. buy, monolith vs. microservice). Highlight trade-offs you weighed and why you picked your approach.
Pick 1-2 significant obstacles (technical or interpersonal) and explain the actions you took, including how you aligned stakeholders or adapted when things changed.
State what you shipped and its measurable impact (e.g., performance, revenue, adoption). Briefly mention what you'd do differently or what you learned.
AI-generated suggestions, not part of the candidate's original notes. May be inaccurate — verify before relying on them.