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Amazon interview notes, page 157 of 159

FAANG / Big Tech

Most of these Amazon write-ups come from Software Engineers (1,092), then Data Scientists (182) and Product Managers (165). The most reported rounds are the technical phone screen (618), the behavioral / leadership round (309), the online assessment (228) and the system design round (159).

1581 interview notes · updated Oct 2026

Amazon·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Aug 2026
Amazon SDE Intern round that ran way over time, with a behavioral opener, a deep dive into a genAI project, and a meeting rooms coding problem that spiraled into multiple follow-ups. The candidate felt okay about the approach but is now spiraling about the time complexity mistake and whether starting with brute force hurt them.
  • Tell me about a time you worked on something and realized midway through that your approach wasn't working. What did you do?
  • Walk me through your project in depth. Why does this approach work, and why wouldn't it have worked before now?
  • You used a generative AI component in your project. How does it work, and why is it the right tool for this problem?
  • How would you convince a skeptical team to adopt this generative AI approach over alternatives?
  • Given a list of meeting time intervals, find the minimum number of meeting rooms required.

“Standard leadership-style opener, went through it fine I think.”

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Amazon·Software Engineer·Onsite - Multi Round

Aug 2026
Went through Amazon's new grad software engineer process which included an OA plus four panel interviews spread across two days. Mix of behavioral, system design, and coding rounds. People were nice, process was structured, still waiting on results.
  • Behavioral questions tied to Amazon's leadership principles, with the interviewer probing for consistency and specific details in your stories.
  • Questions about generative AI, its applications, and your familiarity with the space.
  • A low-difficulty coding problem during the hiring manager interview.
  • A low-level system design problem requiring you to design and implement a component or service.
  • A medium-difficulty algorithm or data structure problem requiring explanation of approach and complexity analysis.

“The bar raiser round was purely behavioral and they really pushed on the details.”

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Amazon·Software Engineer·Online Assessment (OA)

Aug 2026
Took the Amazon SDE 2 OA and ended up in a weird split situation: aced the DSA section (15/15) but completely bombed the AI-assisted coding portion (0/6). Now sitting in limbo wondering if that tanks the whole thing or if one good half can carry you through.
  • If you score perfectly on the DSA coding section but get zero on the AI-assisted coding portion of the Amazon OA, do you still advance to interviews?

“This is genuinely what I'm sitting with right now.”

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Amazon·Software Engineer·Onsite - Multi Round

Aug 2026
Someone prepping for the loop round at Amazon for an Associate Delivery Consultant AI/ML role, sharing what came up in their phone screen and asking what to expect next. The phone screen already hit low level design, AI/ML background, and a surprising amount of AWS-specific stuff.
  • Walk me through a low level design problem relevant to the role.
  • Describe your experience working with AI and ML technologies.
  • What is your hands-on experience with AWS services?

“This came before the loop, in the phone screen, which I wasn't really expecting.”

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Amazon·Software Engineer·Online Assessment (OA)

Aug 2026
Did the Amazon SDE Intern OA and it was a mixed bag. One coding problem was a legit harder medium using prefix/suffix sums and I dropped one test case, while the AI-assisted task went smoothly with all TCs passing and the feature fully built out.
  • Solve a medium-difficulty coding problem involving prefix and suffix sums.
  • Complete an AI-assisted coding task where you implement a feature with the help of an AI tool.

“Got most of it but one test case slipped through.”

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Amazon·Software Engineer·Online Assessment (OA)

Aug 2026
Took an Amazon OA and the whole thing started on a rough note with the webcam showing a black screen and a 'no face detected' error even though my camera was working fine before and after. First coding problem was easy, aced it. Second one wrecked me.
  • Solve the first coding problem presented in the online assessment.
  • Solve the second coding problem presented in the online assessment.

“Straightforward problem, passed all 15 test cases without much trouble.”

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Amazon·Software Engineer·Online Assessment (OA)

Aug 2026
Took the Amazon SDE1 intern online assessment and came out feeling pretty shaky. Cleared the first coding problem completely but only scraped one test case on the second, and now I'm stuck wondering if that's enough to move forward or if I'm just waiting for a rejection email.
  • If you passed all test cases on one coding problem but only one test case on the second, does Amazon typically still advance you to the next round?
  • Does Amazon factor in partial test case scores, or is it strictly pass/fail on each problem?
  • Do other sections of the online assessment (beyond the coding problems) influence whether you advance?

“Finished the first problem clean, felt decent.”

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Amazon·Software Engineer·Onsite - Multi Round

Aug 2026
Went through a four-round Amazon SDE1 onsite loop over two days, all remote via Zoom with a live shared editor. Every round had both a coding problem and behavioral questions, which I wasn't fully prepared for. The technical depth varied a lot but one round felt like a real engineering conversation rather than an interview, which was a nice surprise.
  • Given a set of numbers and a target value, find a specific combination of elements that sums to the target (not just whether one exists).
  • Walk me through a project you built yourself. What design decisions did you make, what are its limitations, and what trade-offs did you accept?
  • How do you use AI tools in your day-to-day development work?
  • Design a solution for a large, ambiguous feature using prompt engineering principles. There's no single correct answer.
  • Given a graph and a starting node, find all nodes reachable within a certain distance threshold and return each node along with its actual distance.
  • Tell me about a time you went beyond the scope of your role. What happened and what was the result?
  • Describe a complex project you built. What made it complex, how did you manage it, and what would you do differently now?
  • Design a pathfinding solution for a very large board that works with different piece types, including both fixed-offset pieces and sliding pieces like a rook or queen.

“The problem statement was deliberately vague and I had to ask a bunch of clarifying questions before I even understood what was being asked.”

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Amazon·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Aug 2026
Amazon SWE interview with a tricky array/binary string optimization problem. The question stumped even the LLMs apparently, which was a weird comfort.
  • Given an integer array called population and a binary string called unit, both of size n, where unit[i] = 1 means population[i] is protected: each 1 in the binary string can shift left at most once (from index i to i-1). Find the maximum total protected population after optimally repositioning the 1s.

“My approach was to find contiguous clumps of 1s and figure out whether the leftmost 1 in a clump should swap with the 0 to its left.”

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Amazon·Software Engineer·Online Assessment (OA)

Aug 2026
Took the Amazon SDE online assessment and went 1 for 2 on the coding side. The debugging problem completely stumped me, couldn't get a single test case to pass, and now I'm just waiting to see if that sinks the whole thing.
  • Solve a coding problem and pass all provided test cases.
  • Debug a broken code snippet to make the test cases pass.

“This one went fine.”

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