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Amazon interview notes, page 36 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·Onsite - Behavioral / Leadership

Apr 2026
Amazon software engineer interview with a simulation-style question that threw me off more than I expected. The whole thing revolved around ambiguity and stakeholder juggling, which felt less like a coding screen and more like a product management stress test.
  • You're in a time-boxed work simulation with vague requirements and multiple stakeholders pulling in different directions. How do you decide what to work on first, figure out what questions to ask, write down your assumptions, and still ship something useful before time runs out? Walk through a real example.

“This one tripped me up because I went straight into the example before I'd actually laid out my approach, so the whole thing felt backwards.”

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Amazon·Data Scientist·Technical Phone Screen

Apr 2026
Amazon data science interview with a meaty causal inference question about live sports on Prime Video. One question, but it sprawled across matching, IV, and diff-in-diff so it basically felt like three interviews compressed into one.
  • Amazon is considering adding live sports to Prime Video. Using observational data, estimate the causal effect on Prime membership subscriptions and engagement. Walk through your treatment and control definition, primary outcomes, covariate selection, a matching strategy with balance diagnostics, your assumptions and how you'd defend them, an instrumental variable approach using variation in promotion placement, the full 2SLS setup, and finally a diff-in-diff or event study alternative with staggered rollout.

“This was a monster.”

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Amazon·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Apr 2026
Amazon coding interview, one question about array manipulation with a constraint that made the obvious solution off-limits. Short and focused, nothing behavioral from what I can tell.
  • Given an array of integers, replace each element with the product of all the other elements in the array. You cannot use division.

“The division shortcut is the first thing your brain goes to and then you realize you can't use it.”

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Amazon·Software Engineer·Online Assessment (OA)

Apr 2026
Amazon SWE online assessment with a math-heavy coding problem about maximizing unique hash values. Pretty niche problem, not your typical array or graph question.
  • Given an array of integers called param, construct a secretKey array of the same length such that hash[i] = secretKey[i] % param[i] produces the maximum number of unique values across the hash array. Return that maximum count.

“Took me a while to even figure out what was being asked.”

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Amazon·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Apr 2026
Amazon SWE coding round, one algorithmic question about arrays. Pretty short session, nothing behavioral.
  • Given two integer arrays, find their longest common prefix.

“Not the string version you always prep for, which threw me off for a second.”

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Amazon·Software Engineer·Onsite - Coding / Algorithms

Apr 2026
Amazon SWE coding round with two algorithmic problems back to back. Both were medium difficulty but had some tricky constraints that made them more interesting than they looked on the surface.
  • Given a string of ASCII characters, return a new string where characters are sorted by decreasing frequency. If two characters have the same frequency, break ties by ascending character code. Walk through your data structure choices and give time and space complexity.
  • Given a sorted (nondecreasing) integer array and a target sum, find all unique index pairs (i, j) where i < j and the two elements sum to the target. Do it in O(n) time and O(1) extra space using two pointers, and explain how you handle duplicate values to avoid returning the same pair twice.

“The sorting logic clicked pretty fast but I fumbled the tie-breaking part initially.”

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Amazon·Software Engineer·Onsite - Behavioral / Leadership

Apr 2026
Amazon behavioral loop for a software engineering role, all four questions were leadership principle territory. Pretty standard stuff but they go deep on specifics so vague answers will get you cut.
  • Tell me about a time you had a hard deadline. How did you handle scope trade-offs and keep stakeholders in the loop?
  • Walk me through a challenging project you led. What obstacles came up and what specifically did you do to get through them?
  • Describe a situation where you stepped outside your defined role. Why did you do it and what happened as a result?
  • Give an example of a time you changed your mind because of someone else's feedback. What convinced you and what did you take away from it?

“This is the one I over-prepared for and still fumbled a bit.”

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Amazon·Software Engineer·Onsite - Behavioral / Leadership

May 2026
Amazon behavioral loop for a software engineer role, pretty much wall-to-wall leadership principle questions. They want a story for everything and they mean everything. Come with a lot of examples prepped because they will keep asking for different ones if you reuse.
  • How do you make decisions?
  • Tell me about a time you had to operate effectively in an ambiguous environment.
  • Describe your experience giving and receiving constructive feedback.
  • Tell me about a conflict you had with a colleague and how it got resolved.
  • Give an example of a time you pushed back on a request or decision from someone above you.
  • Describe a situation where you had to make a quick decision under significant pressure.
  • Tell me about a major challenge you faced, including a tight deadline and helping a teammate who was struggling.

“Broader than it sounds.”

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Amazon·Software Engineer·Online Assessment (OA)

May 2026
Amazon OA for a SWE role. One algorithmic problem, classic weighted interval scheduling dressed up in a streaming/theater theme. Nothing too wild but the problem has a few edge cases that can trip you up if you're not careful.
  • Given a list of screenings each with a start time, duration, and audience size, find the maximum total audience you can achieve by selecting non-overlapping screenings.

“Weighted interval scheduling.”

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Amazon·Research Scientist·Technical Phone Screen

May 2026
Amazon RS phone screen, pure ML breadth orals, no coding. Fast pace, classical stuff but the optimizer and neural net questions had some real teeth to them.
  • What are the assumptions of linear regression, and why do we use squared loss?
  • What is logistic regression and why do we use log loss instead of raw probability?
  • What is Random Forest and how does it select features at each split?
  • Explain Adam and walk through its pros and cons versus SGD.
  • You have two two-layer neural networks, one narrow and one wide. Which is more likely to get stuck in local minima?

“I knew the assumptions cold but fumbled the justification for squared loss until I remembered to frame it as MLE under Gaussian noise.”

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