Track: Other

Amazon Non-Technical Roles Interview Briefing

Overview

Amazon’s hiring process for non-technical roles (e.g., Support Ops Specialist, Grad Area Manager, Research Analyst) varies significantly but heavily emphasizes behavioral alignment with Leadership Principles. The process typically includes screening rounds, aptitude tests, written tests, and behavioral/technical interviews, with a strong focus on communication skills, problem-solving, and cultural fit.

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Round Breakdown and Question Patterns

1. Screening Rounds

Non-technical roles often begin with a screening round to assess communication skills, past experiences, and alignment with the role.

Exact Questions Asked

• Candidate 1 (Support Ops Specialist):
  • Screening:
    • Self-introduction, work experience, handling tough situations, pressure management.

2. Aptitude and Written Tests

• Aptitude Test: 30 questions in 30 minutes (e.g., coding-decoding, seating arrangement, directions, time, work).
• Written Test: Evaluates typing speed, accuracy, and communication skills (e.g., email writing, sentence rewriting).

Exact Questions Asked

• Candidate 1 (Support Ops Specialist):
  • Aptitude Test: 30 questions (30 minutes) on logical reasoning and aptitude.
  • Written Test: Typing speed and accuracy (4 sections).

3. Technical/Behavioral Rounds

Non-technical roles often include technical or behavioral rounds focusing on:

• Role-Specific Knowledge: E.g., Linux for Support Ops, testing concepts for QA roles.
• Behavioral Questions: Leadership Principles, past experiences, and situational handling.

Exact Questions Asked

• Candidate 2 (Behavioral Focus):

  • Behavioral Round:
    • Leadership Principles: 12+ questions (e.g., "Why Amazon?", "Tell me about a time when...", "Give me two examples of when you did more than required").

• Candidate 4 (Linux Focus):

  • Technical Round:
    • Linux: Concepts and troubleshooting.
    • Behavioral: Past experiences and role alignment.

• Candidate 5 (Grad Area Manager):

  • Behavioral Round:
    • Leadership: "Tell me about a time you worked under pressure."

• Candidate 8 (Senior Program Manager):

  • Managerial Round:
    • Leadership: 12+ behavioral questions (e.g., "Why Amazon?", "Tell me about a time when...", "Describe your proudest professional achievement").

4. In-Person/HR Rounds

• In-Person Interview: Focuses on role-specific questions, situational handling, and cultural fit.
• HR Round: May include weakness assessment and self-awareness questions.

Exact Questions Asked

• Candidate 1 (Support Ops Specialist):

  • In-Person Interview:
    • Self-introduction, detailed role description, reasons for transitioning fields, situation-based questions (e.g., handling deadlines, decision-making).

• Candidate 7 (HR Round):

  • HR Round:
    • "What is your biggest weakness?".

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Key Takeaways

• Screening: Focus on communication skills and past experiences.
• Aptitude/Written Tests: Logical reasoning, typing speed, and accuracy.
• Technical/Behavioral Rounds: Role-specific knowledge + Leadership Principles.
• HR Rounds: Weakness assessment and cultural fit.

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Track: SDE-2

Amazon SDE-2 Interview Briefing

Overview

Amazon’s SDE-2 hiring process is rigorous, with a strong emphasis on system design, DSA proficiency, and alignment with Leadership Principles. Candidates typically undergo 4-6 rounds, including 2-3 technical rounds (DSA + system design), 1-2 managerial rounds, and a bar raiser round. The process is designed to assess a candidate’s ability to design scalable systems, optimize solutions, and demonstrate ownership in their work.

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Round Breakdown and Question Patterns

1. Online Assessment (OA)

• Format: Typically 1-2 medium-hard coding problems (e.g., LeetCode medium-hard).
• Topics: DSA (arrays, trees, graphs, dynamic programming), system design basics, and debugging.

Exact Questions Asked

• Candidate 1:

  • OA: Received via email after initial screening (no further details provided).

• Candidate 3:

  • OA: Two medium-level questions in a story format (e.g., binary tree problems).

2. Technical Rounds

SDE-2 candidates face 2-3 technical rounds, each lasting 45-60 minutes. These rounds focus on:

• DSA: Problems on trees, graphs, dynamic programming, and optimization.
• System Design: Designing scalable systems (e.g., music streaming, parking garage, TinyUrl).
• Debugging: Identifying and fixing issues in provided code.

Exact Questions Asked

• Candidate 1:

  • Technical Round 1:

    • DSA: Binary tree coding problem, Graph coding problem.

  • Technical Round 2:

    • DSA + HLD: High-level design of a music streaming system.

  • Technical Round 3:

    • System Design: Design a real-time location-based song recommendation system.

• Candidate 2:

  • Technical Round 1:

    • DSA: Find intersection point of two linked lists.
    • Leadership: Situation-based question (e.g., on-call culture, patent policy).

  • Technical Round 2:

    • Low-Level Design: Design a scalable and concurrent parking garage system.
    • HLD: Discuss a challenging project.

• Candidate 3:

  • Technical Round 1:

    • DSA: Populating Next Right Pointers in Each Node, Find the unique number in a stream of pairwise duplicates (log(n) time).

  • Technical Round 2:

    • DSA: Print level order traversal of n-ary tree in spiral order, Story-based binary tree problem.
    • Leadership: Two leadership principle questions.

  • Technical Round 3:

    • Managerial: Design Makemytrip (components, APIs, database diagrams, trade-offs).

• Candidate 5:

  • Technical Round 1:

    • DSA: Reverse a stack using recursion, Find the position of a number in a stream of integers.

  • Technical Round 2:

    • HLD + Leadership: Design BookMyShow using OO principles, Conflict resolution scenario.

  • Technical Round 3:

    • System Design: Design TinyUrl.

• Candidate 6:

  • Technical Round 1:

    • DSA: Reverse a stack using recursion, Find the position of a number in a stream.
    • Leadership: Scenario where you disagreed with a Program Manager.

  • Technical Round 2:

    • HLD + Leadership: Design BookMyShow, Scenario where you were asked to let code with a known bug go to production.

  • Technical Round 3:

    • System Design: Design Food Panda.

• Candidate 7:

  • Technical Round 1:

    • Leadership: Leadership principle question.
    • DSA: Hash map problem (unable to solve).

  • Technical Round 2:

    • DSA: Array-based problem (brute force and optimized approach).

  • Technical Round 3:

    • System Design: Design Netflix.

3. Managerial / Bar Raiser Rounds

• Focus on Leadership Principles (e.g., Customer Obsession, Ownership, Dive Deep).
• Discussions on past projects, conflicts, and problem-solving approaches.

Exact Questions Asked

• Candidate 1:

  • Bar Raiser Round:
    • HLD/LLD: Design a trading system like Zerodha.
    • Leadership: Extensive discussion on leadership principles.

• Candidate 2:

  • Behavioral Round:
    • Leadership principle-based questions (e.g., team skills, on-call culture).

• Candidate 3:

  • Managerial Round:
    • Leadership principle questions, System design (Makemytrip).

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Key Takeaways

• OA: 1-2 medium-hard coding problems (story format possible).
• Technical Rounds: DSA (trees, graphs, DP) + System Design (scalable systems) + Debugging.
• Managerial Rounds: Leadership Principles, project deep dives, and conflict resolution.
• Bar Raiser: High bar for hiring; focus on ownership and bias for action.

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Track: Intern

Amazon Intern Interview Briefing

Overview

Amazon’s intern hiring process for technical roles (e.g., SDE, Support Engineer) is designed to evaluate a candidate’s foundational knowledge in CS fundamentals, problem-solving skills, and alignment with Amazon’s Leadership Principles. The process typically includes an Online Assessment (OA) with a mix of MCQs and coding problems, followed by 1-3 technical interviews and a behavioral/managerial round. Interns are expected to demonstrate proficiency in DSA, system design basics, and CS fundamentals (e.g., OS, DBMS, networking).

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Round Breakdown and Question Patterns

1. Online Assessment (OA)

The OA for interns is highly variable in format but generally includes:

• MCQs: Covering a wide range of topics such as DBMS, OOPs, Programming, Networking, Error Handling, Software Engineering, and Data Visualization.
• Coding Problems: Typically 1-3 problems of easy to medium difficulty, focusing on DSA (e.g., arrays, strings, trees, graphs) and problem-solving skills.

Exact Questions Asked

• Candidate 1:

  • MCQs: 14 sections covering DBMS, OOPs, Programming, Networking, Error Handling, Software Engineering, and Data Visualization.
  • Coding: 1 easy DSA problem (e.g., Occurrence of a Character in a String).

• Candidate 2:

  • OA1: Two medium-level coding questions (e.g., efficient problem-solving and code optimization).
  • OA2: Two coding problems covering binary trees, graphs (BFS/DFS), and dynamic programming.

• Candidate 3:

  • OA: 2 questions (70 minutes) on LeetCode easy-medium and medium-hard (e.g., string manipulation).

• Candidate 4:

  • OA: 30 MCQs (technical) + 3 coding problems (easy to moderate) covering arrays, linked lists, and basic algorithms.

• Candidate 6:

  • OA: 105-minute assessment with:
    1. Sliding window maximum (using deque).
    2. Graph problem (topological sort, similar to LeetCode’s Course Schedule 2).
    3. Dynamic Programming (grid-based problem with blocked cells).

• Candidate 10:

  • OA: 35 minutes reasoning + 20 minutes debugging + 2 algorithmic coding problems (e.g., Forklift capacity problem, Unique Paths).

2. Technical Interviews

Interns typically face 1-3 technical interviews, each lasting 45-60 minutes. These rounds focus on:

• DSA: Problems on trees, graphs, arrays, strings, and dynamic programming.
• CS Fundamentals: Questions on OS, DBMS, OOPs, and Linux commands.
• Projects: Deep dives into past projects (e.g., ML, Full Stack, Front-End).

Exact Questions Asked

• Candidate 1:

  • Technical Interview I:

    • DSA: Occurrence of a Character in a String (hash map, two-pointer approach).
    • DBMS: SQL queries (e.g., fetching unique values, applying conditions in queries).
    • OOPs: Inheritance, overloading, overriding.

  • Technical Interview II:

    • DSA: Missing Number, Loop in a Linked List.
    • Linux Commands: Find a specific word in a text file, edit a text file.
    • OS: Define deadlock and its conditions; CPU scheduling algorithms (SJF, SRJF, RR, PS, FCFS).

• Candidate 2:

  • Technical Interviews:
    • Coding: Search in a 2D Matrix, Minimum Cost to Connect Roads (MST problem).
    • Graphs: BFS/DFS-based problems.

• Candidate 6:

  • Technical Round 1:

    • DSA: Find the square root using binary search, Insert Delete GetRandom O(1) - Duplicates Allowed.

  • Technical Round 2:

    • DBMS: ACID, Normalization, SQL Joins.
    • OS: Deadlock, LRU, Disk scheduling, Paging.
    • OOP: Overloading, overriding, inheritance.
    • Design: LRU Cache discussion.

• Candidate 16:

  • Technical Round:
    • DSA: Detecting a loop in a linked list, Tree + Dynamic Programming optimization.

3. Managerial / HR Rounds

• Focus on Amazon Leadership Principles (e.g., Ownership, Dive Deep, Bias for Action).
• Discussions on projects, past experiences, and future plans.

Exact Questions Asked

• Candidate 6:

  • HR / Managerial Round:
    • Behavioral questions (e.g., discussion on projects and previous internship).

• Candidate 13:

  • Final Interview:
    • Behavioral questions (e.g., 1 medium problem with follow-ups).

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Key Takeaways

• OA: Highly variable; expect MCQs + 1-3 coding problems (easy-medium).
• Technical Rounds: Focus on DSA, CS fundamentals, and projects.
• Managerial Rounds: Emphasis on Leadership Principles and behavioral alignment.

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Track: QA / SDET

Amazon QA / SDET Interview Briefing

Overview

Amazon’s QA/SDET hiring process is designed to evaluate technical proficiency in testing methodologies, automation, and CS fundamentals, alongside behavioral alignment with Leadership Principles. The process typically includes an Online Assessment (OA), 2 technical interviews, and a focus on scenario-based testing and debugging.

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Round Breakdown and Question Patterns

1. Online Assessment (OA)

• Format: 60-70 MCQs + 2 coding questions (easy to medium).
• Topics: Mathematics, OS, OOPs, DBMS, Networking, Testing Concepts, DSA.

Exact Questions Asked

• Candidate 1:
  • OA: 60-70 MCQs covering:
    • Mathematics, Operating Systems, OOPs, DBMS, Networking, Testing Concepts, DSA.
  • Coding: 2 DSA problems (easy to medium).

2. Technical Interviews

QA/SDET candidates face 2 technical rounds, each lasting 45-60 minutes. These rounds focus on:

• Coding: Basic coding problems (e.g., arrays, strings, palindromes).
• Testing Fundamentals: SDLC, STLC, types of testing, test cases for real-world scenarios.
• CS Fundamentals: OOPs, DBMS, OS, and Linux commands.

Exact Questions Asked

• Candidate 1:

  • Technical Round 1:

    • Coding: Find maximum element in an array, Check whether a given string is a palindrome.
    • CS Fundamentals: Models of Computation, SDLC, role of a QA Engineer.
    • Testing: Write a Test Plan for a Register/Login page, phases of SDLC, types of testing.

  • Technical Round 2:

    • CS Fundamentals: What is OOPs and its real-world usage?
    • Testing: Test cases for online video streaming playback, movie categorization, and recommendations.

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Key Takeaways

• OA: 60-70 MCQs (CS fundamentals + testing concepts) + 2 coding problems.
• Technical Rounds: Coding (arrays, strings) + Testing Fundamentals (SDLC, STLC, test cases) + CS Fundamentals (OOPs, OS, DBMS).
• Focus Areas: Testing methodologies, debugging, and scenario-based problem solving.

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Track: SDE-1 / New Grad

Amazon SDE-1 / New Grad Interview Briefing

Overview

Amazon’s SDE-1 hiring process for new graduates is designed to evaluate DSA proficiency, system design fundamentals, and alignment with Leadership Principles. The process typically includes an Online Assessment (OA), 2-3 technical interviews, and a bar raiser (managerial) round. Candidates are expected to demonstrate problem-solving skills, CS fundamentals (OS, DBMS, networking), and strong behavioral alignment.

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Round Breakdown and Question Patterns

1. Online Assessment (OA)

• Format: 2-3 coding problems (easy-medium to medium-hard) or MCQs + coding problems.
• Topics: Arrays, strings, trees, graphs, dynamic programming, and basic system design. Duration: 60-180 minutes.

Exact Questions Asked

• Candidate 1:

  • OA: Two questions (1 medium, 1 hard) to be completed within 3 working days.

• Candidate 5:

  • OA: 3-hour proctored assessment:
    • Coding: String manipulation problem, Dynamic programming array problem.
    • Behavioral: Workstyle and behavioral questions based on Amazon Leadership Principles.

• Candidate 8:

  • OA1: 1 coding question + 5 MCQs each from 8 topics (e.g., Data Structures, Algorithms, Pseudocode, Computer Networks, DBMS, Linux).
  • OA2: 2 coding questions (1 hard, 1 easy).

• Candidate 10:

  • OA: Multiple coding questions (e.g., Two Sum, Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters, Merge Intervals).

2. Technical Interviews

SDE-1 candidates face 2-3 technical rounds, each lasting 45-60 minutes. These rounds focus on:

• DSA: Problems on trees, graphs, dynamic programming, and optimization.
• CS Fundamentals: Questions on OS, DBMS, OOPs, and Linux commands.
• System Design Basics: Designing small-scale systems (e.g., parking lot, TinyUrl).

Exact Questions Asked

• Candidate 1:

  • Technical Round 1:

    • Coding: Count Complete Subarrays in an Array (brute force to optimized).
    • Leadership: Learn and Be Curious, Dive Deep.

  • Technical Round 2:

    • Coding: Minimize the sum calculated by repeatedly removing any two elements, Rotten Oranges.
    • Leadership: LP questions (performance not satisfactory).

  • Technical Round 3:

    • Managerial: Leadership Principles discussion (e.g., current role, deep diving into bugs, conflict resolution).

• Candidate 2:

  • Debugging and Analytical Round:

    • Debugging: Identify syntactical and logical errors in provided code.
    • Analytical: Sequence-based questions (e.g., identifying the next number in a sequence).

  • Behavioral and Coding Round:

    • Behavioral: Scenario-based questions (e.g., email, text message situations).
    • Coding: LeetCode-style problems (e.g., trees, dynamic programming, graphs).

  • Virtual Interviews:

    • Behavioral: "Tell me a time when..." questions.
    • Coding: Trees, dynamic programming, graphs.

• Candidate 4:

  • Technical Round 1:

    • DSA: 2D DP question, Stack question (nearest greater element).

  • Technical Round 2:

    • DSA: Non-standard CP question (heaps + maps), Longest zigzag path in a binary tree.

  • Technical Round 3:

    • DSA: Binary search (find element with frequency two), Median of two sorted arrays.

• Candidate 6:

  • Technical Round 1:

    • Coding: Sliding Window Maximum.

  • Technical Round 2:

    • Coding: Find the index of the single element in a sorted array, Course Schedule (Topological Sort).

  • Bar Raiser Round:

    • Leadership: Ownership, Dealing with conflicts, Delivering under pressure.

• Candidate 7:

  • Technical Round 1:

    • DSA: Burning Tree problem, Overlapping Intervals problem.

  • Technical Round 2:

    • Behavioral + Design: 2-3 behavioral questions, Design parking lot system.

• Candidate 8:

  • Technical Round:
    • Coding: Given a 2D array, find the maximum number of fruits harvested in k steps.
    • Coding: Given a binary tree and an integer target, check for a root-to-leaf path with the target sum.

3. Managerial / Bar Raiser Rounds

• Focus on Leadership Principles (e.g., Customer Obsession, Ownership, Dive Deep).
• Discussions on projects, past experiences, and problem-solving approaches.

Exact Questions Asked

• Candidate 1:

  • Bar Raiser Round:
    • Leadership: Current working role, deep diving into bugs, conflict resolution, handling feedback.

• Candidate 6:

  • Bar Raiser Round:
    • Leadership: Ownership, dealing with conflicts, delivering under pressure.

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Key Takeaways

• OA: 2-3 coding problems (easy-medium to medium-hard) or MCQs + coding problems.
• Technical Rounds: DSA (trees, graphs, DP, optimization) + CS fundamentals (OS, DBMS, OOPs) + System Design basics.
• Managerial Rounds: Leadership Principles, project deep dives, and conflict resolution.
• Bar Raiser: High bar for hiring; focus on ownership and bias for action.

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Track: Data Science / ML

Amazon Data Science / ML Interview Briefing

Overview

Amazon’s Data Science and ML hiring process emphasizes technical proficiency in ML concepts, SQL, Python, and problem-solving skills, alongside behavioral alignment with Leadership Principles. The process typically includes an Online Assessment (OA), 2-3 technical interviews, and a managerial round. Candidates are expected to demonstrate strong fundamentals in ML, statistics, and large-scale data processing, as well as the ability to apply these concepts to real-world problems.

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Round Breakdown and Question Patterns

1. Online Assessment (OA)

• Format: A mix of MCQs and coding problems.
• Topics: ML concepts, programming fundamentals (Python/SQL), mathematics for ML, and DSA.

Exact Questions Asked

• Candidate 1:
  • OA: Two-part assessment:
    • Part 1: MCQs covering ML Concepts, Programming Fundamentals, and Mathematics for ML.
    • Part 2: Two medium-level DSA problems.

2. Technical Interviews

Data Science/ML candidates face 2-3 technical rounds, each lasting 45-60 minutes. These rounds focus on:

• ML Concepts: Bias-variance tradeoff, overfitting, k-fold cross-validation, hypothesis testing, gradient descent.
• SQL and Python: Query optimization, data manipulation, and coding problems.
• Projects: Deep dives into past ML projects and their impact.

Exact Questions Asked

• Candidate 2:

  • Technical Round 1:

    • Projects: Explain the hardest project you have worked on.
    • SQL: Extracting the date part from a datetime field, GROUP BY, JOINs.
    • Python: Coding question (LeetCode Medium difficulty, modified to be harder).

  • Technical Round 2:

    • Behavioral: Tell me about yourself and what led you to data science.
    • ML Concepts: Bias-variance tradeoff, overfitting, k-fold cross-validation, hypothesis testing, gradient descent.
    • Python: Given a string, find the repeating characters and return their counts.

• Candidate 3:

  • Screening Round:

    • Projects: Discussion on previous projects.
    • Coding: Easy Python question, medium SQL question.

  • Technical Round 1:

    • Projects: Explain a project using the STAR methodology.
    • ML Techniques: Deep dive questions on the project.

  • Technical Round 2:

    • Managerial: 5-8 behavioral questions assessing Amazon Leadership Principles.

  • Technical Round 3:

    • Coding: 5 medium-level Python questions (logical thinking).
    • SQL: 5 medium-level questions covering Window functions, Rank, Aggregation, and CTEs.

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Key Takeaways

• OA: MCQs (ML concepts, programming, mathematics) + 1-2 DSA problems.
• Technical Rounds: ML concepts, SQL/Python coding, and project deep dives.
• Managerial Rounds: Leadership Principles and behavioral alignment.
• Focus Areas: Bias-variance tradeoff, SQL optimization, Python coding, and ML project impact.