I applied online. I interviewed at Amazon in Jul 2025
Interview
Initially I got an assessment and once I cleared the assessment, I received a mail from recruiter saying to they would like to move forward with the interview process asking me to schedule a time for the recruiter screening. Late I got the mail asking to schedule for the phone screening.
I applied through college or university. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Tūmkūr) in Apr 2025
Interview
Interview Experience – Amazon (Data Engineer Role)
My first round was a mix of DSA + basics. They threw four questions at me: Valid Parentheses, Sort 0s, 1s, and 2s, Maximum Sum Subarray, and Reverse Words in a String. I cracked three with optimal solutions and managed one with brute force (didn’t know the Dutch National Flag trick back then). Then came DBMS concepts and a few Linux commands. I was good with the basics but tripped on grep/sed-level stuff. Honestly, I didn’t expect to make it past this round but to my surprise, I did!
Round two was where things got serious. They grilled me on SQL queries group by, aggregates, joins and the whole package. I nailed the first two, gave a partial shot at the tough one, and then smoothly handled DBMS concepts like schema design, OLTP vs OLAP, data warehousing, and data modeling. The final task was a real-life database design scenario, which I actually enjoyed explaining and felt super confident about.
By the end, I genuinely thought I had nailed it. But reality check I wasn’t selected. Turns out, they only had one spot and that went to the very first candidate from my college. Life can be a little cruel sometimes, but hey, that’s how it goes. Still, it was a great learning ride. If you’re preparing, make sure you’re solid on DSA (don’t skip optimal tricks!), SQL joins/aggregates, DBMS, and a pinch of Linux.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
DSA:
Valid Parentheses
Sort 0s, 1s, and 2s (Dutch National Flag problem)
Maximum Sum Subarray (Kadane’s Algorithm)
Reverse Words in a String
SQL / DBMS:
Write queries using GROUP BY and aggregate functions
Solve a complex JOIN query mixing multiple tables
Conceptual questions on schema design, OLTP vs OLAP, data warehousing, and data modeling
Scenario-based question: Design a real-life database schema and explain how you’d model and query it
Linux:
Basics like navigating directories, file handling
Missed out on tougher ones like grep and sed
Python - DSA questions
Data Modeling - Asked to design data model for transactional database schema
SQL - Simple to medium questions that can be solved easily
Behavioral - covered questions like any other companies
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Multiple choice type of tricky question for the given SQL