I applied online. The process took 4 months. I interviewed at Amazon in Jan 2015
Interview
I was contacted by amazon about half a year after I applied. I did the online assessment, a phone/video screening, and an all day in person interview. The interview on site was the hardest. 4 of the 5 interviews were technical and one was behavioral. I signed an NDA so I won't give specific questions, but I will tell you what I did to prepare.
I read through the entire Cracking the Coding Interview book (I didn't have time to do all the problems but I made sure I understood the answers). I took the Algorithms class on coursera (they offer two sequential classes). That was probably one of the most helpful things. Those classes go over exactly what you need to know - data structures, algorithms, etc. They didn't ask me directly about the data structures (i.e. What is a hash table?) but I did need to know exactly what my options were and the properties of each data structure. For each problem, I had to choose which structures were appropriate and explain why. So I had to know them inside and out. I would strongly recommend going through all the common data structures and refreshing how they work, what they are best for, and the complexity of each operation.
I would also suggest learning about Amazon specifically - what their teams do, what languages and database systems they use. I did, so I was able to ask my interviewers good questions.
During the interview, I was extremely nervous but I made sure to talk through everything I was doing and thinking about even if I didn't have a solution in mind right away. I recommend trying to minimize silent moments.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The most difficult question was a design question. It was open ended and there was no one right answer. I would suggest practicing design questions such as "design a parking lot" or "design a card game" and figuring out all the details and possible problems.
It started with an OA, and then after a few weeks, I got invited to four rounds of interviews: technical and behavioral at 3 of the 4, and behavioral only at one.
I applied online. I interviewed at Amazon (Calgary, AB) in Jun 2026
Interview
Online Assessment is the first step in the process. I didn’t have an HR phone screening and went straight to the OA after applying. It was sent to me about a week after I submitted my application.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The first question is LeetCode style algorithms question, and the second question gives a full stack repo (choice of Java, NodeJS, or Django) and asks to solve a backend issue which is causing a bug in the frontend. Unit tests must pass to pass the second question. You can run both backend/frontend indivdually or together
I applied online. I interviewed at Amazon (Santa Clara, CA) in Jun 2026
Interview
Recruiter reached out and set up an onsite loop after the initial steps. Four back to back rounds in one day. Two coding heavy rounds run by senior engineers, one round with the hiring manager, and one behavioral round with a bar raiser. Mix of leadership principles and data structures throughout. Heard back within a week.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Standard BFS grid problem. Given a grid, find the time for all cells to reach a target state where the spread happens one layer at a time.
How did you answer: Clarified the constraints, walked through the approach, then coded a clean BFS from all starting points at once. Tracked the number of layers until everything was covered.