I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Jul 2019
Interview
I applied for a role online and a few days later got emailed by an internal recruiter who had "found my resume in the system" asking me if I would consider applying for a role... the one I had already applied for which was a little odd.
Initial experience was good, everything was booked and communicated with my timezone to avoid any confusion although I did have to provide 3 weeks worth of availability. My 1st interview happened within 4 days however. A load of generic details were sent about the Leadership Principles and interviewing at Amazon; this was both good and bad as there was almost too much information to review. Details were also vague and not forthcoming when I asked about whether I was expecting a HR screening, behavioral or technical interview.
I had decided to focus on the 14 Leadership Principles and how I would give answers in line with those and I prepared for some technical questions based off my experience.
In the end my interview was purely technical and mainly a memory test of my technical knowledge with very little context to discuss my career experience. Given I was interviewing for an industry-specific Solutions Architect role there were zero questions about said industry and a lot of questions which would have been more appropriate for a Network Architect role which is not something I would have ever invested time in applying for, Amazon or not.
Things that made the experience worse included:
- The interviewer turning up 10 minutes late
- The interviewer's video and audio, via Amazon Chime, dropping out nearly a dozen times
- The interviewer being fairly arrogant from the beginning
- The interviewer trying to openly infer things from some of the questions I asked (e.g. he inferred I did not want to travel given I asked about requirements to travel in the role, which I had to correct him about - I simply wanted to understand the expectations)
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Difference between TCP and UDP (this question was fairly straightforward, however others)
I applied online and received an email the next day asking for available dates and time for a phone interview. The email also included links to lengthy videos and leadership references. A few days later I informed my schedule, they picked a date and time to have a phone interview and notified me by an email. I received no information if the interview was technical or not. It was mostly technical questions.
I applied online. The process took 8 months. I interviewed at Amazon (Bangkok) in Jun 2018
Interview
Very professional and kind, 3 stages: first: contact from Recruiter, second: a general technical interview with a senior Solutions Architect, around 2 hours, third: a day with several different interviews arround 8 hours of activities from personal experiences to practical examples over a white board. You will meet very talented people who actually have real life experience with many amazing projects running over AWS Cloud.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Don´t expect questions, expect to conduct a one on one conversation about your real life experience, you will be asked to tell different experiences in your professional life related with some specific subjects, these will vary from one interview to other, but the fact is you are asked to show your experiences and have the skill to tell them clearly. Know you thing is my advice. Be prepared to give a presentation to a panel of experts, and conduct one on one interviews with several key members of the team and building a real life solution on the whiteboard for problems very big in scale. There is no limit on how big the problem is, so you will have to use all the experience you have. Just give the interview is like doing and MBA style of preparation, i prepare myself for 3 months. These is the level inside Amazon senior SA´s don´t think it´s easy Amazon is willing to get the best talent worldwide and the best fit for the job. These means if you are not the best choice for a position, may be you mistake selecting it. I feel these whole process make me become better than before, i´m happy with the experience.