I was interviewed in a recruitment event, so it's not the usual process. They reached to me in LinkedIn inviting me for the event and sent a link to an online test (easy).
I had 4 back-to-back 50 min interviews during the event in a hotel. They payed for my flights and my stay in the same hotel. There was a small happy hour with the interviewers the day before: that helped a lot to break the ice.
I received the feedback the next day and the formal offer the following week. It was the most expedited process in my life (except for when I interviewed for a 4-employee startup).
As for the questions, I can't disclose them.
They asked me to solve middle difficulty problems in a laptop, discuss designs (micro and macro), and asked questions about choices I had to make in my work.
It's really nice that the interview is not 100% technical, so you get to rest from engineering problems by answering leadership principles probes.
The interview process wants to find out if you have a solid background, but it doesn't have algorithm riddles like interviews at other big tech companies. The questions are hard enough for you to prove yourself, but easy enough so you can avoid getting nervous and sometimes dive deep in the question. It also checks for your match to Amazon leadership principles by asking about situations in your career when you should have displayed some of them.
In one of the interviews, I have been asked an actual engineering (not software) question, a welcome surprise (this is called the bar raiser interview).
For Amazon SDE I and II interviews, prepare like this:
- Make sure that your foundational knowledge of CS is solid. The questions are not really hard, but you must be completely comfortable tackling them.
- Read about Amazon leadership principles and try to remember the times in your career when you embodied each of them. They will not question that directly, so having a solid career (or college experience) is really necessary. Don't lie.