Amazon System Engineer interview questions

- Phone Screen - Followed by On-Site The phone was 1 hour long, On-site was 5-6 hours long. Interviewers were very friendly except one. I had a very good interview and assumed I cleared it. But, I got no from them which was very surprising.

I initially approached an Amazon recruiter within LinkedIn. From there, he introduced me to another Amazon recruiter that handles the job opportunities within Amazon Web Services located at Herndon, VA. The recruiter reached out to me through email and introduced the position available. We set a time for him to call me. The first call was about 30 minutes, he did most of the talking about the job opening. He also emailed me a lot of information about the job description and responsibilities. After a week, I had my first phone interview. It lasted for 1.5 hours. Two people were in it; a systems engineer and a developer. I was asked about a combination of systems administration and scripting/developer questions. I honestly stated that I don't have developer experience so I was asked basic programming questions. The morning after the interview, I got an email from the recruiter that I got positive reviews and the team wanted to move forward with another technical phone interview. After a week, the second phone interview was set. This time it was with the Hiring Manager. He was the manager/team lead of the team I would be working with. The interview took another 1.5 hours to complete. It was very technical so it was really draining on the brain. After the interview, he mentioned that it might take a longer time for the result since it was a Friday and a long weekend. The following week, I received an email from the hiring coordinator that the team has decided to pursue other candidates at this time. They will, however, keep my resume on file for 12 months and will contact me if ever there are other positions that fit my qualifications and experience. They also asked me to apply for other open positions. Overall, it was a good experience. The interviewers were all polite and professional. Be prepared. Read a lot of online articles and explanation on how things work. They do ask practical questions but there were a lot of things that if you didn't read it, you wouldn't have an idea on how to explain it as some questions are really based on a lot of readings and understanding on how things work.