Software Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Amazon with 3.2 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 50% positive. To compare, the company-average is 55.1% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Software Engineer roles take an average of 30 days to get hired, when considering 193 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Amazon overall takes an average of 31 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Amazon as a Software Engineer according to 193 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 26%
One on one interview: 23%
Skills test: 18%
Presentation: 11%
Personality test: 7%
IQ intelligence test: 4%
Background check: 4%
Group panel interview: 4%
Drug test: 2%
Other: 2%
Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -
I applied through university. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Los Angeles, CA) in Nov 2016
Interview
I took an online assessment (~45 minutes) that tested logical reasoning and basic programming skills. I then took another online assessment (~3 hours) that consisted of a work simulation followed by some more difficult programming questions. The whole process took a couple of weeks from start to finish. I thought the questions were fair in difficulty given the allotted amount of time.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Various work scenarios followed by asking how you would respond.
Recruiter screen, online assessment, technical interviews, and behavioral rounds focused heavily on Amazon Leadership Principles. The process was structured, with a strong emphasis on problem-solving, coding skills, and examples demonstrating impact and ownership.
Recruiter screen, followed by an online coding assessment and then a technical phone interview. The final round was a virtual onsite loop with multiple interviews covering data structures, system design, debugging, and Amazon Leadership Principles. The technical questions were practical but time-constrained, and the behavioural questions required specific examples using the STAR format.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a scalable URL shortening service and explain how you would handle high read traffic, collisions, database schema, expiration, and basic monitoring.
That moment when the interviewer asked about finding indices in an array for a target sum was wild — I had just tackled something identical while prepping on PracHub. The interview included a technical round with another question about designing an in-memory LRU cache and a behavioral question about meeting tight deadlines. After a smooth discussion, I was told I'd received an offer, which I happily accepted. Overall, the process felt pretty straightforward and not overly challenging.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
Given an array of integers return the indices of two numbers summing to a target