I applied through university. I interviewed at Amazon in Nov 2020
Interview
Amazon came to our campus for the second time during 2020 October. This time they had mentioned that the jobs offered will be SDE, SDET, or Data Engineers. These roles will be based on the common test.
First was a computer knowledge coding round where pseudo-codes, complete the codes, predict the output questions were asked. These were from high to very-high difficulty questions. Topics were linked lists, trees, graphs.
Then were aptitude and basic HR questions with 1 coding question. For me the question was to traverse a BST.
Results were out and only 16 candidates were selected out of 2000. My name was in SDE. The interview was scheduled for November. I took advice from my friends who said to be thorough on concepts of linked lists, trees, graphs. Interview was conducted on Amazon Chimes.
In the first round, there were 2 interviewers who took turns in asking questions. The first one looked at my resume and asked questions regarding ML since I had completed a project in that domain. His questions were tricky but he helped me whenever I got stuck. He gave me 2 questions for live coding. One was to use XOR addition and the other was about a linked list. He asked about complexities and kept asking me questions while I was coding. He was quite helpful.
The second interviewer went through the resume and pinpointed that I had a Linux certification. He started asking me questions from Linux questions in depth. These were really tough since I did not expect questions from this domain and I was not properly prepared. But he helped me a lot and even corrected me when I was having difficulty.
I felt the interview went fine and it lasted about 75 minutes.
My name was called into 2nd round. Only 3 candidates were selected for the last round. The interview began at 6. I was exhausted and nervous due to pressure but managed to keep my calm. This time there was a single lady who had 3 years of experience. She started asking me questions about Cloud, Networking, and Computer Architecture. Then she gave me 3 coding questions. I solved 2 perfectly but I messed up the 3rd one. It was the question of matrix manipulation where you have to print the matrix from start based on the input position given by the user.
The final result for me was waitlisted.
It was a disappointing yet learning experience.
I would suggest being prepared for anything written in your resume. Practice DS algo properly. Interviewers are helpful. Just be calm
Surprisingly easy — I expected tougher questions, but the coding round felt more like a warm-up. The main challenge was a DSA problem about counting islands in a 2D grid, which led to a discussion on DFS versus BFS and handling large grids. Funny enough, I had revisited that exact type of question while prepping on PracHub, which made me feel more confident. The interview wrapped up with a behavioral round, and I accepted an offer, but ultimately decided to decline it for another opportunity. Overall, it was a smooth experience.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Number of Islands — given a 2D grid of '1's (land) and '0's (water), count the number of connected islands. Walk through DFS vs BFS, and discuss how to avoid revisiting cells (in-place mutation vs visited set) and what changes if the grid is huge and must stream from disk.
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.
Um teste de código online, se aprovado, vai para o loop. O loop é 4 entrevistas seguidas, duas em inglês e duas em português. 3 entrevistas técnicas de código, todas as 4 têm pergunta de liderança.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Pergunta historicas baseada nos principios de lideranca da amazon.
