Amazon Interview Experience for Applied Scientist Internship

My first interview round (Coding round) was initially scheduled a day before my semester exam. I requested rescheduling, but due to time constraints and a high volume of candidates, it was postponed to a day after my semester exam. The interview was scheduled for one hour, from 10 am to 11 am. Conducted virtually on Amazon’s Chime platform, I joined the meeting 10 minutes before, where I was placed in the waiting area until the interviewer allowed me into the meeting at exactly 10 am.

Interview Structure:

Two Amazonians conducted the interview. They started by explaining the interview process and provided their introductions. Afterwards, I introduced myself, and they asked questions related to my past work experience, focusing on the problems I encountered and how I resolved them.

Straight after that, we dived into coding,

Coding Part:

• The round comprised two coding problems, one easy and one medium (similar to Leetcode difficulty levels).
• The interviewers shared a link to the Amazon Live Code platform, where the problem statements and test cases were already provided.
• I was given a minute to read each question and propose an initial approach. They engaged in discussions about the chosen approach, its time and space complexity, and potential optimizations.
• Throughout the coding process, they were supportive and actively pointed out any errors I made.
• I successfully solved both problems optimally!

The interviewers concluded by asking if I had any questions for them. I opted for some casual inquiries.

Questions:

First question: Find K’s Closest Elements

The Second question was “Mountain Range Problem.” I was given an array representing the heights of mountains and had to place 2 points at different locations and find the maximum altitude difference between two points, where the first point must be to the left of the second.