Amazon Interview Experience for SDE-1

I had been constantly applying for SDE roles through the amazon jobs portal. Eventually, I got an invite for an Online Assessment in September 2021 for the application I’d applied for in June 2021.

Round 1: Online Assessment

• There were 2 coding problems followed by an approach with time complexity.
• The first question was Demolition Robot; I don’t remember the second question but I solved using Priority Queue. The first coding solution passed all test cases & the second solution failed for one test case.

After 10 days I got a call and the interview got scheduled for next week.

Round 2: F2F Technical Interview

• I was asked to introduce myself and about my projects. Then we jumped onto coding problems.
• https://leetcode.com/problems/meeting-rooms-ii/
• Given an array of meeting time intervals consisting of start and end times [[s1,e1],[s2,e2],…] find the minimum number of meeting rooms required.
• https://leetcode.com/problems/top-k-frequent-elements/  or https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/find-k-numbers-occurrences-given-array/
• I was asked for time complexity and to optimize the code. There was not enough time left because I took more time for the first problem so he asked me to stop coding and just explain the further code. I asked him for feedback but he said HR will contact you. It’s was my first coding interview so I was nervous and couldn’t perform very well.

Round 3: F2F Technical Interview

I had the second coding round on the same day, we had an introduction then jumped onto problems.

• https://leetcode.com/problems/group-anagrams/ or https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/given-a-sequence-of-words-print-all-anagrams-together/
• After discussion, I was asked to write code.
•  https://leetcode.com/problems/number-of-islands/ or https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/find-number-of-islands/
• After writing coding, I was asked questions on BFS and DFS and time complexity.

This round went so well & the interviewer was happy with me and immediately after Round 2, I got called for the next round after 30 minutes.

Round 4: F2F Hiring Manager Interview

• After an introduction, I was asked designing question.
• Write a program to design vending machine.
• After getting clarification I was asked to write code. 
• There is a stream of numbers containing 0’s and 1’s. Move all 0’s to left and 1’s to right. Note that size is not given.
• After solving it, I asked what kind of projects does fresher gets.

The next day I got the call and the last round got scheduled after 2 days (on Monday).

Round 5: F2F Hiring Manager Interview

• We had little introduction then I was asked 2 coding problems.
• https://leetcode.com/problems/trapping-rain-water/ or https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/trapping-rain-water/
• I explained and wrote code for the Brute-Force approach then I was asked to optimize it.
• It was a new problem to be related to covid but a somewhat modified version of rotten oranges. He told me to take care of all the edge cases, I wrote code then he pointed to read the problem again as I’d missed something, then I took some time and modified the code accordingly.

After 5 days, I got the call saying that I got selected.

Verdict: Selected