Amazon Interview Experience for SDE1 (8 Months Experienced) 2022

Online Round (Sept 2021): Two coding questions, both were Easy-Medium Level (Don’t remember the questions). I had to write the coding approach also along with the code. After this round, I got a call from a recruiter in January 2022, mentioning that I had cleared the Online Test earlier and will they will be moving forward with my candidature. All the interview rounds were taken virtually on Amazon Chime.

1st Interview Round (Feb 2022): The interview was taken by an SDE-II. The interview started with a quick introduction and then moved to coding questions. I was asked two coding questions, both were standard. One was Easy level and the other was Medium level.

• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/a-boolean-matrix-question/

I was asked to optimize the space complexity after I initially explained my approach.

• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/connect-nodes-at-same-level/

I had to give a solution that used O(1) extra space. I was expected to write fully functioning code for both the questions after I explained my approach.

2nd Interview Round (Feb 2022): The interview was taken by an SDE-II. The interview started with my introduction, projects I have worked on, previous experience, etc. After I told them about my projects, I was asked extensively about Relational Databases, APIs, How to maintain consistency over multiple databases, etc. This went on for around 20-25 mins. After this, I was asked one coding question and was expected to write Production Quality code.

• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/longest-palindrome-substring-set-1

I was expected to write complete working code with all edge cases covered. After writing the code, I had to dry run through my code with input given by them. Both the interviews were taken on the same day and after 3-4 days, I got another mail with a schedule for the next rounds.

3rd Interview (March 2022): This interview was taken by an SDM who was part of the team they were hiring for. The interviewer was very friendly and gave an introduction about herself and the product on which the team was working. I was asked many behavioral questions which were based on Leadership Principles:

• A task that you recently did that you are proud of
• Any new thing that you learned recently
• How do you avoid distractions and maintain productivity, etc?

NOTE – The interview mail had a few of their Leadership Principles mentioned under Competencies and the interview was based on those only.

4th Interview (March 2022): This was a Bar Raiser Round taken by an SDE-II. The interview started with a quick introduction. Two coding questions were asked. One was a Medium level standard question, another one was a hard question.

• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/queue-using-stacks/
  • After I told the time complexity of my approach, the interviewer asked to optimize the code so that the amortized time complexity can be reduced.
  • I was asked to write a complete working code which was thoroughly done by the interviewer.
• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/find-m-th-smallest-value-in-k-sorted-arrays/
  • After I gave an initial approach based on merging arrays, I was asked the complexity and the interviewer told me if I can optimize the time complexity.
  • Gave a lot of hints after which I was able to figure out the heap-based solution.
  • I was asked to write the code which was checked thoroughly by the interviewer.
• Two behavioral questions were asked after this which were based on Leadership Principles only.
  • Here again, there were some Leadership Principles mentioned in the mail, and the behavioral questions were based on those only.

Verdict: After a week, I got the call from the recruiter telling me that I was selected 🙂

Preparation Tips:

• Prepare for all Amazon standard questions as coding questions are mostly based on that.
• Keep speaking whatever you are thinking when trying to solve a coding question. The interviewers are helpful and will tell you if you are thinking in the right direction or not.
• Do consider all edge cases and special cases when writing code for a solution as they check for that.
• They expect Production Quality code, so use meaningful variable and function names and avoid using names like a, b, x, y, DP, etc.

All the best!!