After you’ve applied for an SDE (Software Development Engineer) job at Amazon, the next step is to prepare for the interview. Amazon coding interviews are not among the easiest.
Therefore, you need to put in the extra work to pass the interview.
Though, you must be thinking of certain questions including;
- What does the interview process at the e-commerce giant look like?
- What are the topics you need to prepare?
- How can you ace the interview?
In this complete guide to the Amazon interview process, we will answer some critical amazon coding questions for you so you can land your dream job at the trillion-dollar tech company.
Interview Process at Amazon
The Amazon recruitment team vets each applicant thoroughly before issuing a job offer letter. The interviews form a core part of the vetting process.
Since Amazon has several specialties within the company, the interview process differs. For coding, the tech company usually has two types of interviews. These are telephonic and face-to-face interviews. You need to prepare for both.
Telephonic Interview
The first of the two interviews is likely to be telephonic. After you’ve submitted an application, the hiring manager will schedule a phone interview to take things forward.
So what happens during the phone interview?
Some applicants have reported they were asked questions pertaining to their resume, technical skills, and behavioral skills.
In the telephonic round, HR will check your compatibility and overall knowledge of the role.
If you’re attending the telephonic rounds, you successfully completed Amazon’s online assessment. This online assessment is designed around the company’s leadership principles, and checks whether your professional style matches the company’s culture or not
However, in some cases, the online assessment may succeed the telephone interview. Hence, you’ll be taking up the assessment after the phone screening.
The Amazon phone interview process will last somewhere between 30 to 45 mins. Therefore, ensure you set aside the required time.
This interview is also an opportunity for you to learn more about the job role. You can ask questions to the recruiter and get relevant answers. Doing so will help you decide whether the programming job is a good fit for you.
Face-to-Face Interview (Amazon Loop Interview)
If you pass the telephonic round, you’ll be invited for the face-to-face round, also known as the Amazon Loop interview. This is more challenging than the first one.
The company has something called a ‘Bar Raiser’ interview round where they bring in cross-functional team members to interview the candidates.So you might be probed by the marketing, sales, delivery, or accounts department to check competency.
Contrary to the telephonic round, the Amazon face-to-face interview may take up the entire day.
The exact timeframe would depend on how many rounds of interviews there are. As you might know, Amazon uses a Level system in their recruitment. There are 12 Levels in total, depending on seniority, work experience, and salary range.
If you’re a fresher coder, you’ll most likely start at Level 4. More experienced candidates may get categorized at Levels 5, 6, or higher. The higher the level, the more rounds there will be in the Loop interview.
In general, here’s what the Amazon face-to-face interview comprises of:
- Coding interview
- System design interview
- Behavioral interview
- Domain-specific interview
- Bar raiser interview
At the interview location, you’ll begin with the coding round, followed by system design and domain-specific tests. Then the recruiter will test your behavioral skills and put you through the bar raiser round.
The candidates who successfully clear all the interviews will receive an offer letter within a few weeks.
Amazon Coding Interview Questions
As already mentioned, the coding interview at Amazon is not only technical but also behavioral in nature. Therefore, you need to prepare for both types of questions.
Technical Interview Questions at Amazon
The e-commerce giant hires for a wide range of coding disciplines. These are front end, back end, machine learning, big data, etc. the same set of questions are asked in Google coding interview questions.
Therefore, the questions you’d get would depend on the domain.
However, Amazon loves to test its candidates on two programming concepts:
- Data structures
- Algorithms
For data structures, you should acquaint yourself with arrays, stacks, queues, graphs, trees, and hash tables, among others.
Likewise, for algorithms, brush up on topics like depth/breadth first search, binary search, mergesort, divide and conquer, and dynamic search.
Here are some of the most frequently asked Amazon coding interview questions:
- Find the missing number in the array (Arrays)
- Find out if or not the sum of the two integer equals the said value (Arrays)
- How to merge two sorted linked lists? (Linked lists)
- Copy the linked list with arbitrary pointer (Linked lists)
- Check if the binary tree is a binary search tree (Trees)
- Perform a string segmentation (Strings)
- Reverse the words in a sentence (Strings)
- How many ways can you make change with coins and a total amount (Dynamic programming)
- Determine the Kth permutation (Math and stats)
- Find all subsets of a given set of integers (Math and stats)
- Clone a directed graph (Graphs)
- Determine the High/Low index (Sorting and searching)
- Search rotated array (Sorting and searching)
Behavioral Interview Questions at Amazon
The next set of questions you’d be asked at the Amazon Coding interview are behavioral. These are designed to check your leadership and soft skills.
Here are the behavioral questions you need to prepare for:
- Tell me about a time when you dealt with an issue that had multiple possible solutions. How did you solve the issue?
- When was the last time you took a risk and made a mistake? What was your first response?
- How do you analyze risk? Tell us about a time when the risk paid off big time.
- What was your most significant career failure? How did you respond?
- Describe the time when you led a project successfully.
- What does ‘Thinking Big’ mean to you?
- As a leader, how did you motivate your team members?
- Have you ever used data to develop a strategy?
- Describe your ideal work environment.
- Did you ever work on a project with limited resources?
- How do you approach mentorship? Explain a scenario where you had to mentor subordinates.
- Have you ever had to deal with an upset customer? How did you deal with it?
Wrapping Up
Knowing about the interview process and Amazon coding questions would be a great way to kickstart your interview preparation.
Also, these set of questions would be asked in Google coding interview questions and other company’s interview questions.
