I applied through a recruiter. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Sept 2018
Interview
Interview process was quick; about 6 weeks in all. Started with a phone call asking about recent experience and general skills before describing the position and team. After that, got a quick, live coding technical challenge from someone on the team . From there it was an onsite. The onsite was much more pleasant than I thought it would be. As intimidating as Amazon can be, I really feel like the team did a great job in making the interview feel relaxing and more like you're talking with a friends. As many other have said and their own HR will repeatedly tell you -- they are serious when they say you'll be asked questions around their cultural values. Have an answer for every single one. Every. Single. One.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Find the longest palindrome in a string. Write a function to merge k number of sorted lists. How would you design Amazon's recommender system (from an algorithms stand point, not a technical one).
Applied for Amazon AGI. After first round, it will go into full round of multiple interviews. Lots of modern LLM training technic questions. There are still some behavioral questions, but less than general Amazon roles.
Interviewed with 1 phone screen, 1 coding, 2 ml design and 2 lp rounds. Most questions were non-leetcode questions more related to day to day ml implementations. The questions were very practical.
I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Amazon (Tokyo) in Apr 2026
Interview
The interview for the Applied Scientist position primarily focused on three core components: technical questions regarding machine learning, a live coding assessment, and a detailed review of my professional experience.