I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (New York, NY) in Apr 2019
Interview
- Timed coding test online, involved some graphs algorithm problems
- Then an on-site where I cycled through 4 one-on-one interviewers, involved a brief intro/background talk and then some design-related questions (no expectation of actually having experience in designing software systems obviously but it was NOT algorithm questions, it was more about coming up with solutions to the problems they gave that involved at least some pseudocode on the whiteboard by the end of the session)
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The question that stood out to me the most was about creating a kind of file system. The interviewer was super vague about the required features of this system, I think on purpose to see if I did a good job asking questions to figure out what exactly was the product he was asking for.
Surprisingly easy — I expected tougher questions, but the coding round felt more like a warm-up. The main challenge was a DSA problem about counting islands in a 2D grid, which led to a discussion on DFS versus BFS and handling large grids. Funny enough, I had revisited that exact type of question while prepping on PracHub, which made me feel more confident. The interview wrapped up with a behavioral round, and I accepted an offer, but ultimately decided to decline it for another opportunity. Overall, it was a smooth experience.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Number of Islands — given a 2D grid of '1's (land) and '0's (water), count the number of connected islands. Walk through DFS vs BFS, and discuss how to avoid revisiting cells (in-place mutation vs visited set) and what changes if the grid is huge and must stream from disk.
It started with an OA, and then after a few weeks, I got invited to four rounds of interviews: technical and behavioral at 3 of the 4, and behavioral only at one.
Um teste de código online, se aprovado, vai para o loop. O loop é 4 entrevistas seguidas, duas em inglês e duas em português. 3 entrevistas técnicas de código, todas as 4 têm pergunta de liderança.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Pergunta historicas baseada nos principios de lideranca da amazon.