Amazon Research Scientist II interview questions

Initial phone discussions, day of in-house interviews, follow-on discussions about leveling and responsibilities, offer. On-site interviews covered business process, problem solving (some with a situational component, see below), management experience. At least one paired interview (a junior plus a senior person). Didn't actually get to meet my potential manager. Offers from Amazon are tricky. Pay scale will be considerably under market value. Early on they make that up with a cash bonus; after year 2, they make that up with stock grants (not options, these are just shares that you are given as pay). However, there is a catch with all that. The bonus money is forfeit if you leave early, and you'll have to return it. So, unless you can afford to pay that money back, you're on the hook for a minimum of two years. After that period, the stock grants will make your pay competitive or better, but only if (a) you sell them when you get them and (b) the stock continues to go up year over year. If the price levels or falls, you will be stuck with a lower than average salary and not enough stock to bring you up to parity.

Went through 4 Phone Interviews, one with the hiring manager and 3 technical phone screens. After which I was called onsite to their Seattle HQ, where I had another full day of interviews. I signed an NDA, so would not go into details, but all in all the interviews evaluated both my algorithmic/programming skills and math/statistics/machine learning skills. The interviewers posed a lot of real worlds scenarios for me to solve and judged me based on my approach.