Hi, I know there are quite a few posts here asking something similar but I’m at a bit of a loss. Is there a big difference between the SDE interview process at AWS vs Amazon? From what I’ve gathered AWS’ process looks something like this:
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phone screen
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phone interview
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virtual 5-6x interviews
Is there no online assessment prior to the phone screen like an Amazon interview?
The position I’d like to apply for is a Front End Developer role. What kind of prep would I need for each of those stages? Will I be asked about practical front end knowledge? Data structures/algorithm/leetcode style knowledge? Is there a bare minimum I should know architecture wise (I don’t have AWS experience but could at least learn some of the basics of how it fits in)?
Aside that I’ve reviewed the leadership principles/STAR and prepped answers regarding my experiences through that lens.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and potentially providing me feedback.
Title pretty much sums it all. A recruiter reached out to me for an L6 Sr industry value specialist role within cloud economics.
I'm fairly confident about my industry expertise however I don't necessarily work in the cloud space. My line of work often touches cloud projects, but that's not the chunk of what I do and as a result I don't have technical expertise to understand in depth details of cloud infrastructure.
In the recruiter screen, the recruiter kept telling me to emphasize my industry expertise however, when I got the prep notes, it talked a lot about knowing cloud technicalities.
I have the phone screen with the hiring manager coming up, and I've been told it's more of a functional interview. I've read up on the LP's and understand how the general loop structure works, but none of that would be relevant if I can't clear the phone screen.
Just curious if anyone is familiar with a similar role, and if they know how in depth your technical expertise must be to make it past the phone screen. Also, if the questions are functional or technical in nature, do they still need to allude to leadership principles to be considered successful answer? TIA!!!
How's their interview process? Just curious..
Phone screen then 6 onsite interviews.
It’s a slog, but I had a lot of fun.
Like others have said, general process is 1 or 2 phone screens (2 for sure if you're potentially relocating) and then an in-person interview "loop" with 5-6 people. If they're on the fence, you may have an additional phone screen after the in-person loop but this isn't common. Phone screens can be a bunch of canned questions depending on who is doing your interview. If this is a technical role, just be prepared for lots of technical questions relevant to the skills/technologies outlined in the job description. It's less behavioral at this stage and more to make sure you appear to have the technical chops to do the job before they spend the money to bring you on site (if applicable).
General advice for all Amazon and AWS jobs (technical or not): Know the Leadership Principles inside and out. Have examples of how you've demonstrated each one over your career. Every question, even the technical ones, are all based around these. In person, each interviewer is assigned a couple of them (you won't know who has what) and they will be looking for answers that speak to the LPs they have. If you listen carefully to the questions, you can likely narrow down which LPs they may have, but good answers will hit on multiple. A good interviewer will only have a few questions for you, but they will probe hard and go really deep to find out how much you know. You can bullshit most (all?) of the behavioral interview if you come really prepared on the LPs and talking points for each one.
If you're interviewing as an SDE, you'll do a couple whiteboard exercises for technical stuff when you go in-person. Expect lots of CS fundamentals. If it's an SDE2 or 3, be prepared to really go into the details on solutions and discuss optimizations; particularly you should be prepared to talk about tradeoffs, why you'd make certain decisions, and how those decisions impact things. If it's an SDE1 interview, you won't be grilled as hard on optimizing. Technical but non-SDE interviews (including PM's, TPM's, SA's) will also have at least one technical component, and it will likely be a variation of a standard SDE/CompSci problem with relaxed constraints. You'll be judged less harshly so don't beat yourself up too much if the problem seems overwhelming. Focus on understanding it, asking to clarify requirements (very important), and presenting any solution that seems to fit the scope. It's ok to say "I don't know, but I would do X, Y, and Z to find the answer" or "this may not be exactly what you're looking for, but I think I would implement it like this".
Some job levels and families require a written essay type thing as part of the in-person interview. You'll do this before and complete it before your interview day. These *do* count so don't neglect them, but most interviewers could care less about them and won't even bring them up in the interview. As long as you can put together a coherent essay that addresses the topic using decent grammar you'll be fine.
Good luck.
Edit: I'm speaking broadly as Amazon/AWS is a very large company. Your experience can be pretty different depending on the team. I saw another commenter saying they didn't do any whiteboard coding. This could be due to the role they applied for or because that particular team likes to use a different method. Hiring teams have a good amount of flexibility on how they compose their interviews, but the stereotypical SDE interviews with whiteboarding are still pretty prevalent.
Hey ladies and Gents, I hope you are having a great weekend...
Next Wednesday, I have a phone interview with AWS for an early start 2022 SA role ( for newly grads and early career pros ) I've passed the online assessment, and I've been doing to reading and research on the Leader Principles and the STAR method.
the thing is I don't have much experience to create stories to impress the interviewer and I don't want to B.S as well.
please any tips are welcome <3
So yeah as the title says, I'm looking for typical Amazon Web Service job interview questions. I'm new to the world of AWS, and have never been required to answer questions about it before. That's why I need help.
I'd appreciate every "question" you respond to this thread, including the ideal answer. Just to save me the time I need for googling
Hi,
I will be interviewing with a recruiter at Amazon in two weeks regarding a position as a Solutions Architect. I have some experience from a pre sales position in a different area, I have worked within IT for the last 7-8 years with everything from support to sales but I feel a bit scared of this interview since I dont know much about AWS at the moment. If you were given a week to learn as much as possible about AWS, do you think it would be possible to learn enough to land a job like this? I dont think they expect me to know every single detail about the products, but since I dont have the underlying network or cloud experience I feel like I need to start somewhere. For people who are very familiar with AWS, what would be your focus areas to try to study and understand? The products I would be working with is S3, EC2, DynamoDB and CouldFront.
I have a lot of experience in the API segment, so I dont think that would be an issue, but AWS seems to be huge which makes it kind of hard to know where to start and where to focus.
Any help is appreciated, meanwhile I will start googling and reading what I can find.
My initial thought is that I am a bit to young and inexperienced for this position, but Ill rather give it a shot and fail than to not try at all. And I have done this before, and had the same thoughts then.
I started from zero industry knowledge at an big enterprise company and just studied everything while at work to become very successful at what I did. So I know I can do it here as well, but I need to overachieve at the interview to show then that I am the right person for the job. Hence my questions.
Hi Perhapsaws,
OK so the interview consists of the following steps;
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An initial phone interview with a recruiter from AWS (45 minutes in length)
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A tech screening call (45 minutes in length)
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An assignment, really easy don't worry.
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5 face to face interviews each 45 minutes, known as "the loop". You will be interviewed by the hiring manager, other solutions architects, account managers and generally someone not in AWS but part of the larger group.
They will be both looking at your technical skills as well as the amazon leadership principles.
If you don't know anything about AWS you can view the first 2 sections of my Certified Solutions Architect - Associate course for free which will give you a good overview of the AWS platform.
You can also get an idea of what type of questions they will ask you by looking at glass door, that will give you a good idea as to what technical questions you will be asked in the tech screening.
I'd also recommend that you get someone to check your assignment before you submit it. Remember the following points;
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Configure apache (if using linux) to automatically start up if your VM reboots accidentally (you have no idea how many people this catches out).
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When sharing your AMI, remember to delete your bash history and public keys.
Any questions let me know.
Free Tier, use it. No excuse not to have any product experience.
Hello there!
I recently scored an interview as a Solutions Architect Associate with one of the offices in Europe. I'm extremely stoked for the opportunity and consideration. My only issue is that I'm not certified yet, although I'm grinding through Adrian Cantrill's course and have what I believe to be a reasonable grasp on how the console functions and theories behind the systems (Obviously I have a lot more to learn).
I really would like to know what I should be expecting and particular areas I should focus my studies/refresh on. Any and all tips/ stories are absolutely welcome.
I also just want to say thank you to all of you in this community, everyone has been so friendly and helpful with all of my questions. I really appreciate it.
I recently had my technical interview for a DCEO L3 position and got an email the next day to schedule for the panel interview.
Does anyone have direct experience applying for this position who can tell me how extensive the behavioral portion of the interview is?
I am schedule to meet with 3 team members and 2 of which are Facility Managers and the third I’m unsure of (possibly the bar raiser)
I have tried to come up with as many examples as possible in the STAR format for the 6 Leadership Principles I was given by my recruiter but I’m just worried about how many different examples I might need. I’m hoping that it’s not just one behavioral question after another for 3 straight interviews but I would love any advice from those who have been interviewed for this same position.
Hey everyone I’m interviewing for an internship at AWS and I have my final interview coming up and I was wondering if there’s any tips anyone would recommend on impressing the interviewer to secure the job. I’m pretty confident in my behavioral skills but I don’t really have a lot of experience in AWS (I’m surprised I passed all previous rounds) so any tips would be greatly appreciated.
For context I’m a junior studying compsci interviewing for the CSA internship
I've been tasked by my management team to drill our team with complex/complicated AWS questions/scenarios. What are some deep technical questions or tricky scenarios that you have encountered in your experience or that you would use in an interview with someone for a senior AWS position?
Thanks for the help. I already have your typical interview AWS questions, and ones you can find online, looking for more unique and tricky scenarios. Bring on your toughest questions/scenarios! No answers needed with the questions either unless you want to take the time.
Hello! Not sure if this is the right place to post this question. I have an interview coming up where I am required to have basic knowledge about AWS. I am completely clueless as to where to begin in order to learn. AWS seems to have a lot of services. What are the most important ones? How do I learn them? Can anyone help?
EDIT: Thanks to all who replied to me. I went through two phone screens and have been approached to go through the loop interviews now. Just providing the dates now. If i do make it, i will post another edit :), thanks all you good people.
am currently studying for AWS Solution Architect - Associate, and have completed 40% of Stephen Maareks course on Udemy. Meanwhilr i applied for a job and surprisingly landed an interview. Ofcourse just screening next week but it is a SA role and they would have shortlisted me based on my current work ex of 10 years in consulting (non AWS). I am sure a lot others here would have been in this situation. Just looking for insights on what you think i should prepare for (the technical stuff). It is my first AWS interview and i am hoping to do my best. Any advice is appreciated.
Its just like any other tech interview, don't lie about what you don't know. Demonstrating how you can figure something out is more important than memorizing all technical details. That said it is better if you can also demonstrator technical knowledge on the subject(AWS). Even if yo don't get it, practicing interviewing is always good if you have not done it for this role yet.
My first interview for cloud infra was interesting - it was via Teams, first they asked some basic questions about direct connect, IAM roles etc, then manager gave me a project to do in either terraform or cloudformation to choose - it was to create a vpn gateway and said he will call me again in 2 hours to see if i done it or how much i did. Well, I landed a job so I think I wasnt completely useless :)
I have an interview coming up for an install tech, I actually work in a fulfillment center already so this would just be a transfer technically. I had an interview before but I did fairly poorly, the leadership principles is what tripped me up the most. They rely heavily on that, it's like 95% of the three one hour long interviews. I at least know what to expect so should be better equipped, just wanting to know if there's any tips on making it through this time
I generally think the interview should be a little easier for transfers but what can you do, maybe I just had bad managers doing it
I applied for a two roles at AWS, when contacted by the recruiter for first steps, there was no indication for which role I was interviewing for. When following up to clarify I never heard back and was given times to select from. I did not know the team until my meeting with the hiring manager.
Everything went well with the hiring manager and I made it to final rounds of interviews. We had a prep call with a recruiter who said if your recruiter hasn’t brought up compensation to contact them. Of course mine again is impossible to get a hold of. I understand it’s a massive company but I was assigned three people who all seemed very confused and to not communicate with each other.
The interview was set for 6 people at 1 hour each. The first 4 were ok but when I got to the top person on the team she gave me 15 mins and asked no questions, not one. The other interviews kept asking the same exact star question, do they not share which questions they ask from the list? At least share a list to mark off.
I got the call that I didn’t get the role, when asking for feedback I was told “not at this time” Anywho, I was very disappointed by the entire process and lack of feedback. I took off time and work and dedicated a lot to this process, I guess thats an AWS policy to not provide feedback but the whole thing left me feeling blindsided and confused. Explains why they are notorious for having a terrible culture and morale.
Wondering if anyone else ran into anything like this.
Navigating the "Do you have any questions?" gauntlet at the end of an interview can be tricky. The usual "What's a typical day like?" feels uninspired, while venturing off topic might raise eyebrows.
Can someone suggest some of the smart questions one can ask to leave a lasting impression on the interviewer and thus boosting the chances of getting hired?
Thought I'd give another name dump for those prospective workers out there. Interviewed recently for a role at AWS that I applied to about a month back.
Got contacted by a recruiter a week or so later, going over the typical intro questions. She mentioned I'd be taking an assessment, then interview with the hiring manager, then a rotation of about 5 other people over 5 hours. She sent me basic info on their benefits which were not actually that great. They really liked to emphasize their generic "leadership principles" and "vestment growth" as if it was anything special, encouraging me to familiarize myself with them to help with interview prep.
The assessment was multiple choice over different sections, namely my course of action in example scenarios, some behavioral trite like choosing between "I am more of a team player" or "I am detail oriented," and a technical evaluation. None of it was entirely difficult, but took me just over 90 minutes to get through the ridiculous amount of questions. Passed and got set up for the first interview.
When I joined the interview I could already tell how bad it would be when he explicitly asked me to only answer using the STAR method and to make sure I was very clear when using "I" or "we" in my responses. I initially tried to generalize some answers to my overall thought process, but was encouraged to be specific. I expressed that I have a lot of experience in a variety of situations, so my exact actions in one example are not indicative of how I'd handle everything. So I had to cherry-pick what things I could remember after years and he just had to deep-dive into every single aspect of them.
At the end of each answer, I was repeatedly asked to iterate on the overall impact I had on whatever the situation was, most of which I either already mentioned or implied. In one example, I was asked about "a time I couldn't deliver on an ask and how I handled it."
I talked about a time, somewhat recently, where I was asked to upgrade an application that hadn't been touched in 20+ years. That it was only used by 2 people in the entire company, the documentation dated back to '99 and the only person that ever managed it left in 2005. The company that created this application rebranded long ago and they don't even really handle it anymore. I stated it wasn't really feasible, if even possible, to update this, so I proposed various solutions to management that I would be happy to implement as an alternative. Was told they would discuss it amongst themselves and get back to me. I'm actually still waiting on their decision to this day, but I at least told them what I could do.
I would say this essentially answers the question, right? He kept asking what my impact was and why I haven't heard back from anyone yet. Um, because I can't control their decision or how long it takes, but I at least gave them their options?
"Don't you think just leaving this application how it is now is a security vulnerability?" Well, it has been running fine since I was in grade school, doesn't touch that much data, and I'm not going to just start making changes when it's not my call.
He didn't seem to understand the point I was making, so I said "well, let me give you a different example that I think will convey this better." As I started to go over it, he immediately interrupted me saying that it doesn't sound like what he's asking for, despite not even allowing me to actually explain anything.
It was overall a very stiff interview and did not remotely flow like a conversation. Felt as though he couldn't make any distinctions without me spoon feeding him. Maybe I could have chosen some better examples to speak on? I'm no stranger to questions like these, but this specific interview felt far too stringent for the kind of role it was. Didn't really ask for any kind of overview as it related to the role and I felt like my answers could not be understood beyond face value.
Got my rejection the next week. Already told myself I wouldn't be taking the job even if I got the offer, so not heartbroken over it. The role was listed in Seattle (I don't live there), but didn't 100% confirm if it was only on-site. Figured since there are definitely remote workers at Amazon, I'll give it a shot. Was told in my screening that it was on-site only, no WFH eligibility and no relocation assistance. Went ahead with it anyway to at least get some experience and insight on their hiring process. The hiring manager didn't even live in Washington though, so essentially the team was expected to be in office yet the boss gets a pass. Kind of glad now that I didn't waste my time further with the upcoming 5 interviews if they were all going to be like this. Not a fun endeavor.
Hello Everyone,
Ever since I posted about my offer with Amazon, I have been asked a LOT about the interview process and how to prepare. So, I thought I could post a comprehensive guide for the process. Please be advised that I will not be covering the basics of leadership principles, STAR format and loop interview process in this post. This is a more in depth post about the actual process and some nuances that are not available online.
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HR Phone Screen: This is the first round of the interview process with an Amazon recruiter on call. The recruiter will mostly ask basic questions about your resume and experience and pass you on to the next round if they think you are a good fit. I had two different experiences in this round. For the position I got hired for, the recruiter said I don’t need to do the HR phone screen since she thought I was a good fit already. In another instance, I had the HR phone screen but the recruiter ghosted me. So it is hit or miss. On paper, Amazon has a 48-hour response time promise for this round.
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Technical Phone Screen: I got a little lucky in this round because the interviewer was informed late and she asked questions from the top of her head. Even then, it was really technical, asking about my workflows, thought processes and experience with various software. I have been told horror stories of intense technical grilling, especially by SDE roles. So I would highly suggest preparing well. I used ChatGPT for this purpose. Some of my prompts were:
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I am interviewing for <job posting link> with <interviewer linkedin link> on a technical phone screen. What kind of questions can I expect?
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I am interviewing for <job posting link> with <interviewer linkedin link> on a technical phone screen. <job description line> is a core responsibility. What kind of questions can I expect? On paper, Amazon has a 48-hour response time promise for this round.
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Recruiter Counselling Call: If you pass the technical phone screen, the recruiter will schedule what I call as a counselling call with you. They will discuss the loop structure, STAR format and leadership principles (LPS). There is a good chance they might tell you what leadership principles (out of Amazon’s 14) and technical competencies (TCs) will be needed for this role.
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The Loop: Amazon loop interview is basically a panel 4-6 interviewers with each one given an hour to test you on LPs and TCs associated with the role. The hiring manager assigns LPs & TCs to each interviewer to test your abilities. Here is a typical amazon interview panel:
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Hiring Manager
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Bar Raiser: From a completely different team, has veto power to overturn the panel’s hiring decision
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Cross-Functional Stakeholder
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Teammates/Peers
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Management Personnel
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This is how I would prepare for my loop if I were to do it all over again, assuming I am confident about the job description expectations. My prompts to ChatGPT were:I am interviewing for the role of <job posting link> with Amazon. <linkedin profile link> is a loop interviewer. What kind of questions can I expect?
I am interviewing for the role of <job posting link> with Amazon. The LPs & TCs associated are _____. What questions can I expect?
Get creative with prompts. Use multiple AI agents. It’s all worth it, the more the better. Amazon expects all answers in STAR format unless specifically said “scenario based question”. STAR is basically a Situation-Task-Action-Result format. The time I recommend for each answer is 6-10 minutes, with a 20-20-40-20 split. Amazon has a 5-day response time promise for this round and I heard back on day 4.
Personal Advise:
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Make at least 15-20 STAR format stories. Match LPs to stories, not the other way around. One story can be associated with multiple LPs.
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I recommend not repeating stories within the loop BUT I did repeat two stories twice and I was okay.
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Don’t be nervous, but at the same time don’t make small talk unless reciprocated. Interviewers are very formal and serious at Amazon. They are trained to do so.
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Carry a single page notes sheet with summary of all stories.
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Use as many numbers as possible.
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Ask ChatGPT to review, rate and polish all your STAR format answers. Repeat this for every answer until ChatGPT rates it 4.5 or above.
I just had my AWS phone interview and wanted to share some feedback and notes from my interview in case this can benefit you.
Overall, I would say the interview process was terrible and, needless to say, I didn’t get to move along the process. But certainly learnt a few lessons. As far as qualifications, I have 12 years experience, was IT director in a multi-billion dollar company, ran my own successful company for 6 years, and am certified in Microsoft, Cisco, Amazon, and CompTIA. Just to give some perspective to what’s coming.
The interview was pleasant and friendly, but the tricks were sophisticated and slimy. It started off with the interviewer introducing herself and explaining a bit about the job description and the general yadayada. She then proceeded to say that CSAA’s really have to know a lot but it's impossible to know everything and therefore you have to fall back on colleagues who may be more knowledgeable than yourself in a particular industry. She told me her strengths and what areas she personally felt not as strong. She then asked me to share back and disclose what areas I feel strong with as well as what areas I fall behind in so that she can inquire about my strengths and avoid asking me about my weak spots "because why beat a dead horse" as she put it. Like an idiot, I fell for this trap. I told her where I feel most comfortable (Servers/client environments, EC2, Load Balancing, Security etc.) and what I felt not as strong in (Large Data, AD, among others). She immediately said, "Well, I still like to ask questions on what you feel weak in since often candidates actually know more than they think." BAM! I was screwed. She obviously didn’t ask a single question about anything I felt confident in and roasted me on ridiculous, open-ended questions that even after I answered correctly (which was always followed with “cool”) she kept asking me to go more in depth. An example: What’s the difference between TCP and UDP? So I explained the ‘handshake’ analogy of ensuring packets are received... Which was followed up with, “What else can you tell me about that?” Umm what do you wanna know? That question is meant to make you lose confidence even when you get the answer right. Listening to the conversation again afterwards it was clear I had no chance.
Here’s the bottom line for those interviewing with Amazon:
Don’t reveal your weakness.
2) Answer vaguely enough to give room for when they probe further if it's not something you’re 100% comfortable with
3) Answering a question right will lead to a further open-ended question.
4) Ask for questions to be clarified and narrowed down
Finally, don’t feel bad if you don’t get a follow up interview. I’m far more than qualified and have had jobs which required far more than an AWS job requires and I still didn’t get it. In retrospect, I’m thankful as things turned out for the best with my next employment but it was the first time I interviewed for a job and didn’t get it.
I have an interview with Amazon in about a week and am concerned about how I’ll fair on the technical portion of the interview. Does anyone have suggestions on how I should I go about preparing for it?
The suggested topics are: web/app dev, security, devops, infrastructure as code/config management and Data Analytics
I only need a basic understanding of these areas but I don’t have much work experience. What’s the best way to go about prepping? Thanks for any help!
Been in IT for 12+ years, have many certs, most recently CSA, but I've been working in AWS for 2+ years. I was approached by AWS for a PS position, and had a positive convo with the recruiter. I know my shit, but I'd like to be absolutely prepared for the phone screening and the interviews beyond that (if I get that far). Any pointers are appreciated!
Thanks in advance.