I recently completed the online assessment for SDE 1 at AWS. There were two questions, I was able to solve 1 completely and 2nd partially. Got an email from recruiter to schedule 3 hours of virtual interview via Amazon Chime.

I need guidance on the below points from someone who has experience of interview at AWS. It would be really helpful for me.

1. How long should I take to schedule the interview? I have to give them a couple of dates for the interview.

2. Types of problem/topics I should focus on. I consider myself not a pro at solving Leetcode problem, so need guidance on how my prep should be.

3. How to prepare for behavioural questions.

4. Overall tips to crack the interview.

I would really appreciate any help and if someone has their interview scheduled, I am also up for preparing together.

Thanks in advance :)

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share my Amazon SDE-1 interview timeline and get your thoughts on whether there’s still a chance for an offer. • Received Online Assessment (OA): 15th May • First Round (DSA/Problem Solving): 26th June • Second Round (Tech Deep Dive): 2nd July • Third Round (Bar Raiser): 10th July

It’s now been over 10 days since my final round (including weekends), and I haven’t received any communication—no offer, no rejection, nothing. I did try reaching out to the recruiter, but got a generic “still under consideration” template response from loop scheduler

Is this kind of delay normal with Amazon? Or does silence usually mean rejection in such cases?

Would love to hear from folks who have gone through the process—especially those who’ve waited long and still got an offer. Appreciate any input!

Thanks in advance :)

Mar 20: Applied Online (no referrals, just applied on their portal) - Tailored resume to add keywords like distributed systems

Apr 6: Online Assessment (2 coding questions + work simulation)

Apr 8: Received Survey via email

June 4: Interviews Scheduled (3 back to back interviews)

June 9: Got Result - Accepted Offer

---

More About Interview Day:

Round 1: LP+LLD(Library mgmt system + Use design patterns in the code)

I had to take a lot of hints in the design pattern part.

Round 2: 3 Leetcode Medium-Hards (2D DP, Heap, BST respectively)

Could not code BST question but coded first two before time maybe that's why BST question was asked because so much time was left.

Round 3: Completely Behavioral (I'm guessing this was the bar raiser)

The usual behvioral questions but only 2 questions for 1 hour. Interviewer dived very deep into each of the questions. Nobody has ever (even me) thought about the projects and given time to introspect the projects before him.

---

Interview Prep Resources:

LC Amazon Tagged questions, Striver's list, the famous LLD repo, STAR method practice - chatGPT was a saviour in structuring stories according to STAR method! And of course: https://seanprashad.com/leetcode-patterns/

Added one more important resource: https://seanprashad.com/leetcode-patterns/

Giving it back to reddit as I relied heavily on the experiences. I had my virtual loop recently and the rounds were as follows:

Edit: Timeline

10/11 - OA

10/14 - Recruiter asked for availability

10/16 - Got the schedule

10/29 - Interviewed, 3hr loop

10/31 - Offer

Round 1: 1 hr LP

The interviewer was a very senior manager, he was friendly in the beginning but as the interview started he kept on a poker face. I tried to answer everything in STAR format and also answered all of his follow ups. He asked around 3 questions with 4-6 followups on each. Tip: say something technical or throw some jargon and they will stop probing you, make sure you know what you are saying though. I have no idea how it went.

Round 2: 20min LP and 30 min LLD

Was asked a simple LLD problem, and two LP questions. The interviewer was very supportive and did make it more like a conversation. The LLD was something like design a load balancer.

Round 3: 1hr for 2 LC.

First question was a very easy LC problem, BUT he asked 6 follow ups and I had to give solution to each and code everything up. Mind you the question was very easy but the last two followups were tricky. The second one was an easy medium hashmap based problem and he asked one followup on it. Luckily was able to do all the followups for both questions in time and he didn't have to give hints. This interviewer was the nicest of all, very friendly and didn't make it feel like an interview.

Overall Id say it was a good experience and learnt a lot. The waiting games begin, it can be 50-50 given the first one was the bar raiser. Overall, it depends A LOT on luck, but Id say for SDE 1 it is probably the easiest to get in to Amazon right now.

Have a amazon aws sde1 interview coming (12 November 2024), US based role.

1. As this is AWS , do you know they will ask LLD? Is there any exception for aws ?

2. The order of interview is 1.Manager 2.Senior Software engineer 3. AWS Principle Engineer

How will be the order of interview , like in which order - coding,1 hour hr,lp+LLD?

Hello...

Firstly I wanted to thank the people of this subreddit. Most of the post from here helped me a lot to understand how the interview process of amazon would be and what can I expect. Since I took a lot from this subreddit, I wanted to give it back and I hope my experience helps any other who is preparing.

Timeline:
Applied: June 18th, 2025
OA: Last week of June, don't exactly remember the date
Interview availability form: July 4th, 2025
Interview schedule: Initially all the 3 rounds were scheduled on July 24th, 2025, but then the 2nd and 3rd rounds were re-scheduled on Aug 4th, 2025 due to unavailability of interviewer.
Aug 6th: Final decision - Reject

Experience:
Round 1: LeetCode - Started with selft intro and directly jumped to coding. Initially the interviewer said we are going to do 2 coding exercises, but then I wasn't able to solve the 2nd question. I was able to identify the underlying concepts and what I need to do to solve the problem, but can't able to code it correctly. So he gave me another question to solve, which I solved quickly. First 2 questions were graph based but the last one was hashmap based, thus I solved 2/3 questions. All from medium level difficulty. 2 from NeetCode and one was not so famous problem but still from leetcode, which I wasn't able to solve. Finally I asked some questions to the interviewer about amazon and it ended.

Round 2: Leadership Principles - The interviewer just drilled me with leadership principles questions along with follow up for 40 mins straight and then ended by me asking few questions to him. Went smooth.

Round 3: LP + LLD - Started with self intro and 2 LP questions for about 20 mins. And then a LLD problem for 20 to 25 mins. I'm not getting into the details of what the question is. Not any famous LLD questions like parkingLot or pizza shop. It was different, but wasn't too difficult as well. Open to any language and focus is on design more than correctness. No need of working solution, but I was asked to think out loud and say all of my thought process as I code. Initially just gave a basic OOPs design for it, but as the interviewer added complexity, I changed that to a Builder pattern which he said it made sense to adapt. And then once again the interview ended with me asking some question to the interviewer.

Aug 6th morning: I got rejection for a job ID which I did not applied ever in amazon, but after mailing the recruiting team, I got to know that amazon internally maps your external job id to another internal opening as u clear OA, and the rejection with job ID I got was indeed for the interview which I gave on Aug 4th.

General advice: The amazon SDE-1 positions are oversubscribed and there is a large talent pool. You have very slim chances of making small mistakes and getting thru with it. So try for perfection as the job market demands it. All the best!

Timeline -

OA - Sept 4th

Interview - Nov 5th

Offer - Nov 11th

First round - Senior SDM. He was the one talking for most of the time. Was asked 3 LPs and he was impressed and we had a discussion about that the team does.

Second round - SDM with shadow. 3 LPs with lots of follow ups and wanted to know my stories in depth. Was asked an LLD with vague requirements. I kept on asking clarifying questions and implemented accordingly. Interviewer was like you pushed me to ask more and more questions. It was great speaking to you!!.

Third round - SDE II and shadow. Coding question not available on leetcode. Did brute force first and optimized with a small hint. Added an early exit condition to which he was very impressed and mentioned he did not see that coming! Asked a follow up for discussion as time was up but I coded that out too. Overall all the 3 rounds went really well.

My prep strategies:

Doing lots of leetcode to understand various patterns. For LLD, practiced with chatgpt for given vague requirements by asking clarifying questions and implementing accordingly. I had prepared 12 stories for LPs which really helped me as I was asked similar question in the first round twice.

All the best to everyone! Thanks to this community 🙏

Hey everyone, I relied a lot on this community to learn more about the interview process so I am looking to give back.

Timeline and process (Going to keep it approximate to protect identity):

Let's say at month X: Applied to Amazon for the new grad SDE 1 role (Canada/US) with a referral.

Early month X + 1: Received coding and work-style assessment.

Mid month X + 1: Gave the assessment within 7 days as that is the limit. It was a 3.5 hour assessment. Started with a coding OA. I was given 70 minutes to finish 2 leetcode style questions. I passed all test cases for the first one, and 5ish out of 15 on the second one. Difficulty was leetcode medium level. For this part, my advice would be that If you're running out of time and are not yet passing test cases with the optimal solution, then focus on making sure that your approach is easy to understand and readable since it could possibly be reviewed by a person. I don't think there is a need to prepare for the work-style assessment. Amazon jobs website has information about the work-style assessment that you should review before. Other than that, just use common sense.

Late Month X + 2: Received an invite to schedule the loop. Got scheduled for early moth X+3 Loop consists of 3 back to interviews. Each interview would be a mix of coding part, and behavioral questions. How this exactly looks depends on the interview panel. I will share my experience.

Interview 1: Started off with an Introduction. Straight away jumped into the problem. The interviewer shared a problem that was intentionally vague. He clearly wanted me to define it well. This was a uncommon DSA problem and it wasn't straightforward whether it was meant to be DS+Algos interview or Logical+Maintainable. So I clarified this with the interview who mentioned that the goal was to write a utility function. I started out with asking questions about the problem in order to define it better since it was quite vague. This included clarification of terms, different scenarios, input/output format, edge cases etc. After defining the problem, I started talking out loud about my thought process. I talked about different data structures I could use and what the tradeoffs would look like. I verbally talked about a brute force approach which I mentioned was not optimal. As I started talking about an optimal approach, my interview interjected and said that we should start with the brute-force approach and build from there. As I started coding the brute force approach I earlier explained, I made sure to continue to talk as I was writing code. This including mentioning the time complexity of different things I was doing, choice of DS like why I am using a set instead of a list or why I am using a tuple instead of a list. Once I was done, the interviewer and I ran through the code with a couple of test cases to ensure correctness. Note: This is a simple text editor and you cannot run the code. I was done with this at the 35 minute mark. At this point I thought I would have to work on giving a optimal solution. However, instead the interviewer said assume that X requirement of the question that was given earlier was changed to Y. How would you modify the code to account for that? At this point I started talking about different approaches that came to mind and then updated my code. I talked about how the time and space complexity changed for this. Once, this was done the interviewer again changed the requirement. At this point the problem changed from a coding question to a high level question where I had talk about the problem with respect to how it would make sense to use a Redis cache over a database for XYZ reason. This is not system design and was a very high level discussion. At the end I had the opportunity to ask questions. The goal of this interview, in this case, was to showcase how you think as requirements change.

Interview 2: Bar Raiser. Purely Behavioral. Look at the behavioral portion for interview 3.

Interview 3: Started off with an Introduction. I was given two behavioral questions that could very easily be found in popular interview websites. I had prepared a story bank with 12-13 stories that I used to answer these questions using the STAR format. Instead of trying to guess which LP the questions belonged to I tried to answer in a way that showcased different LPs like customer obsession, ownership, dive deep, disagree and commit etc. I made sure that the result was well defined and if possible included some metrics. The interviewer asked multiple follow ups for each question to understand the story and the circumstances better. This was wrapped un in roughly 20ish minutes. At this point we jumped into the coding problem. The interviewer again provided a problem with a couple of examples. It seemed like a DSA style question but I still asked what the expectation was. The interviewer this time replied that he was looking to see if I write Logical and Maintainable code. (Some people get a more vague LLD style problem in this round but approach should remain the same). I started by asking questions again to better define the problem. Once I did that, I started talking out what I was thinking. I talked about different approaches and data structures. At this point the interviewer, gave me a very small hint as to the direction of the solution. I started out by first designing the solution. Since the goal of this was to write logical and maintainable code, I started by writing the different classes I would be using and how they would relate to one another. This is a very important step. Arguably more important than the actual logic. Once, i had the base structure ready I wrote the actual logic for the problem. In a normal DSA question on Leetcode you would simply write a function and that could have been done here as well but I decided to make the code scalable, modular, testable, and readable. Once, I was done with the problem interviewer asked me how I would test this and what kind of test cases would I use. After this he said, lets say we have to extend the original problem X and add new requirements Y to it, How will you do that? Here is where properly designing the solution really helped me. I was able to extend the code to accommodate the new requirements with less than 5 lines of code. The goal of this to see how easily my code could be extended. If it took a lot of refactor, that would say that the code was not maintainable. As interview 1, throughout the process I was talking about what I was thinking and explaining my choices (This is way more important). Simply reaching the optimal solution without explaining your reasoning and thought process and not caring about code quality, will lead to sure shot rejection.

Within one week of loop: Offer received

Notes:

1. There is no LLD round for SDE 1. It's actually a Logical and Maintainable round and there is a difference in what's being expected.

2. It is very important to discuss your thought process, discuss trade-offs between different approaches

3. While coding can talk about things like why you're choosing a tuple over a list etc.

4. Try to think of changing requirements early on and design a solution that is resilient to that.

5. Make sure that the code is neat and readable. Things like modularity, naming, optimizations are important.

6. Prepare a story bank with 10-15 stories that is diverse and has stories involving interesting projects, conflicts, strict timelines, being team player, disagreeing with manager, showcasing customer obsession etc.

7. Go over this for sure; https://www.amazon.jobs/en/software-development-interview-prep#/lessons/fxggI6Y3AxoOjvF9oKV_gky-TSFACjCu

8. This is a good resource for Logical and Maintainable (LLD/OOP): https://github.com/ashishps1/awesome-low-level-design?tab=readme-ov-file

9. Amazon can be slow. Have patience.

Best of luck! Feel free to ask questions, I'm here to help.

Hello All, I recently appered for Amazon SDE-1 interviews and here's how it went.

Brief background: I currently have 6 months of experience, and Amazon reached out to me for my interest in their recent APAC hirings. (They have been reaching out to many people.) I cleared OA having 2 coding questions and thier usual work simuation and workstyle assement.

Round - 1: Technical Round 1 (1 hr) - 6th Nov
The interviewer was SDE-2. It started with my introduction, and then he introduced himself. Straightaway after this I was given the following problem.

https://leetcode.com/problems/trapping-rain-water/description/

First approach, O(N) time and O(N) space. Then he asked me to optimise it. Second approach, using two pointers, O(N) time and O(1) space. Interviewer seemed satisfied, and the interview ended after that. No LP questions.

Round - 2: Technical Round 2 (1 hr) - 7th Nov
Two interviewers were there; one lady was SDE-1, and the other guy was SDE-3. It started with our introduction, and then they asked me some LP questions, like the last time you took ownership of something in your job.

Then I was given these two LeetCode problems.

https://leetcode.com/problems/product-of-array-except-self/description/

https://leetcode.com/problems/capacity-to-ship-packages-within-d-days/description/

The first problem was straightforward; I did it with O(N) time and O(N) space. They were asking me to do it in O(1) space, but initially they weren't mentioning that the output array is excluded from space complexity calculation. So I was a little confused for a while but eventually got it cleared and did what they asked.

The second problem was also easy; didn't take more time to realise that it was a binary search problem. I explained the approach to them and did it optimally on the first try.

Round - 3: Bar Raiser Round (1 hr) - 18th Nov
The interviewer was the engineering manager. It was purely based on leadership principles, and no Leetcode problems were asked. The following questions were asked with few follow-ups on them.

- Current working role and responsibility.

- Last time you had to deep dive into a particular bug or task.

- Last time you had a conflict with a co-worker/manager.

- How do you handle feedback, and when was the last time you received negative feedback?

- How do you keep yourself updated?

- The last time you learnt something that wasn't required at your job, what was your way of learning, and how much time did it take?

- Why do you want to work at Amazon?

Mostly, questions were around it, and for most of them I was prepared, and I didn't completely fumble for any of the questions, it went well and I was hopeful for positive results.

On 25th Nov, I received automated mail stating that my application is no longer under consideration, and no actual conversation with HR happened, so I'm yet to receive any feedback. The bar raiser went well, according to me, but I know rejection must have been because of that only, as my communication isn't at its very best.

Any tips on how to clear these behavioural interviews are welcome.

Just got the survey to fill out my time availability for SDE-1 interviews. What should I expect from each of the three sections?

Much appreciated if you can give example questions for the LLD section and the leetcode portion.

My timeline so far:

2/6 apply

6/4 OA invitation

6/6 finished (11/15 and 8/15 on the oa)

small delay due to my photo not processing correctly

6/20 survey

Background:

I'm currently working as a software engineer at a startup. It’s been about 18 months since my last LeetCode-style interview, so I was pretty rusty when I got the interview call from Amazon. With just two weeks to prepare, I started grinding LeetCode as best as I could.

Interview Experience: Standard format - 3 rounds, each one hour.

Round 1: (25 mins coding + Leadership Principles) I got an easy/medium coding question but ended up messing it up. I was on the right track, but the interviewer’s suggestion threw me off, and I wasn’t able to complete the code. Toward the end, I explained my approach, which the interviewer acknowledged, but overall, I didn’t perform well. I was also nervous and didn’t do great on the Leadership Principles (LP) questions.

Round 2: (Fully Behavioral - LP) This round went much better. It was completely focused on LP with about 8 questions and 2-3 follow-ups on each. I felt like I was able to provide solid answers here.

Round 3: (Coding) This round went the best. I was given one coding question and was able to provide an optimal solution on my first attempt. I also got a follow-up, which I handled well.

Takeaways and Mistakes:

1. Preparation matters. With more prep, I think I could have done much better.

2. Focus on coding experience for LP. I spent a decent amount of time preparing for LP and used some non-coding experiences (PM experience, school projects) to answer the questions, but I should’ve prioritized my coding work.

3. STAR method with details. I used the STAR method for LP questions, but looking back, my answers could have been more detailed.

4. Start LeetCode practice early. If you’re in school or planning to job hunt, start LeetCode early. Doing a few problems every week can help keep your skills sharp. I'm planning to keep this up so I’m better prepared next time.

5. Track your work accomplishments. If you’re a working professional, start jotting down accomplishments and challenges you’ve overcome at work. It’s tough to remember the details of problems you solved a year ago.

Resources:

1. LC tagged Amazon questions

2. krishnadey30/LeetCode-Questions-CompanyWise - GitHub

3. viraptor/reverse-interview - GitHub

4. prashant075/Low-Level-Design/ - GitHub

Hope this helps anyone preparing for Amazon or any similar companies!

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share my recent Amazon SDE-1 interview experience with AUTA (Amazon University Talent Acquisition) for the USA location, including all the timelines, so it helps others who are going through the same process.

📌 Timeline

• July 1, 2025 (Tuesday) → Completed Online Assessment (OA)

• September 16, 2025 (Tuesday) → Final Interview Loop (3 rounds on the same day)

• September 23, 2025 (Tuesday) → Result received → Waitlisted

Interview Loop (Sept 16th, 2025)

Round 1 (SDE-2):

• Started with a short intro + 2–3 Leadership Principles (LP) questions (~15 mins).

• Then moved to Low-Level Design (LLD) + Coding for ~40 mins.

• Interviewer seemed okay with my approach, said it looked good.

• Wrapped up a few mins early after answering my question.

• Rating: 8/10

Round 2 (SDE-2):

• Jumped directly into coding.

• Q1: 1 medium + 1 hard LeetCode-style question. After solving, he gave a slight modification task → done.

• With ~20 mins left, he pasted another coding problem → solved it well.

• Interviewer seemed satisfied and closed on time after Q&A.

• Rating: 8/10

30-min Break:

• Just drank water, chatted with a friend, and waited for the next round.

Round 3 (Bar Raiser + SDM):

• Interviewer joined 8 mins late (apologized, said he was finishing lunch).

• Started casually, discussed my background in India (he was from India too).

• Asked ~4 behavioral questions (LPs) based on past work experience.

• Took detailed notes (looked like STAR format).

• Interviewer seemed happy with responses and ended ~20 mins early.

• Rating: 9/10

Result (Sept 23, 2025 – 5th Business Day):

As expected, I received the result → Passed, but Waitlisted.

My Question to the Community:

• After this whole H-1B situation, what can we expect?

• Has anyone received offers in September 2025 after being waitlisted?

• Any idea how many people are actually waitlisted for SDE-1 USA this season?

• Should I stay hopeful or just move on?

Let’s use this thread to share offers, waitlist updates, timelines, and experiences so everyone knows what’s happening.

👉 Please drop your updates in the comments — together we can track how Amazon is handling these waitlists.

✅ That’s it from my side. Wishing good luck to everyone waiting!

Hey everyone, just finished my Amazon SDE 1 interview loop and wanted to share my experience

Round 1 – Coding (LFU Cache) Started with 7–8 minutes of intros, then jumped into coding. The question was to implement the LFU Cache, which is a hard-level LeetCode problem. I used a LinkedHashSet approach instead of a doubly linked list. The interviewer suggested the doubly linked list but was okay with my approach. We had a deep 30–35 minute discussion on design choices, edge cases, and complexity. I coded the solution, but due to time constraints, the second question was not asked. At the end, I pasted my code into the chat, and the interviewer wrapped up the round after a brief discussion with the shadow interviewer. Overall, only one problem was discussed and coded. I’m a bit unsure how this round will be evaluated since only one question was asked.

Round 2 – Leadership Principles (Behavioral) This was a fully behavioral round focused on Amazon’s Leadership Principles. I answered using the STAR method and there were follow-up questions for each. The interviewer was engaged and the round went smoothly.

Round 3 – Mixed (Behavioral + Coding) This round lasted 30 minutes. It started with a couple of leadership principle questions followed by a coding problem involving priority queues. I explained my approach clearly and the interviewer seemed satisfied.

Final Thoughts Rounds 2 and 3 felt solid. I am slightly concerned about Round 1 because we only covered one question despite a thorough discussion.

If anyone has experienced something similar or knows how Amazon evaluates rounds like this, I’d appreciate your insights.

Timeline: OA on May 9th, recruiter contact on July 2nd, interview on July 10th

Update- it’s rejected! No other information!

I wanted to share my interview experience for the SDE-1 role at Amazon. The whole process had 5 rounds including the OA.

OA Round

I gave the OA around late October. It had 2 LeetCode medium questions.

One was a sliding window problem.

The other was based on number theory. If you were comfortable with prime numbers and sieve concepts, it was manageable.

After solving the coding questions, there was also a 30-minute behavioral round in the OA.

I didn’t hear anything for a while, but around late December I received an email saying they would like to move forward with interviews.

Round 1 (Technical)

They scheduled two technical rounds on the same day.

In the first round, I was asked two DSA questions.

Question 1:

Course Schedule

The interviewer asked me to implement both approaches:

DFS (cycle detection)

Kahn’s algorithm

Then he asked a follow-up about reducing space complexity, since the goal was only to determine whether scheduling the courses is possible.

Question 2:

This was an interesting problem.

You are given an array of prime numbers, and you generate a sequence using combinations of these primes.

Example:

If primes = [2,3,5], the sequence becomes:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12...

The task was to find the nth number in this sequence.

Initially it looked confusing, but after examining the test cases I realized it could be solved using a priority queue (min heap) approach.

Once I got the idea, implementation was straightforward. I finished both questions in around 35 minutes.

After that we discussed:

my previous work

some Leadership Principle questions

what Amazon is currently working on

Overall the round went very well.

Round 2 (Technical)

After a one hour break, I joined the second round feeling quite confident.

The interviewer said he would ask two DSA questions.

Question 1

You are given an array.

Find the subarray whose (minimum + maximum) sum is maximum.

Example:

Input: [9,4,2,3,8,7]

Answer: 15

Subarray: [8,7]

All elements ai > 0.

It turned out to be a greedy-style reasoning problem, and after dry running a few cases I figured it out.

Then he asked a follow-up question

What if we also want to return the maximum length subarray that achieves the same value?

We discussed that variation briefly.

Question 2

Distribute Coins in Binary Tree

Luckily I had solved this problem before, so implementing it was straightforward.

The round ended with a few more Leadership Principle questions.

Round 3 (Technical + Discussion)

The next week I had the third round.

The interviewer introduced himself and explained the team and the type of work they do. He mentioned the round would include:

one coding problem

some discussion about Gen-AI

The coding question was this one:

https://carloarg02.medium.com/my-favorite-coding-question-to-give-candidates-17ea4758880c

At first it looked simple, but the implementation was tricky. It took me around 30 minutes to arrive at a working solution.

After that he asked whether I had worked on Gen-AI. I haven’t primarily worked in Gen-AI, but I explained some related experience and projects.

Then we discussed my past projects and the round concluded.

About one hour later, HR called and said I had cleared the round, and my Bar Raiser round would be scheduled the following week.

Bar Raiser Round (Final)

The Bar Raiser round unfortunately had some scheduling issues.

One day before the interview, HR called and said it would be rescheduled to the next week.

On the new date, I joined the meeting at the scheduled time, but no one joined. Later HR said the interviewer was waiting at a different time slot that I had not been informed about. Eventually it was rescheduled again for the next week.

This round is where things went wrong.

The interviewer focused heavily on Leadership Principles.

At one point I discussed an example where we optimized an API and reduced latency from 10 seconds to 200 ms. I explained the architecture and the optimizations we applied.

However, he kept pushing deeper into every intermediate step of the optimization process and wanted a very detailed breakdown of how the latency was reduced.

I explained everything I knew, but I could sense the interviewer wasn’t fully convinced.

The round lasted 1 hour 10 minutes, even though it was scheduled for 40 minutes. I spent most of that time explaining and answering follow-up questions.

At that point I already had a feeling that I might have messed up.

About a week later, I received the rejection email.

Takeaway

My main advice for anyone interviewing at Amazon:

Prepare Leadership Principles thoroughly.

Strong DSA performance is important, but LP answers can significantly affect your chances, especially in the Bar Raiser round.

I have 3 weeks to prepare for three interviews:

One technical interview with an Amazon Software Development Engineer

One technical and behavioral based interview with an Amazon Software Development Manager

One behavioral based interview with an Amazonian

Tbh I am amazed I made it to the last round. I consider myself a weak coder (it recently took me two days to fully understand twoSum) so I am NOT feeling confident at all about this. What percentage of my preparation time should be spent towards:
DSA theory (knowing Big O for each algorithm, pros/cons of linked lists
VS

Actually being able to do Leetcode problems (memorize with some understanding)

Also for SDE 1 how hard of leetcode problems should I try to solve? Master a bunch of easy ones and then do some medium ones? Or do some mediums and take a stab at the hard ones?

How do you think the technical interview will differ from the technical AND behavioral based one?

Lastly what percentage of the hiring decision will be around the technical vs behavioral? I am confident in my ability to answer behavioral (I have a wide range of experiences) but the technical I am really unsure about. Should I focus on 70% technical, 30% behavioral? 90/10?

This thread helped me a lot while preparing, so I wanted to give back by sharing my experience. However, Amazon has a policy about not revealing interview questions, so I’ll keep things high-level instead.

Online Assessment (Mid-Jan 2025):

Had to solve one Leetcode-style medium and one hard problem. Both were coding. Then there was a behavioral section with scenario-based questions centered on Amazon's Leadership Principles (LPs), similar to a workplace interaction.

Interview Rounds (Mid May 2025):

Round 1 (original): The interviewer didn’t show up so this got rescheduled.

Round 2 (likely Bar Raiser):

Fully behavioral with a senior team lead. Focused heavily on LPs like:

• A time I solved a complex technical issue

• When I collaborated closely with teammates

• How I handled critical feedback from a senior

• A situation where my suggestion was implemented

There were many follow-up questions and deep dives into each scenario. The interviewer maintained a neutral expression throughout, which I’ve heard is common for this round.

Round 3:

Started with 30 minutes of behavioral questions:

• Navigating a team conflict

• Something I’m particularly proud of

• Deep dive into one of my past projects

Then, we moved into a coding section. It was a classic medium-level graph traversal problem that’s often used to assess understanding of BFS and edge cases. I solved it in about 20 minutes and fixed a bug during the dry run. We also discussed modularizing the solution. It felt like my best round.

Rescheduled Round 1:

Jumped straight into coding. The interviewer had two problems lined up:

First one was a common sliding window pattern used to find the longest valid substring based on certain constraints. Took some time to come up with the right approach but I talked through my process and corrected a logic issue midway. Discussed time and space complexity at the end.

The second was a design-related data structure question that required constant-time insert, delete, and random retrieval. Initially gave a partial solution but had a flaw in the delete operation. With a small nudge from the interviewer, I identified the fix and also discussed possible simplifications if certain operations were not required.

Decision:

Accepted! Got the offer within two days. As a new grad, this was a huge relief and I’m really grateful.

Hey everyone, Im currently working in the development space, I have 4-5 years of industry development experience.

I wanted to get some insight regarding working at AWS as well as what their interview process is like? I've previously worked for a lot of start ups because I get quite a wide scope of work and get to be involved in stuff outside my "box". But AWS due to its size is a whole different ball game.

1. What can I expect from the interview process?

2. Is there stuff they do/don't particularly like?

3. What's the culture like? (This could be different globally compared to the Cape Town offices)

Any other input/advice is welcome.

Note: It's for an SDE role in their EC2 team in Cape Town, South Africa.

Hey everyone, I have an upcoming interview with AWS and the recruiter mentioned I should set aside 5–7 hours for it. Just wanted to ask: • How many interview rounds should I expect during that time? • What was your experience like with the AWS interview process?

Would appreciate any insights—thanks in advance!

I recently completed the Amazon SDE I 3 hour interview loop.

Round 1: The interviewer is Software Eng. Manager started with a brief introduction, followed by around 20 minutes of Amazon’s Leadership Principles (LP) questions. I felt pretty good about my answers, and the interviewer responded positively, saying "good" to most of them.

After that, we moved on to the coding problem. It was an easy LeetCode question where I had to use a HashMap. I managed to solve it and he asked if there's any alternative approach. I solved the alternative approach, explained time and space complexities for both approaches and completed the follow-up questions. We wrapped up with about 5 minutes to spare. Overall, I left the first round feeling confident.

Round 2: He is Engineering Manager, and the round started with introductions, and the interviewer was super friendly, which helped ease my nerves. We began with LP questions, and I initially did well. However, I misunderstood one of the questions and ended up giving a different scenario. I realized my mistake, paused, and corrected myself by switching to the right example. Later for the next set of questions I didn't do as good as the round one.

Next, we moved on to LLD. I misunderstood the initial question again, but through the clarifying questions I asked, the interviewer explained it further, and we eventually got on the same page. I designed the solution, and as we progressed, the interviewer added more requirements. I was able to adapt and implement the changes, finishing all the requirements in about 17-18 minutes.

Before we wrapped up, I asked few questions about his work at Amazon. He explained about his project and we were already 10 min over the time by the time he completed explaining , so he said, "We’ll have a chat soon" and ended the interview. I wasn’t sure how to take that, either positive or he wants to leave as he is out of time..! but he was definitely the coolest interviewer I’ve had!

Round 3: This was with a senior SDE, and he started by asking me to explain about the technologies I know. We then moved to an LP scenario where I had to describe a situation where I made a decision and saw it through in a project. I shared a story about how I sticked to a decision and made my manager and co-workers agree to implement it in the project. The interviewer asked very deep follow-up questions about how I executed it and if there were any other ways to do it. I offered alternatives and also explained how I would improve the solution now by adding new tech to enhance latency, which seemed to satisfy him.

We then moved on to coding, starting with an easy LeetCode problem involving an array. I solved it in about 5 minutes and explained my approach. He then modified the problem to use a 2D array, which I was able to solve. Finally, he made it more complex by adding elements from a graph. I discussed my approach and managed to solve it, but when he asked for an alternative solution, we ran out of time, so I could only explain it verbally and also explained the time and space complexities.

Post-Interview Thoughts: I feel like my first and third rounds went pretty well, but I’m worried about the second round. I struggled a bit with the behavioral questions, and that’s been on my mind.

Update : rejected

Alright, Let’s use this thread to post the interview results/experience of Amazon SDE1.

Please use this format:

<Location>,<Interview Date>,<Result>,<Response Time>

<Interview Experience>

Example can be found in the first comment.