I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Amazon (Tel Aviv-Yafo) in Jun 2017
Interview
I was interviewed first on the phone for AWS Solution Architect position in Israel.
Here is what happened in the phone interview:
* Early in the beginning of the call the interviewer asks to switch to english.
* A lot of the interview is in english.
* Explain what you do.
* What does cloud computing means to you?
* Name one thing that you are proud of in your career.
* Name one failure and the way you managed it.
I received a call about an hour later setting a date for face to face interview (not ‘the loop’).
Question asked in the face to face interview:
* How did you prepare for the interview?
(They really expect that you prepare yourself for the interview.
Actually it is a very good question IMO)
* Name 2 Leadership principles and examples.
They don't really care for more than asked. They just want you to name two.
More on this below.
* Why do you want to join this company?
* What does cloud computing mean to you?
* Describe one of your failures and what you learned from it.
* Now one of your success and what you learned from it.
* How do you know that you are right?
* Why do you think you will to fit for this job?
Now there was a question about a generic site design.
* Describe a generic three tiers web application.
* What happens if you experience load in the Back Ends.
* Now choose a DB. what do you do if you experience a load in the DB.
Experience of the interview.
* At least half of the interview (first part) is in English.
* Opening and ending notes.
In the beginning they mentioned the interview structure in advance.
("We are going to type the whole time.", "We are going to stop you a lot when we want to
proceed.", "There might not be time for questions.")
This is quite good.
* Solution Architect job description was not presented at all.
(What do you actually do in the job. What are the day to day tasks. This part was missing)
* Very focused about filing documents on their laptops while you talk.
This one is the strongest experience.
(Israelis will be familiar with it because it resembles exactly public doctor appointments).
Definitely no room for open conversation because it either do not fit their form or they have to progress in the meeting according to their regulations.
e.g. If you already told a story that answers one of their later questions in the interview, they will still ask you the question when its time arrives and insist that you repeat the story while they are filling their forms.
On the other hand, they do not interrupt your answers too much because they are still typing a lot after each answer. And even if they are, the conversation that follows is very short as a result.
The interview is very structured. Not judging if it is a correct approach or not for this scale of business. Just know that this is the game and be precise with your answers.
One interviewer shadowed the other. The shadow one did not speak but also typed a lot all of the time.
Not a lot of time for questions. 1-2 minutes after 58 minutes of interviews.
This was definitely a minus.
In the end I did not pass.
Since amazon policy is not to provide specific or individual feedback I can’t share my knowledge with you about what went wrong.
Good Luck.
Few rounds of interview, mixed with behavioral and technical questions to showcase you knowledge of building system on aws. They also asked gen ai questions on how you would create these systems
I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Apr 2026
Interview
You do 4 back to back interview in 1 day. It was exhausting. Besides that really appreciated the recruiter giving out interview prep before it takes place. The good thing is there is no coding round.
The interview process was very challenging and thorough. The questions required deep technical knowledge and problem-solving under pressure. While tough, it was fair and tested real-world skills, communication, and adaptability.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Can you walk us through a time you solved a complex problem under tight deadlines, and how you balanced technical accuracy with speed?