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      Software Development Engineer Interview

      29 Jun 2014
      Anonymous interview candidate
      Seattle, WA
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Apr 2014

      Interview

      I didn't hear back from them for over month after I applied. So I contacted them by email to ask about the status of my application, and they replied by inviting me for an on-site interview at their Seattle campus. They didn't ask for a phone interview or talk to me before that. I thought that was weird, but cool nonetheless. As it turned out, there was a catch. The reason they don't do phone interviews is because the on-site interviews are group interviews with about 50 other candidates. And damn they are difficult. They don't have time to do phone interviews, because they are doing it mass production style. Amazon is growing at a very fast pace, and adding a lot of employees constantly, as well as replacing those who leave because of their high turn-over rate. I guess they figured this is the only way that they can hire a lot of people, yet still ensure they are only getting top quality. I would have preferred if it was one-on-one interviews. Even if I hadn't gotten an offer that way, I would have felt more respected. The interview day is comprised of one big programming project. We were given old low-end bulky laptops with small screens (14 inch?) to work on. We worked in groups of three. They constantly stressed that we were not competing with either our teammates or other groups, and that if we were all good, they would hire us all. Given the fast rate at which Amazon is growing, I believe that. I believe the programming project was too big and too time consuming for only about 5-6 hours. I think it favors people with a lot of programming experience rather than problem solving ability. Someone who can crank out a lot of simple code quickly will outperform someone who can write a small amount of really difficult code. I don't think they are necessarily getting the best quality of candidates this way. This is an entry level position, and they shouldn't have interviews more suitable for seasoned software engineers. Amazon admitted that they have a very frugal cost-conscious company culture and this is a good thing. However, I don't like that they downplayed the frequency with which employees are on-call: where they could be called in the middle of the night and have to wake up and fix a site reliability problem, albeit from their home. According to them, it was a few days every six months, but according to someone I know who worked at Amazon, it is a few days every couple of weeks.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      The programming project was too big and time-consuming for completing in under 6 hours. It takes a lot of time to read and fully comprehend the long project writeup and the framework code we are supposed to build on, let alone code it, test it, and comment it.
      Answer question
      5

      Other Software Development Engineer interview reviews for Amazon

      Software Development Engineer Interview

      17 Jun 2026
      Anonymous interview candidate
      Declined offer
      Positive experience
      Easy interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Amazon

      Interview

      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.
      Answer question

      Software Development Engineer Interview

      3 Jun 2026
      Anonymous interview candidate
      No offer
      Positive experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Amazon

      Interview

      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.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Questions related to leadership principles
      Answer question

      Software Development Engineer Interview

      23 Jun 2026
      Anonymous interview candidate
      Calgary, AB
      No offer
      Positive experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I applied online. I interviewed at Amazon (Calgary, AB) in Jun 2026

      Interview

      Online Assessment is the first step in the process. I didn’t have an HR phone screening and went straight to the OA after applying. It was sent to me about a week after I submitted my application.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      The first question is LeetCode style algorithms question, and the second question gives a full stack repo (choice of Java, NodeJS, or Django) and asks to solve a backend issue which is causing a bug in the frontend. Unit tests must pass to pass the second question. You can run both backend/frontend indivdually or together
      Answer question