I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Feb 2015
Interview
The total process of Amazon is really slow....I went through employee referral, OA and final onsite these three phases. Now I will talk about onsite experience:
There are four round interviews for onsite interview. Every round begins with some general resume questions such as "tell me about your most proud project/activity" etc. Then the interview is followed by one or two algorithm question:
Round one: 1. compare two trees return if they are equal; 2. merge sort(follow up: how about have two large files with each contains a bunch of number)
Round two: 1. max subarray sum(follow up: can you do that without array); 2.zigzag travel of a tree
Round three:1. given an integer, start from the end put a comma after first three digits, and for the rest, put a comma after every two digits, return final string; 2. I can't remember very clearly about this round, but I do remember it's a dfs or bfs search for a maze with additional constraints such as "each time I can only go forward and turn right"
Round four: implement the checkin and checkout interface, I think this problem has been mentioned in previous reviews
Generally, Amazon onsite is not hard but I still don't get offer, maybe I performed badly for behavior questions. As for algorithm, it's just about searching, sorting and a little dynamic programming. As for data structure, I heard that they prefer array and string than tree.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
General resume questions and basic algorithm(Leetcode can be helpful)
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.
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
I applied online. I interviewed at Amazon (Santa Clara, CA) in Jun 2026
Interview
Recruiter reached out and set up an onsite loop after the initial steps. Four back to back rounds in one day. Two coding heavy rounds run by senior engineers, one round with the hiring manager, and one behavioral round with a bar raiser. Mix of leadership principles and data structures throughout. Heard back within a week.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Standard BFS grid problem. Given a grid, find the time for all cells to reach a target state where the spread happens one layer at a time.
How did you answer: Clarified the constraints, walked through the approach, then coded a clean BFS from all starting points at once. Tracked the number of layers until everything was covered.