I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (New York, NY) in Apr 2019
Interview
- Timed coding test online, involved some graphs algorithm problems
- Then an on-site where I cycled through 4 one-on-one interviewers, involved a brief intro/background talk and then some design-related questions (no expectation of actually having experience in designing software systems obviously but it was NOT algorithm questions, it was more about coming up with solutions to the problems they gave that involved at least some pseudocode on the whiteboard by the end of the session)
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The question that stood out to me the most was about creating a kind of file system. The interviewer was super vague about the required features of this system, I think on purpose to see if I did a good job asking questions to figure out what exactly was the product he was asking for.
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.
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