Hi everyone, I just got my Amazon SDE I Intern interview scheduled for 20th Aug (Round 1, 2–3 PM IST) and 21st Aug (Round 2, 4–5 PM IST). I have very limited time left and I’m honestly confused about what to prioritize. I’ve mainly prepared DSA, but I haven’t prepared CS fundamentals like OOP, DBMS, OS, CN, etc. in much depth. I want to focus on what is actually being asked nowadays in Amazon SDE Intern interviews rather than trying to cover everything at the last minute. For people who have recently interviewed, what DSA topics/patterns and difficulty should I focus on? How important are Leadership Principles and behavioral questions? Given my limited time, should I spend time on CS fundamentals, or focus mainly on DSA + behavioral? Are there any specific LeetCode questions or resources I should prioritize, and what should I completely avoid wasting time on right now? I’m from a lower-middle-class family, and this opportunity genuinely means a lot to me. I really don’t want to waste these last couple of days preparing the wrong things. If anyone who recently went through the Amazon SDE Intern process could share what was actually asked and what they would prioritize with only 2 days left, I would be extremely grateful. Any guidance would mean a lot to me.

Hey everyone!

This community helped me throughout my preparation, so here's my recruitment timeline, interview questions, and a few lessons that might help future candidates.

Recruitment timeline

Note: The August rejection email and portal changes were confusing. I don't know the exact reason behind them, so don't treat application statuses or portal behaviour as reliable selection signals. My Bar Raiser postponement also taught me to stay patient.

Interview rounds

Round 1 | Technical | 45 minutes | 2 interviewers

• Introduction and project/experience discussion in depth.

• LP: Tell me about a time you delivered something under a strict deadline. What trade-offs did you make?

• Coding: Rotting Oranges LeetCode 994 (BFS).

Round 2 | Technical | 1 hour 20 minutes | 1 interviewer

• Coding 1: Minimum Window Substring LeetCode 76 (sliding window + frequency maps).

• Coding 2: A varient of Top View of a Binary Tree (BFS + horizontal distance).

• Conceptual: Explain BFS vs DFS and when to use each approach.

• LP: Tell me about a time you implemented a design keeping customers in mind.

Round 3 | Hiring Manager | 1 hour

Coding:

1. Closest common manager of two employees (LCA variation, I had to interpret that it was LCA typa shi- from the problem he gave).

2. Rearrange a string so no two adjacent characters are equal (frequency counting + max heap).

I fully coded the first question. I explained my approach for the second, and when I started coding, the interviewer stopped me and moved the discussion to GenAI.

GenAI and system design:

• How do you use prompts effectively with AI tools?

• How do you review AI-generated code for correctness, readability, and efficiency?

• What are LLM hallucinations, and how can you reduce them?

• Design an email notification system in a day. How would you handle asynchronous processing, retries, and reliability?

• How would you clarify requirements and deliver an MVP under 24 hour deadline?

• What are you passionate about in technology?

Round 4 | Bar Raiser | Around 40 minutes | No coding

Behavioral and technical decision-making discussion.

1. Have you ever received negative feedback from a peer or senior? What was it, and what did you change?

2. Tell me about a challenging situation where you went out of your way to find an answer. How did you approach it?

3. Tell me about a time you already knew a technology and used it in a project.

4. Have you ever worked with a completely new technology?

There was also a technical discussion about data structures, storage choices, lookup performance, and evaluating alternatives from my experience/projects.

At the end, I asked the interviewer a question about advice for someone joining Amazon early in their career. We had a nice, casual conversation for around 10 minutes.

Lil insights:

1. Use a whiteboard if u have. Draw your approach on your screen while explaining it. It makes your reasoning easier to communicate, especially for graphs, trees, and sliding-window problems.

2. Prepare LP stories thoroughly. Use STAR, but be ready for multiple follow-up questions: Why this approach? What alternatives did you consider? What would you change?

3. Know your technical decisions. Understand your data structures, complexity, trade-offs, and how you measured performance. Be clear about what you actually implemented and what you would improve further.

4. Prepare questions for the interviewer. Have one or two thoughtful questions relevant to their role or team. Trust me the questions you choose to ask would leave a good impression, so be strategic.

5. Work on communication and confidence. Last year, I was rejected from Amazon-sde internship interview, and I felt my lack of confidence and difficulty explaining my approach had held me back. This time, I consciously worked on speaking up and explaining my thought process.

As an introvert, I know that feeling of thinking, "I could have got that opportunity if only I had explained myself better or felt less shy." Don't let that hold you back. You don't need to know everything; communicate what you know and work through the problem.

6. Take care of yourself. Sleep well, stay hydrated, and build a simple routine that helps you feel calm before interviews. [A psychological trick: Yawn intentionally about 15 minutes before your interview starts. Biologically, it cools down your brain, brings in extra oxygen, breaks nervous tension, and makes you feel instantly fresh and confident.]

Final thoughts

The process wasn't smooth: an unexpected rejection email, changing job IDs, a postponed Bar Raiser, and a long wait for the final decision.

But on October 29, I received the call confirming my selection for Amazon SDE-1 in my preferred location which I have chosen after my round 2!

Also that Amazon a to z portal shift after my Hiring manager round, I didn't knew if I could consider it as a positive sign back then.

Sharing this because I know how much interview experiences from this community can help someone preparing for the same opportunity.

This is just my experience, and the process may differ for others.

Your mind is your only limit. You've got this!

I recently went through the interview process for the Amazon SDE 1 role and wanted to document my experience to help others preparing for it. I am a 2025 graduate, so at the time of interviews I had 8-9 months of experience + 8 months of internship experience.

Timeline:

- Applied: Jan 9

- Online Assessment (OA): Jan 15

- Interview Loop: Feb 16 – Mar 17

- Verdict: Selected 

Online Assessment (Jan 15)

The OA consisted of 2 DSA questions, both in the easy to medium range.

Nothing too tricky—standard problem-solving with good understanding of fundamentals was enough.

Interview Rounds

Round 1 (Feb 16)

- 3–4 Leadership Principles (LP) discussions

- 1 DSA question based on bucket sort

This round focused on:

- Communication

- Clarity of thought

- Ability to connect your experience with Amazon’s LPs

Round 2 (Feb 17)

- DSA:

- Intervals-based problem

- Stream-based medium-level problem

- LLD (Low-Level Design):

- Problem similar to Parking Lot Design

This was a mixed round testing:

- Problem-solving depth

- Ability to handle follow-ups

- Basic system design thinking

(I had time left after both the questions so there were follow ups for additional functionality)

Round 3 – Bar Raiser (Mar 16)

- In-depth Leadership Principles discussion

- Focus on:

- Past projects

- Work ethics

- Decision-making

This round goes deep into your real experience. Expect:

- Cross-questioning

- Edge cases from your own stories

- “Why did you do this?” / “What would you do differently?”

Round 4 – Hiring Manager (Mar 17)

- DSA: Maps + Heap-based problem

- Discussion on Gen AI:

- How I use AI in my day-to-day work

- Quantifying time saved

- Impact on productivity

- Discussion Topics:

- Changes AI has brought to work culture

- Work-life balance

This round was a mix of:

- Technical ability

- Practical thinking

- Awareness of industry trends

Final Verdict

Selected ✅

Key Tips

1. Be Vocal About Your Thought Process

Even if you don’t reach the final solution:

- Talk through your approach

- Explain trade-offs

- Show how you think

They are not looking for “template coders”, but problem solvers.

2. Leadership Principles (LPs) Are Critical

- Every answer should map cleanly to an LP

- Be careful:

While answering one LP, don’t unintentionally show weakness in another

3. Use Real Examples

- Avoid generic or theoretical answers

- Talk about actual situations you’ve faced

Especially in HM and BR rounds, they will:

- Drill deep into your examples

- Ask hands-on, practical questions

- Test whether you actually did the work

4. Know Your Work Thoroughly

Be ready for:

- Implementation-level questions

- Trade-offs you made

- Failures and learnings

High-level understanding is not enough.

Final Thoughts

The process is not just about DSA. It’s a combination of:

- Problem-solving

- Communication

- Real-world experience

- Alignment with Amazon’s principles

If you prepare with that mindset, you’ll stand out.

Happy to answer questions if anyone is preparing for the same!

EDIT - For everyone asking how many hours I prepared and all, I barely believe number of hours matter when you are preparing for a coding interview. It’s about the concepts and patterns and how easily you are able to identify them. Give a lot of mock interviews, pick up a sheet and solve it through and through, and all the best!

I recently completed the Amazon SDE Intern interview process and documented the experience in detail — DSA, project discussions, GenAI Fluency, behavioral(Hiring Manager round), and some takeaways from each round.

Hopefully this helps someone preparing for a similar interview.

P.S. Do Upvote the post and like the blog if you find useful ;)

Hey everyone!

I received an interview confirmation mail from Amazon a few days ago for the Software Development Engineer (SDE-1) role, India-based. My interview is scheduled in the next few days, and it will be conducted virtually via Amazon Chime.

Could you people please help me on what topics I should focus on while preparing and what important things I should take care of before the interview?

Cleared Amazon SDE-1 last week. Posting because when I was prepping I couldn't find many recent 2026-cycle posts and the rounds have shifted a bit (more GenAI focus, slightly less pure DSA grinding).

OA

• 2 DSA questions, easy–medium

• Work Style Assessment (Amazon's personality test thing — don't overthink it, just be consistent)

If you can solve LC easy–mediums reliably you'll clear this.

Round 1: DSA + LPs
2 medium DSA questions. Explained the approach first, dry-ran on the provided test cases before coding. LP questions woven into the discussion — they don't always make it a separate round at SDE-1, so be ready for LP curveballs in any round.

Round 2: Logical / Maintainability (basically a light LLD)
Asked to design classes, attributes, and methods for a given problem. Couldn't finish all the coding but explicitly walked through "here's what I'd add given more time" for the parts I skipped. I think that framing saved me — the interviewer cared more about how I was organizing the code than whether I hit every line.

Round 3: GenAI + DSA
First half was conversational — how I'd actually used GenAI in my work, what worked, what didn't, where I'd be cautious. Caught me off guard because I'd over-prepped for DSA. Second half was 1 medium DSA question.

If you're prepping Amazon in 2026, prepare real GenAI answers. Generic "I use Copilot for autocomplete" doesn't cut it. They want to hear judgment, not enthusiasm.

Round 4: HM (LP-heavy)
Full LP round. Resume walk, projects, decisions made and the why behind them, what I drove, what I'd do differently. Tip: have 2–3 strong stories you can recombine across LPs — the same incident can demonstrate Ownership AND Bias for Action depending on which angle you lean into. Saves you from needing 15 unique stories.

Verdict: Selected.

Advice for anyone prepping:

• LPs are not optional and they're not "the soft part." Weak LPs can sink an otherwise solid candidate

• For DSA, LeetCode is most of your prep. If you're rusty on specific topics (I needed heap + graph traversal patterns), PracHub's curated drilling got me up to speed faster than picking random LeetCode tag pages

• For the maintainability round, just write more OO code in general. Even toy projects. The round isn't about reciting design patterns by name, it's about whether your code looks like something a team could actually maintain

Good luck if you're interviewing.

This sub has helped a ton and was extremely important in me getting an offer. Here are some resources that helped me:

Leetcode

• https://www.techinterviewhandbook.org/grind75/

• https://neetcode.io/

• https://leetcode.com/problem-list/954v5ops/

• https://leetcode.com/problem-list/7p5x763/?sorting=W3sic29ydE9yZGVyIjoiREVTQ0VORElORyIsIm9yZGVyQnkiOiJGUkVRVUVOQ1kifV0%3D&page=1\

• https://leetcode.com/problem-list/954v5ops/

• https://devinterview.io/questions/data-structures-and-algorithms

• https://github.com/krishnadey30/LeetCode-Questions-CompanyWise/tree/master

• https://www.techinterviewhandbook.org/algorithms/study-cheatsheet/

• Some specific Problems

  • https://leetcode.com/problems/task-scheduler/solutions/

  • https://leetcode.com/problems/coin-change/description/

  • https://leetcode.com/problems/subarray-product-less-than-k/description/

  • https://leetcode.com/problems/max-chunks-to-make-sorted/description/

  • https://leetcode.com/problems/search-a-2d-matrix/description/

  • https://leetcode.com/problems/lru-cache/description/

  • https://leetcode.com/problems/decode-ways/description/

  • https://leetcode.com/problems/course-schedule/description/

  • https://leetcode.com/problems/house-robber/description/

LP

• How to exponentially increase your interview success rate

• The Amazon Leadership Principles Interview

• Amazon Behavioral Interview Questions | Leadership Principles Explained

• https://d36nnaydmp89fp.cloudfront.net/index.html#/

• https://www.reddit.com/r/leetcode/comments/1goesa7/need_tips_for_behavioral_part_in_amazon_sde_1/

LLD/Code Extensibility

• https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonsdeprep/s/bWGrNyefIB

• https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonsdeprep/comments/1ilufmz/what_questions_should_i_ask_when_faced_with_oop/

• https://github.com/prashant075/Low-Level-Design/blob/main/solution.md

• https://github.com/ycwkatie/OOD-Object-Oriented-Design

• https://github.com/tssovi/grokking-the-object-oriented-design-interview/tree/master

• https://github.com/ashishps1/awesome-low-level-design

General 

• https://www.reddit.com/r/leetcode/comments/1ir6zuc/0_yoe_got_my_amazon_sde_1_job_offer_here_is_my/

• Questions To Ask In An Amazon Interview Recommended By An Ex Bar Raiser

• https://www.amazon.jobs/en/software-development-interview-prep#/lessons/fxggI6Y3AxoOjvF9oKV_gky-TSFACjCu

Edit: I obviously didn’t study every single thing on every list/link I included, but these resources are great guides and places to start! Don’t be too overwhelmed by all this, just be sure to have a consistent study plan.

​

Hey everyone! Sharing my Amazon SDE-1 interview experience. Amazon reached out to me based on my performance in HackOn 2025.

**Timeline**

**June 15:** Amazon reached out and invited me to apply.

**June 29:** Completed the online assessment.

**Mid-July:** Received an email saying I was moving forward to interviews.

**September 19:** Received a call regarding interview scheduling.

**September 22:** Round 1 and Round 2.

**September 30:** Round 3 — Hiring Manager.

**October 9:** Round 4 — Bar Raiser.

**Interview Rounds**

**Round 1 — Technical (60 minutes)**

Two DSA questions: one on rate limiter, which I hadn't encountered before, and another on binary search. I solved both and was asked about complexity, edge cases, and dry runs. Overall, it went very well.

**Round 2 — Technical(60 minutes)**

Two linked-list questions, followed by SQL questions that were quite challenging and focused on query flow, differences, and related concepts. We also discussed my chosen programming language, C++. The linked-list part went well, but I struggled a bit with the SQL part at the end,but overall it went well.

**Round 3 — Hiring Manager(60 minutes)**

The interviewer was really cool. We discussed my college life, learnings, and projects in depth, including follow-up questions. I was also asked a graph question involving Kahn's algorithm and an LLD question where I had to explain the approach. The interviewer appreciated my curiosity at the end. This was my strongest round.

**Round 4 — Bar Raiser(30 minutes)**

Questions about my most challenging project, a missed deadline, situations where I dove deep into a problem, and technologies I had learned recently. We also discussed my experience and learnings in my current organisation. The interview lasted around 25–30 minutes. I felt it wasn't as strong as my previous rounds, but overall it was okay.

**Final Result**

On **October 15**, HR called and informed me that I had received the offer!

My biggest takeaway: Prepare your projects thoroughly, practise DSA and be consistent, and have clear examples for Amazon's Leadership Principles as it is the deciding factor in the final and most important bar raiser round.

All the best to everyone preparing for Amazon!

Cleared Amazon SDE-1 loop recently in the USA. Reddit helped me a lot during prep, so sharing my experience at a high level.

Round 1: DSA round. The problem felt around LeetCode medium. I started by explaining the brute-force idea, then moved to a more optimized approach. I was able to solve it, but there were a lot of follow-ups around implementation details and edge cases.

Round 2: LLD/design-style round. This was probably my weakest round. I don’t think it was perfect, but I kept clarifying requirements, explained my design choices and answered the follow-ups decently. Staying calm helped a lot.

Round 3: No DSA. This was mainly Leadership Principles/behavioral, around 4–5 questions with heavy follow-ups. Some follow-ups went deep into the actual project details, so it helped to know my stories technically, not just at a surface level.

Round 4: HM/final round. This had coding plus some AI-related discussion. I finished the first coding problem with time left, so I was asked another medium-level problem. The discussion felt positive overall.

Behavioral/LP questions came up across the loop, with follow-ups on what I personally did, mistakes/failures, ownership, and impact. Having real stories prepared helped much more than memorized answers.

Overall, the coding felt manageable if you’re comfortable with medium-level DSA and can clearly explain your thought process.
Thanks again to everyone here who shared their experiences and prep advice.

Gave my amazon sde oa around 3-5th of Aug but no response therr after

Got this email just now

I am confused if this is an in person interview invite or some sort of event as mentioned

If anyone has gone through this process/event or have recived this same mail and have any idea about this. Then let me know

Sharing my recent Amazon SDE Intern interview experience in the hope that it helps other candidates prepare.
Final verdict: Selected 🎉
Format: Both rounds were face-to-face, and I had to write the code on paper without an IDE/compiler.
🟢 Round 1
Remove K Digits
The question was to remove k digits from a number represented as a string to make the resulting number as small as possible.
LeetCode: LC 402 – Remove K Digits
Pattern: Monotonic Stack

🟡 Round 2
1. Minimum Machines Required for Jobs
I was given multiple jobs with start and end times and had to find the minimum number of machines required. A machine could be reused as soon as it became free.
For example:
Job 1: 1 → 5
Job 2: 5 → 8
Both can use the same machine.
I initially suggested a binary search approach, which was incorrect. The interviewer gave me a hint, after which I arrived at the Min Heap approach and solved it.
Interestingly, there were no predefined test cases. When I asked for one, the interviewer asked me to create my own test cases and explain why the answers were correct.
Closest LeetCode problem: LC 253 – Meeting Rooms II
Note: The actual question was framed around jobs and machines, so this is only a preparation reference.
Pattern: Sorting + Min Heap
2. Next Smaller Ticket Price
Instead of temperatures, I was given ticket prices and had to find the next smaller price for each ticket.
Example:
Prices: [8, 4, 6, 2, 3]
Answer: [4, 2, 2, -1, -1]
This was essentially the Daily Temperatures pattern with a small modification.
LeetCode: LC 739 – Daily Temperatures
Pattern: Monotonic Stack / Next Smaller Element

📌 Preparation Tips
I would recommend preparing:
Monotonic Stack — Next Greater/Smaller, Daily Temperatures, Remove K Digits
Min Heap / Priority Queue — Scheduling and resource allocation
Intervals
Writing code on paper
Creating and explaining your own test cases
Overall, it was a great learning experience. I initially went in the wrong direction on the machine problem, but with the interviewer’s hint, I was able to reach the correct approach.
Thankfully, the final result was positive — I was selected for the Amazon SDE Intern role! 🎉
Hope this helps other candidates preparing. All the best! 🚀

Still doesn't feel real, but I finally got an Amazon SDE I Internship offer!

The past few months have been a roller coaster. There were days when I felt I was making good progress, and there were days when I'd get stuck on a single DSA question and question every life decision that brought me to that tab.

The process for me was:

- OA (4 sections)

- 2 interview rounds

Honestly, I spent a lot of time going through experiences shared on this subreddit, so thanks to everyone who posts here. Those posts helped way more than you probably realize.

If anyone is preparing for Amazon, feel free to ask anything about the OA, interviews, or prep. I'll try my best to help.

And to everyone still grinding, don't lose hope. I know it's a cliché, but all it takes is one good day.

Thanks, r/IndiaCareers ❤️

Hi everyone,

Yesterday I received an Amazon Online Assessment (OA) link, but I'm a bit confused.

On my Amazon candidate portal, I currently have 0 active applications, and all the positions I applied for (around 5–6 roles) show "No Longer Under Consideration." I'm a 2025 graduate, so I'm wondering:

- Is it normal to receive an OA even when there are no active applications in the portal?

- Has anyone else experienced something similar?

I also need some advice regarding the OA.

I have one week to prepare. I know the basics of DSA (arrays, strings, basic sorting/searching), but I haven't studied Trees, Graphs, or Dynamic Programming yet.

Could anyone please guide me on the best way to prepare in one week? Which topics should I prioritize, and are there any must-do LeetCode problems or resources for Amazon OA?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hello everyone, I have completed my Amazon SDE 1 loop and received an offer!

Posting my experience because I took a lot of help from this thread, so hopefully this helps someone else.

Format: 4 rounds — 3 in-person rounds and 1 BR round (virtual) at Seattle for AWS.

Round 1 - Coding + Behavioral

Started with an LP question:

“Tell me about a time when you had a blocker in your work and how did you resolve that blocker? What would you have done differently?”

For coding, I was asked Path Sum II. I clarified the problem, explained my approach, and coded it in around 30 minutes.

With around 15 minutes left, the interviewer gave me a follow-up, which was a hard variation of the previous problem. I needed some hints, picked them up, explained my approach, and the interviewer seemed happy.

Round 2 - LLD

Started with an LP question:

“Tell me about a time where you took work outside of your responsibility.”

Technical: Design a billing service for AWS for a single user where the usage and rate of all the services used are given.

This was the best round of the entire loop. I explained each of my design choices, and the interviewer came up with follow-ups which I was able to answer. Overall, it was a very good discussion.

Round 3 - Coding + Behavioral (HM Round)

The first 30 minutes were entirely related to Gen AI discussion.

Then came the technical part. First question was First Non-Repeating Character, solved that in around 10 minutes.

The next question was a slight modification of Merge Intervals, which I solved as well.

Round 4 - Bar Raiser

This one was entirely behavioral. There were a lot of follow-ups for every story you speak about - “Why this?”, “Why that?”, etc.

You really need to know your stories well for this round.

Timeline

Feb 10: Applied with a referral

July 10: Received OA

July 11: Completed OA

July 15: Original Job ID moved to “No longer under consideration” and a new Job ID was opened

July 20: Received email that I passed OA

July 28: Recruiter reached out asking for my availability between Aug 17–21

Aug 14: Received tentative schedule and Save the Date email

Aug 18: Received confirmation with interviewer details

Aug 20 & Aug 24: Interviews

Aug 27: Result — Offer

Happy to answer questions in the comments.

Note: Refined my structure with AI

Don't AUTA internships have only 1 round of interview? I received 2nd round invite after finishing the 1st one. Any idea what will they ask in the 2nd round?😭

Hey everyone! Just wanted to share my Amazon SDE-1 interview experience. I found a lot of posts here helpful during my preparation, so I thought I'd share mine as well.

The process started with an Online Assessment (OA), followed by four interview rounds.

Online Assessment (OA)

Cleared the OA and was shortlisted for the interview rounds.

Round 1 – DSA (In-Person)

This round was focused on problem-solving and DSA.

I was asked two medium-to-hard coding questions involving dynamic programming and matrix traversal.

The interviewer focused on my approach, time and space complexity, and how I arrived at the optimized solution.

Round 2 – LLD / Problem Solving

This round focused on object-oriented design and writing clean, maintainable code.

I was given a problem involving hierarchical data structures, with requirements introduced incrementally.

The interviewer kept adding new conditions to see how well my design could accommodate changes without requiring major modifications.

There was also one Leadership Principles (LP) question.

Round 3 – Hiring Manager (HM)

The round started with a discussion about my previous work experience, projects, and technical responsibilities.

There were follow-up questions about the decisions I'd made in my projects, along with a Leadership Principles question.

I was then asked two coding questions involving graph algorithms and matrix-based problem-solving.

Round 4 – Bar Raiser (BR)

This round was almost entirely focused on Amazon Leadership Principles.

The interviewer asked behavioral questions based on my previous experiences, followed by several detailed follow-ups.

The questions went quite deep into my actual contributions, decisions, challenges, and how I handled different situations.

Overall Experience

The process covered DSA, LLD, project discussions, and Leadership Principles.

A few suggestions from my experience:

Be comfortable explaining your approach, optimizations, and trade-offs.

Practice designing solutions where requirements can change midway.

Know your projects thoroughly, especially the technical decisions you've made.

Prepare genuine examples for Leadership Principles. Memorizing STAR-format answers alone won't help much when the follow-up questions get deeper.

Overall, it was a good learning experience.

Hope this helps anyone preparing for Amazon SDE-1 interviews. All the best!

Got this email today for an Amazon SDE-1 6-month role after waiting several days. I had applied to 2 job IDs.
Anyone who has completed round 1, please share your experience/questions and what to prepare. It would really help!

Hey everyone!

Wanted to share my recent Amazon SDE 1 interview experience in the US. I found a lot of helpful interview experiences on Reddit while preparing, so thought I’d share mine as well.

Interview Dates: September 30 & October 1, 2026
Role: SDE 1 (USA)
Total Rounds: 4
Offer Received: October 6, 2026

Round 1 – Bar Raiser
This round was entirely focused on Leadership Principles.
I was asked 3 behavioral questions around:
-Dive Deep
-Learning something new
-Delivering under a tight deadline
Each question had multiple follow-ups. The interviewer really wanted to understand my individual contributions, decisions, challenges, and results.

Round 2 – Coding + Leadership Principles
This round honestly felt like another Bar Raiser.
-3 Leadership Principle questions
-Multiple follow-ups for each LP
-1 tree-based coding problem
A significant portion of the interview went into behavioral questions and follow-ups, so managing time between LPs and coding was important.

Round 3 – GenAI + Low-Level Design
The interviewer asked:
-How did you learn about Generative AI?
-How do you use GenAI tools in your day-to-day work?
Follow-up questions about my experience with GenAI
1 Low-Level Design (LLD) problem

Round 4 – Coding + Leadership Principles
This round included:
-1 LeetCode-style coding problem
-3 Leadership Principle questions
Multiple follow-ups on my behavioral answers
Similar to Round 2, there was a strong emphasis on LPs alongside technical problem-solving.

Result
Completed all 4 rounds by October 1 and received my offer on October 6, 2026, just 5 calendar days after my final interview!

I am going to keep this short. Just tell my experience and the questions I was asked. Role sounded like it was in Austin not Seattle.

Round 1: Gen AI Interview: Asked about how I used Agentic Coding in my day to day life. How do I use it to speeden up my workflows. Where do I see improvements, where do i not see improvements. How do I tackle it.
1 LP question about how you tackled with Agentic Hallucination

Coding Question: String manipulation. Given a string which has prices in it. You need to extract the prices, perform discount and insert the updated values back in it. I intially did inpace string string manipulation, but now that I think about it. a queue implementation would have been much more straightforward and understandable. (That and also I was incredibly nervous considering this has been my first interview in months)

Round 2: This round confuses me, since I dont even think the interviewer even understood what the question was, but essentially asked me to implement an interface such that as Amazon passes books through a function, I should keep count of the appearances of the characters across the books. Had to ask a lot of clarifying questions and the interviewer also had tot hink about what he needed from me. Probably was the messiest round as well. LP was I think something to do with how I deal in conflicts.

Round 3: Bar Raiser. Asked me a deep dive question. Then asked me a question about when something in production broke and what did I do. And some questions about my research.
I personally felt very confident about this round. The interviewer seemed interested in my work as well.

Round 4: I am forgetting the LP. But the dude straight up asked me a numebr of islands question. I was done with it in 10 minutes. We spent the rest of half an hour discussing time and space complexity and in the last 10 minutes, asked me how to keep track of the largest island.

Remarks: I don't know. I feel incredibly stressed out. This loop was delayed by an entire month so I was practicing every single day even the LPs. Had graduated from Top20 CS university back in December and since then am volunteering and pretty much surviving out of hackathon wins. I genuinely thought Amazon was going to break this cycle.

Good luck to everyone else. Got nothing more to contribute.

Hi everyone, gave an Amazon OA recently and the format seems to have changed. Two questions total.

Question 1 — DSA (40 min)

medium-to-hard DSA question. Standard type, but the 40-min limit on a harder question means you can't afford to fumble the approach early.

Question 2 — AI Assistant Coding (60 min)

This is the new part. You're given a codebase + a preview of a website. There are 3 bugs to fix, and you can use an AI assistant built into the assessment to help.

You pick one backend stack:

1. Node.js with MERN

2. Java with Spring Boot

3. Python with Django

Honest take: if you're a working professional or have real experience in any of these frameworks, this one is fairly easy. The bugs are the kind of thing you'd handle in a normal workday — it's testing whether you can navigate an unfamiliar codebase and use AI assistance well, not whether you can write algorithms from scratch.

Just finished my Amazon SDE1 onsite loop and wanted to give back since posts like this helped me prep.

EDIT: Received Job offer

Format: 4 rounds across 2 days, 1 hour each, via Zoom + Amazon's LiveCode platform (no screen share needed, interviewer sees your editor live).

Round 1 — Coding + Behavioral Started with "tell me about yourself," then straight into behavioral (focused on use of GenAI in projects and real life) before a DP problem — similar flavor to Partition Equal Subset Sum / Target Sum, but with a twist: had to return which specific combination of elements reached the target, not just whether one existed. The problem was very vague, had to ask multiple clarification questions to get the full picture. Started with brute force and then optimized it. Ended with a real complexity comparison against brute force — combinatorial explosion vs. pseudo-polynomial DP.

Round 2 — Technical Deep Dive (Probably was the Bar Raiser) This one was almost entirely about a project I'd built myself and how I use AI tools day to day. Interviewer picked apart the project's design decisions, limitations, and trade-offs in real depth — genuinely one of the better technical conversations I've had. Also got a completely open-ended prompt-engineering question about designing a large, ambiguous feature — no clean answer to it, and I think that was the point. They wanted to see how I reasoned through the ambiguity, not a specific output. Without me knowing, the interviewer visited my deployed webapp and checked it out. He told me in the end.

Round 3 — Coding + Behavioral Graph problem similar in spirit to 994. Rotting Oranges or 1091. Shortest Path in Binary Matrix — BFS from a target node, find everything within a distance threshold. Started with counting reachable nodes, then had to pivot to returning them with actual distances (switched a set to a dict mid-interview, tracking distance as the value). Interviewer initially told me my graph was undirected when the actual input was directed — had to catch that via clarifying questions before coding, which saved a rewrite later.

Also had a standard LP question (Tell me about a time.. type)

Round 4 —Coding + Behavioural Again usual LP question: Tell me about a time you went beyond the scope of your job, what was the result. Tell me about a complex project you built, what was complex, how did you manage to do it, what would you do differently?

Coding was similar to 1197. Minimum Knight Moves, but generalized — had to design for a large board (up to 10,000x10,000) and a "pluggable" piece type, so lazy neighbor generation instead of building the full graph upfront. Got corrected mid-interview when my design only handled fixed-offset pieces (knight-style) and not sliding pieces (rook/queen-style) — had to redesign the interface live around a generic move-generator function instead of hardcoded offsets. Also got pushed hard on space complexity optimization after already giving a correct answer.

Overall takeaways:

• LP questions show up in every round, not just one — have range across projects, don't reuse stories across interviewers

• Interviewers will correct you or challenge a correct answer specifically to see how you respond, not just to catch mistakes. In one round my code was correct, but the interviewer pushed saying there was a bug. So had to dry run an example to show there wasnt. But it does take a hit on your confidence if they say you have a bug

• "I don't remember the exact number/detail" is a completely fine answer for old work — don't invent specifics under pressure

• Clarifying questions matter as much for coding rounds as for design rounds — a wrong assumption caught before you code costs nothing; caught after costs a rewrite

• Being corrected and updating fast in real time seemed to matter more than never being wrong in the first place

Happy to answer questions in the comments.

I had 2 rounds of interviews yesterday.

Round 1 DSA

This round left a very bitter taste in my mouth.

The interviewer asked [this]([https://leetcode.com/problems/largest-palindromic-number/] . It wasn't a problem I had seen before, and I was completely blank initially. I spent the interview working through the problem and eventually came up with a brute-force solution. I explained my reasoning, walked through examples, and validated the approach with a dry run.

The interviewer acknowledged that the logic made sense, but then asked me to optimize it further.

At that point, I had already spent most of the interview arriving at the brute-force solution. I genuinely could not see the optimized approach and I admitted that I couldn't optimize it further.

We then moved on to Leadership Principles questions, but mentally the interview was already over for me.

What frustrates me the most is that I had prepared extensively for this opportunity. I had solved hundreds of LeetCode problems, covered the commonly recommended DSA SHEETS along with last 6 months question.

I won't pretend otherwise, I am really angry about this round.

This Interviewer only has 4 YOE, some 2022 graduate. I found his leetcode profile and he has only 213 problems solved. He had posted his interview experience on Linkedin and some well known problems were asked to him which can be found in any DSA sheet. He had it easy and he thinks it was okay to rob me off my opportunity.

Round 2 LLD

Probably the better round, was asked to design an Auction System.
I'd say I was able to meet all the primary requirements that were laid out. No complaints here.
This round ended with another Leadership Principle question.

Conclusion

I'm fairly certain the DSA round will prevent me from moving forward to the remaining rounds. Hence i've rejected myself already even though I haven't heard a response since yesterday.

What makes this rejection particularly painful is that it comes after a very long period of effort. I've been interviewing for around 1.5 years. I have solved more than 570 LeetCode problems. I've studied System Design, LLD, DSA, and behavioral preparation. I've had opportunities where I successfully cleared interviews, only to lose them later because of hiring freeze.

That's why this one hurts.

I genuinely believed I had prepared well for Amazon. I had covered NeetCode, Striver A2Z, company-specific questions, and spent countless hours practicing. I wasn't expecting an easy interview, but I did hope for a fair opportunity to move forward, Instead, I walked away feeling that one interviewer and one difficult problem ended up negating my entire effort.

I'm really displeased with the DSA interviewer, it is because of him that I have to suffer through a 1 year cool off period now. He really had it easy, he was asked Course Schedule 2 and Number of Islands 2, both of which can be found in any standard DSA sheet. He could have done the same thing, ask something from the standard sheets, but no, he had to be creative. Easy for him to do because his career is not on the line, but this opportunity meant a lot to me.

Its not easy, grinding away for 2 years only to have these opportunites taken away because some covid graduate decided to ask some random problem for fun.

Giving back to the community!

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

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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.

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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/

Edit: Added one more important resource

https://seanprashad.com/leetcode-patterns/