I applied through university. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Apr 2009
Interview
Amazon's engineering teams hire candidates for their own teams. This means that there will be a great degree of variance in quality and relevant skills from team to team.
To tackle this issue, an impartial bar raiser is also added to each interview "loop" who is supposed to ensure that the candidate being interviewed meets the amazon bar. But there's a lot of variance among bar raisers too.
Overall, the Software Engineering and related interviews are tough, but probably easier than Facebook, Twitter, Google.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Standard Software Development interview questions. Check careercup.com or leetcode.com for lots of examples. Popular interview question:
Implement the floodfill (aka paint bucket) function of the Windows Paint program.
I applied through a staffing agency. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in May 2026
Interview
There were a total of 2 rounds:
The first round was with an SDE II on Data Structures/Algo - Leet code questions mainly
The second rounds was with an SDM Behavioral/System Design - Leadership principles and past work experience impact.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Amazon in Feb 2026
Interview
Recruiter explicitly mentioned that the Technical Phone Screen interview did not contain any Behavioral question but the interviewer definitely asked 3 behavioral questions.
The coding problem was utterly garbage, it was a pretty trivial problem that anyone that knows DFS would be able to solve. That is not appropriate for a SDE 2 role. Not even useful to demonstrate candidate skills
PS: They care a lot more about what you've accomplished than whatever you can accomplish based on your skills
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1. Tell me about a time when you had to meet a tight deadline
2. Tell me about a time when you had to do more than what you were required to do
3. Tell me about a time where you made a significant impact on a customer
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Amazon (Bengaluru) in Sep 2025
Interview
5 rounds of interviews
1. OA (2 Medium Hard Questions along with some Work Related Assessment which tested design related concepts)
2. HLD
3. DSA
4. LLD
5. Bar Raiser
Technically, the questions were of medium difficulty and with good polish, you should be able to solve these questions. The main challenge in Amazon is of the Leadership Principles which involve citing real work experience in the STAR format.