Amazon Intern Software Engineer Interview Experience — OA With Coding, Work Simulation and Work Style Sections

I applied for the role last Wednesday, got the OA invite on Thursday, and I just finished it.

The whole OA has three parts:

• Coding Challenge — 100 min
• Work Simulation — ~45 min
• Work Style Assessment — ~6 min

Part 1: Coding Challenge

There were two coding questions this time.

Q1 — Sliding window

You are given a string log containing only 0 and 1, where:

• 1 means the server is running normally
• 0 means the server has failed

You are allowed at most one maintenance operation: pick a contiguous substring of length exactly k and change all the 0s in it to 1. Return the length of the longest run of consecutive 1s after the operation.

I think it is a variant of the longest-substring problems, but the key difference is that the maintenance operation has to cover a contiguous window of exactly length k, instead of flipping any at most k zeros. You can use a sliding window and combine it with the lengths of the runs of 1s on the left and right of the window.

Q2 — AI-assisted Code Repository

The second question is the Repository Coding format of the new OA. It uses an online VS Code style IDE provided by HackerRank, and you can use the built-in AI Assistant on the platform.

Unlike traditional LeetCode, this part is much closer to real software engineering work: you need to read the existing code, understand the project structure, and finish the assigned task.

Part 2: Work Simulation

Honestly I found this part more tiring than the coding...

I thought I could relax once the code was written, but then there was almost another 45 minutes of Work Simulation.

This part mainly evaluates how an engineer makes decisions in real work situations. You have to weigh technical issues, task priorities, teamwork, and potential risks together.

It is nothing like the algorithm questions. Coding at least has a fairly clear right answer, but in Work Simulation you keep having to weigh how reasonable each choice is... so tiring...

Doing it all back to back really drains your attention, especially right after the 100-minute Coding Challenge.

Part 3: Work Style Assessment

Last there is a work style questionnaire, which mostly covers how you usually work and your personal preferences.