Amazon Software Engineer Interview Experience — Boomerang Loop With a Surprise ML Platform System Design

Amazon·Software Engineer·Aug 2026
OnsiteRejectedmedium

HR reached out about a boomerang interview, two rounds.

Round 1: 20 minutes of behavioral questions, 30 minutes of coding. The questions weren't hard, but there were two of them. The first one gave me a graph and asked me to print the shortest path — not hard, but the messed up part was there was no problem description, I had to guess it myself, and there was also some distracting code mixed in that I had no idea what it was for — I guess whoever set it up didn't clean up the paste properly. I was completely thrown off for the first few minutes. The second question was a lottery problem: given n people's bids (1-100 each), the probability of winning is positively correlated with the bid amount, and I had to output the k winners. I finished both. Honestly the questions themselves weren't hard, but the interviewer didn't even turn on their camera, and again, no problem description plus distracting code.

Round 2: 20 minutes BQ, 30 minutes system design. This is where it gets truly wild. Since it was a boomerang, the hiring manager looked at my resume and decided I was a good fit before scheduling me — and then for system design they hit me with an ML Infra question (the JD didn't even say ML experience was required): design an ML platform for scientists to train and deploy models. Then they asked me how I'd design online inference vs. batch inference. I'm just amazed — there's nothing on my resume that has anything to do with ML.

Guess I'll just consider myself rejected. (Also, for what it's worth, I don't think Amazon interview prep really helps much — you just walk in and go for it.)

Published

Curated and edited by PracHub

Practice the questions from this interview

Discussion

Sign in to join the discussion. The author is notified of every comment.

Loading comments…

Interview at a glance

Company
Amazon
Role
Software Engineer
Rounds
Onsite
Outcome
Rejected
Difficulty
medium
Interview date
Aug 2026
Questions from this interview
1 question

Real Amazon interview experiences

First-hand reports from Amazon candidates — the rounds, the questions they were asked, and how it went.

All 136 Amazon interview experiences