Interview Experiences

Real candidates, real loops: every round, what was asked, and how it ended.

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136 stories

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AmazonSoftware Engineer
Aug 2026

Leadership Principles and a Timestamp-Based LRU-Style Object

A female PM and an SDE interviewed me. They began with Leadership Principles questions: Tell me about a time when you needed to take responsibility or ownership. Tell me about a time when you faced a challenge. These were standard Leadership Principles questions. The follow-ups were about AI and impact: how many people used what I built, what my manager's reaction was, and related points. Then I…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
AmazonSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Aug 2026

Binary Swaps and a Django Post Fix

I took the online assessment. It had two parts. DSA: minimum adjacent swaps for a binary array Given an array containing only 0s and 1s, rearrange it so that all 0s are at one end and all 1s are at the other. Either ordering was allowed: 000...111 or 111...000. In one move, I could swap two adjacent elements. I had to return the minimum number of moves required. For [0, 1, 0, 1], the answer was 1…

Online Assessment0
AmazonFrontend EngineerNew Grad
Aug 2026

Phone Screen, Virtual Onsite, and Bar Raiser

Amazon 2026 New Grad Timeline and Interview Experience Role: Frontend Engineer, or perhaps Full Stack Engineer. During the interview, the hiring manager said there could be an opportunity to move toward full-stack work within the team later. I just finished interviewing for an Amazon Frontend Engineer role this week. I wanted to share the full process, the interview content, and the resources I u…

In progressOnsite0
AmazonBusiness Intelligence Engineer
Aug 2026

Deep Leadership Follow-ups, SQL, and Data Visualization

I am sharing the BIE phone interview that I just failed. I hope it can help everyone. A senior DE interviewed me and brought along a junior AE. Leadership BQ They first looked at my resume and asked about projects I had done and about leadership. The questions went very deep. After one A/B test, did I run any other tests? What kind of trade-off led to not launching? Which team did I work with? Wa…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Aug 2026

Two Leadership Principles and Two Whiteboard Problems

Before the interview, the recruiter scheduled a call and said the interview would focus mainly on two Leadership Principles. The recruiter suggested preparing the related behavioral questions in advance using the STAR format. The first behavioral portion stayed mostly around those two Leadership Principles. After the first question, the interviewer dug further into the trade-off, so that discussi…

In progressTechnical Screen0
AmazonSDE 1
Aug 2026

Three Rounds, Rejected in Five Business Days

Amazon SDE 1 three-round interview experience: ultimately rejected. Round 1: Coding He first had me do a self-introduction, briefly going over my career plans, and then we moved into the coding part. Q: Design a file search API backend that supports recursive subdirectory search. There are a few edge cases to watch out for here. If the input directory is null or not a directory, the output should…

RejectedOnsite0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Aug 2026

Boomerang Loop With a Surprise ML Platform System Design

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 t…

RejectedOnsite0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Jul 2026

Phone Screen Package Installer, Onsite Topological Sort

Phone Interview Given a mapping (Map / Adjacency List) of software packages and their dependencies, write a class or method to install a specified package along with all of its dependencies. Assume each package object has an install() method that only installs that package itself and does not handle its dependencies. Need to implement an installWithDependencies(package) method that makes sure all…

Onsite0
AmazonSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Jul 2026

Leadership Principle BQs and an Edit Distance Follow-up

Round 1 BQ1: Give an example of how you organized a product. BQ2: Give an example of a time you missed a deadline. BQ3: Talk about a time you thought something was wrong but stuck to your own view. Prepare your stories using the STAR method. Except for the first two — "the project you're most proud of" type stories — try to add lessons learned to the rest. Tell the story in a concise, easy-to-fol…

Onsite0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Jul 2026

A Segmented-Array OA Problem That Even ChatGPT Couldn't Solve

I got Amazon's OA and started it one day right after waking up from a nap. I wasn't in a good state though, and I ended up getting a rejection. Question 1 Coding, 40 minutes. I wrote one version and only passed 4 cases — the other hidden cases threw some memory errors. It wasn't until after it ended that I realized there must have been a space constraint, which is why I was getting those memory-r…

RejectedOnline Assessment0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Jul 2026

Ambiguous Word-Combination Problem, Rejected After a Rocky Phone Screen

Got rejected from the phone screen — I saw it on the portal before I even got the email. The interviewer opened with a hard problem, similar to a LeetCode problem, but it required outputting the actual combinations. It was really strange — the problem didn't say whether the word had to be in the given list, how many times each word could be used, or whether repeats were allowed. I asked him about…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

Amazon Software Engineer interview: pressured DSA and leadership-principles loop

After the initial online assessment, I entered several technical interviews with a consistent structure: coding first, then strong pressure to connect my answers to Amazon Leadership Principles. The most intense round combined leadership-aligned evaluation with multiple DSA problems, turning it into a test of time and completeness rather than one neat solution. I also had a couple of medium codin…

Online Assessment0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

Amazon Software Engineer interview: streaming-system design in a four-round loop

My interview journey was straightforward in how the rounds were organized. After the early steps, I entered a loop with four interviews, each about an hour. It began with a system-design conversation, and later rounds included manager-style discussion plus bar-raiser and behavioral evaluation. The design prompt was to build a streaming application like Netflix or Amazon Prime Video, so the discus…

Technical Screen0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

Amazon Software Engineer interview: four-interview loop and leadership principles

I took an online assessment and, about a week later, had four interviews in a single day. The recruiter stayed responsive throughout, which helped me understand what each round would look like. The onsite loop ran back to back and followed the Amazon loop format closely. I had coding-and-judgment moments mixed with Leadership Principles. One round was more team or hiring-manager focused, while an…

OfferOnline Assessment0
AmazonBusiness Analyst
Reported Jul 2026

Amazon Business Analyst interview with SQL and business case

After the assessment, I was invited to an initial screening. The interviewer asked three SQL questions, then moved into a deep-dive behavioral segment with about two or three questions on the same theme. A business case study was also part of the flow, so it was neither pure coding nor only storytelling. The process felt structured and relevant to the role. The SQL questions were the most concret…

Technical Screen0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

Amazon Software Engineer virtual onsite interview experience

My process began with a recruiter screen, then moved quickly through an online coding assessment and a technical phone interview. The questions were practical but time-constrained, which made it harder to slow down and check every edge case. The final stage was a virtual onsite loop with multiple interviews. I had data-structures-heavy questions, system design, and a debugging-focused segment. Am…

Online Assessment0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

Amazon Software Engineer interview: HackerRank OA and pending update

After applying, I took an Amazon online assessment on HackerRank. The DSA section was heavy on prefixes and patterns, with a problem that felt like something in the longest-happy-prefix family. The next part involved debugging code. I did well there, so the overall assessment felt manageable even though the DSA question itself was a grind. When I checked my DSA performance, the test coverage did…

In progressOnline Assessment0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

Software Engineer interview at Amazon: networking follow-ups

A phone screen began with my current experience and projects, then each response drew deeper questions. I used STAR structure for behavioral answers as the interviewer pressed past surface-level descriptions. Technical discussion covered TCP/IP and routing topics, including OSPF and BGP. It was an engaging but difficult conversation because of the depth expected in both storytelling and networkin…

0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

Software Engineer interview at Amazon: leadership narrative challenge

My three-round loop had two DSA rounds and a Leadership Principles round. The first DSA round included two medium LeetCode questions. The second had one medium and one hard question involving DP and graphs. The Leadership Principles interview was harder for me than DSA because it required a convincing narrative about how I would operate under Amazon's values. I did not receive an offer. The proce…

0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

Amazon Software Engineer interview: LeetCode and leadership pressure

My first interview was about an hour and had two easy LeetCode-style questions. The final stage was tougher: two separate LeetCode sessions, a system-design session, and an LLD session. Leadership Principle prompts came up in every session, so it was never only about getting a solution. The technical questions were easy to medium overall, but the leadership questions were harder for me. I also lo…

Technical Screen0

What are interview experiences?

An interview experience is a candidate's own account of a hiring loop — not a question bank entry. It tells you the shape of the process: how many rounds there were, what each round actually tested, how long the gaps between them ran, and what the recruiter said at the end. That context is the part a question list cannot give you.

How to read them

Weight recent write-ups more heavily — interview loops change, often within a year. Read several for the same company and role rather than one: a single account tells you what one interviewer asked, while five tell you what the bar is. Note the outcome badge too, since a rejection write-up usually explains the gap far more precisely than an offer one.

Share your own

Every published experience earns 50 XP, and each of the first 3 likes it receives in a day earns you 10 XP more. Likes must come from established accounts; like-for-like swaps and likes from your own second account are not paid. Write it while the details are fresh — the round order, the exact prompts, and how much time you were given are what the next reader needs.

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