I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in July 2020
Interview
Applied online. Was sent through their new online assessment. It was unlike anything I have done before, so it's worth going into.
The first part of the online assessment puts you through a set of real-world scenarios at Amazon. Very interesting. There's no way to prepare for this so just use your best judgement.
The second part was a bunch of technical questions. Very similar to what's posted here. I found out later from the recruiter that if you do well enough on the assessment, then you can skip straight to the loop, which somehow I did! So if you get the online assessment, it's worth spending some time brushing up on your technical knowledge before taking it.
The Loop: 5 Interviewers. 80% behavioral LP based questions similar to what's been shared here. Only one interviewer went technical and he based it on my background and was pretty laid back.
Despite my preparation, I felt like the loop was pretty intense. I really don't think you can over-prepare for this interview! There's already a ton of useful info on here on what to expect in the loop, so I won't go into it here but I wanted to share a couple other useful tips that I hadn't seen shared yet:
Checkout Dan Croiter's videos on YouTube. He has a ton of good info on what to expect in Amazon interviews and it was all spot on.
Google "How to Interview at Amazon - Leadership David Anderson" - Super great writeup on LinkedIn by a former bar raiser
Any advice the recruiters give you, take it! They really want you to succeed and will give you a ton of links to resources. If they send you a video, watch it. If they email you a bunch of links, read them.
Read some of Jeff Bezos's shareholder letters. You can find them on the amazon.jobs site. It gives some good context into the thought process behind the Leadership Principles.
Ask good questions! This shows that you're genuinely interested in the role and engaged.
SA specific advice:
In your presentation, make sure you can provide metrics and measurements of the success (or failure) of your project. I didn't do a great job on this and got questions about it.
Read the "Cloud Adoption Framework" paper and spend some time on the "Well Architected Framework" - I was able to answer a few questions directly from the knowledge I gained from these.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Behavioral based on Leadership Principles - STAR format
I applied online. I interviewed at Amazon (Tel Aviv-Yafo) in Dec 2024
Interview
I applied for a SA position in Tel Aviv, Israel. My name sounded somewhat Israeli, which may have helped me get through to the assessment stage and then a phone (video) interview. However, during the call, the interviewer’s attitude shifted drastically once he realized I wasn’t Jewish. He became noticeably hostile and started asking deliberately trivial and misleading questions, seemingly just to make me stumble.
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Chicago, IL) in Oct 2024
Interview
I am an Enterprise Architect with over 20 years of experience in IT. I recently interviewed for a Senior Solutions Architect role at Amazon, which consisted of a phone screening with another Senior Solutions Architect. The questions covered both behavioral and technical aspects, and I felt confident that I handled them well. Despite this, I received an email stating that I was not being considered for the next steps. This result was surprising and frustrating, especially after feeling positive about the interview.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What was the challenging situation you faced and how did you overcome?
How did you handled the push back from the internal customer?
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon in Oct 2023
Interview
The interview process started with a prep call with the recruiter. This was unique as they provided you with an outline of how the process of interviewing would go and gave you clear direction of what the interviewers would ask and are looking for. This took about 30 minutes After the recruiter prep call, another interview was setup a week later. This was supposed to be the hiring manager but was with changed to an integration specialist as well as someone who was shadowing the call. The interviewers did not care about my background and even cut me off and told me they already read my resume when I was providing an introduction of myself. They were only concerned with their set of questions and getting answers from me. It was very cold. The interviewers also had a level of arrogance to them as they challenged how things operated within my current company and felt that what I explained to them could not of been right. The impression of the 2nd interview felt like I was a burden to these gentlemen and they wanted to hurry through the process. They also did not ask questions that aligned to the prep call with the recruiter. Definitely a disconnect in expectations. The recruiter provided a great experience where the interviewers did not.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Please describe a situation where you needed to develop a root cause for a problem that occurred.