I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Jan 2014
Interview
Recruiter first called, then email to sched for a technical interview + sent a brief pdf of what to expect in an interview (it helped). Interviewer called on time and was very friendly and gave me a lot of time to think, to answer and to ask questions.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
- Given a binary tree and a number, return true if the tree has a root-to-leaf path such that adding up all the values along the path equals the given number. Return false if no such path can be found.
- How do u know if a number is divisible by 8? (hinted to use a binary operator and NOT % or the subtraction approach)
Surprisingly easy — I expected tougher questions, but the coding round felt more like a warm-up. The main challenge was a DSA problem about counting islands in a 2D grid, which led to a discussion on DFS versus BFS and handling large grids. Funny enough, I had revisited that exact type of question while prepping on PracHub, which made me feel more confident. The interview wrapped up with a behavioral round, and I accepted an offer, but ultimately decided to decline it for another opportunity. Overall, it was a smooth experience.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Number of Islands — given a 2D grid of '1's (land) and '0's (water), count the number of connected islands. Walk through DFS vs BFS, and discuss how to avoid revisiting cells (in-place mutation vs visited set) and what changes if the grid is huge and must stream from disk.
It started with an OA, and then after a few weeks, I got invited to four rounds of interviews: technical and behavioral at 3 of the 4, and behavioral only at one.
I applied online. I interviewed at Amazon (Calgary, AB) in June 2026
Interview
Online Assessment is the first step in the process. I didn’t have an HR phone screening and went straight to the OA after applying. It was sent to me about a week after I submitted my application.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The first question is LeetCode style algorithms question, and the second question gives a full stack repo (choice of Java, NodeJS, or Django) and asks to solve a backend issue which is causing a bug in the frontend. Unit tests must pass to pass the second question. You can run both backend/frontend indivdually or together