I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Dec 2013
Interview
The process was very in depth, but also had a very friendly and kind of laid back feel. I met with 4 different interviewers who asked a bit about my background and experience, and followed up with a technical question. Most of them were related to a problem one might face while working with Amazon, while others were about general algorithm design and implementation. Each portion lasted about an hour, and the entire interview day was about 5 hours, with lunch provided. The interviews are all conducted at their HQ, but Amazon will pay for your travel, hotel room, and reimbursement for certain personal expenses during your stay. All in all it was very professional while being incredibly fun.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The most difficult question was one in which I had to design a specific algorithm off the top of my head, and really had no clue where to start. It wasn't inherently difficult, I just wasn't prepared for it, so I stumbled a little bit.
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