I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Mar 2014
Interview
I don't remember how I applied, but remember that Amazon contacted me by email. First step was an informal interview with one of the team members, followed by 5 formal interviews. What's the difference between formal and informal? I didn't quite understand.
The interviewers were nice, tasks were well formulated with some exceptions. Mostly trivial algorithms. For all questions involving algorithms I first implemented the task using the most-trivial, least-efficient method, told the interviewer the current complexity and then incrementally improved the algorithm for efficiency. I'd recommend you the same as it gives you the time to analyse the task and have some basis for improvement.
Didn't solve 2 tasks and was asked to send the solutions immediately after the interview. And I sent.
After a week I got a phone call telling me about an offer.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a system for a cinema theatre. This was the formulation and it wasn't clear what they want - class model design, or an architectural design. Ask questions, check your assumptions and everything will be fine.
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