I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Amazon
Interview
I was contacted by a recruiter about a hiring event. I had talked to Amazon before so I only had to pass a test on hackerrank.com After I passed the test, I was granted an on-site interview. They set you up for 3 interviews and if they "need more data" they ask you to do a 4th interview. The first interview was crazy difficult (it was clearly the bar raiser) I was able to answer the question but made a few coding mistakes. I would give myself a C, the next two were not really difficult if you prepared, I would give myself a B+. I was then told I would need to interview a fourth time. The fourth interview was all technical and comprised of 2 technical questions. I like to believe that my answers were close to perfection and finished under time. I was shocked when I learned that they would not make me an offer.
Other Software Development Engineer interview reviews for Amazon
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