I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Berlin) in Aug 2024
Interview
My Amazon System Engineer Interview Experience
I applied for a System Engineer role at Amazon, and after a few weeks, they reached out to schedule my first interview.
Interview Format:
The interview had two parts:
A technical problem
A behavioral question
Technical Problem:
The technical problem I was given was based on parsing Nginx logs. The task was to:
Count how many times different requests were made to specific URLs. For instance, I had to look at HTTP methods like GET or POST and count how many times each one was used for each URL (such as GET /home or POST /login).
Additionally, I needed to know how to structure the data using a dictionary of dictionaries. This required storing the counts in a way that for each HTTP method (e.g., GET, POST), I could map it to the corresponding URLs and their occurrence counts.
I explained my approach to solve the problem and how I would organize the data, making sure it met the requirements.
Behavioral Question:
The interviewer also asked a behavioral question that I had to answer using the STAR method. STAR stands for:
Situation: The background or context of the situation.
Task: What needed to be achieved or the problem that needed to be solved.
Action: The specific steps I took to address the situation.
Result: The outcome of my actions.
The question was something along the lines of:
"Tell me about a time when you faced a challenging problem and how you resolved it."
I responded by describing a situation in my previous job where I was responsible for quickly resolving a system downtime issue. I outlined the steps I took to identify and fix the problem and explained how I ensured a quick recovery, which prevented major disruptions. Using the STAR method helped me present my answer clearly, focusing on the key aspects of the problem and my solution.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about a time when you faced a challenging problem and how you resolved it.