Amazon Software Developer interview questions

Timeline: Online Assessment: January 2025 Loop Interviews: April 2025 Round 1 – Technical + Behavioral (SDE-2) Duration: 1 hour 0.5 hr Behavioral: Focus on Amazon Leadership Principles. Asked about ownership, bias for action, and delivering results. 0.5 hr Technical: Unbounded Knapsack problem – minimize box combinations to reach a target. -I explained the brute-force recursive approach, then optimized using top-down DP with memoization. Follow-up: Asked to modify the solution for Bounded Knapsack (each box can be used only certain no of times). Round 2 – Managerial Round Duration: 1 hour Experience: Disorganized and unclear. -Interviewer was confused, used a personal laptop, and struggled with tech setup (mic/camera on/off). -No question was shared via the code editor. -Verbally described a vague Elevator System Design OOP problem and kept adding unrelated helper methods. -Frequent interruptions, poor structure, and lack of clarity. Feedback: Amazon should evaluate interviewers based on their ability to conduct structured, effective interviews—not solely on seniority. Round 3 – Technical + Behavioral (SDE-2) Duration: 1 hour 0.5 hr Behavioral: Question 1: Delivered a critical project under a tight deadline. Asked to elaborate on trade-offs and sacrifices made. Question 2: Made a long-term decision sacrificing short-term gain. Asked to explain the rationale and business impact. 0.5 hr Technical: Simulated Unix find command functionality. 1: Search and return all files over a certain size ( 5MB) in a directory tree. 2: Search and return all .xml files in a directory. -Implemented recursive DFS traversal with filtering logic.

4 step interview process after recruiter call: 3 coding - 2 data structures and 1 code design, 1 system design In each interview there is leadership principles / management questions to be answered in STAR format.