I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Feb 2012
Interview
I applied for an internship on Amazon's website. A few weeks later I received an email asking to schedule a phone interview with blocks of times. I replied to it and later received an email indicating the times of 2 45-minute interviews. Both interviews were very similar. The interviewers told me about the company and why they liked working there. I was able to ask them some questions to see how they felt about Amazon. For the technical portions, they would ask the question and I would repeat it back to them to ensure that I understood it. Most of the questions were based off the ones from this website. I was allowed to put the phone down and then type out the answer to the question on a PC using an IDE which made things a lot easier compared to coding it on paper. When I was done coding I sent the code to the interviewer who would review it with me and have me walk them through my thought processes. They would suggest ideas for improvement and seemed very helpful.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Revealing the questions asked is a violation of the NDA as someone has already posted. But if you know the questions asked on this website you should do pretty well in the interview.
Loop — 4 rounds, all on the same day
Round 1 — Coding (DSA)
Interviewer was a senior SDE, very friendly.
Warm-up + behavioral: "Tell me about a time you took ownership of something outside your responsibilities."
Main question: Given a list of meeting intervals, find the minimum number of conference rooms required. I used a heap. He then asked a follow-up: what if meetings could be reassigned to minimize total idle time? We discussed approaches but didn't fully code it.
He cared a lot about how I talked through edge cases out loud.
Round 2 — Coding + Problem Solving
LP question: "Describe a situation where you disagreed with a teammate."
Coding: LRU Cache implementation from scratch. I used a hashmap + doubly linked list. He pushed on thread-safety and what happens at capacity 0.
Round 3 — Behavioral (Bar Raiser)
This was the toughest round — no coding, all Leadership Principles, very deep STAR-format probing.
Questions I got:
"Tell me about a time you failed and what you learned."
"A time you had to deliver something with a tight deadline and limited information."
The bar raiser kept drilling: "What was your specific contribution?" "What would you do differently?" "What data did you use?" Have 6–8 strong stories ready with metrics.
Round 4 — Low-Level Design
Design: Design a parking lot system (classes, vehicle types, spot allocation, pricing). Then he asked me to code the findSpot() and releaseSpot() methods.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Most coding questions were LeetCode Medium. Common themes: graphs, heaps, sliding window, hashmaps, and LRU/design., system design,
Great interview process with three rounds, including a technical assessment and a technical interview. The interviewers were professional and supportive throughout the process. The questions mainly focused on DSA, problem-solving, and core technical concepts. The discussions were engaging and provided a good opportunity to demonstrate technical skills. Overall, the process was well-structured, smooth, transparent, and a very positive experience.
I applied through college or university. I interviewed at Amazon (Dublino, Dublino)
Interview
Online techincal assessment. Had to screen share and complete basic coding tasks similar to Leet Code. Could choose a language of your choice. Overall a very fair system and judged based on merit.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Technical assessment so a basic leet code style question about reversing the orders of long numerical strings.
