I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Jan 2012
Interview
The interview process consisted of two phone interviews. Each phone interview lasted about 45 minutes and include about 20 minutes spent coding in a chat room. The first interview began by asking me to describe my background for a few minutes. Then there were questions about basic object oriented programming concepts. Then they ask about concepts specific to whatever language you're most comfortable with. Then they asked about concepts dealing with a secondary programming language. Then they ask about data structures. Then they asked me to design an algorithm dealing with a particular data structure and to analyze the time complexity of the algorithm. Then I had to code the algorithm. The second interview was very similar to the first, except it was quite a bit more difficult because the interviewer wasn't as helpful in guiding me using the coding portion of the interview.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
what is the average case and worst case time complexity for mergesort?
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 Jun 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