Amazon Software Engineer Interview Process: What to Expect
Devana Team
Amazon is unusually open about how it interviews software engineers. It publishes the stages, the length of each interview and the principles every answer is measured against. Most candidates still prepare as if the loop were a pure coding test, and that is the most common way to fail it.
The process, as Amazon describes it
For SDE II roles, Amazon's own interview prep page sets out the stages after you apply:
| Stage | What happens |
|---|---|
| Online assessment | 90 minutes for two coding questions, then 20 minutes of system design scenarios and an 8-minute work style survey |
| Interview loop | Four 55-minute interviews with members of Amazon's software development community |
| Outcome | A decision within five business days |
Amazon also says its process differs from role to role, so other levels and teams will not match this exactly. Its hiring pages also mention Bar Raisers. Candidates describe the Bar Raiser as an experienced interviewer from outside the hiring team whose job is to keep the hiring standard high; the SDE II prep page does not go into the role, so treat those details as reported.
What Amazon assesses
The loop covers coding, system design, data structures and algorithms, and problem solving. Three lines from Amazon's prep page are worth more than they look:
- โ Real code, not pseudocode. Amazon asks for syntactically correct code and says it looks for "scalable, robust, and well-tested code."
- โ Six design objectives. System design answers are judged on practicality, accuracy, efficiency, reliability, optimisation and scalability.
- โ The principles run through everything. "A significant portion of the conversation will focus on how you've demonstrated our Leadership Principles in your past jobs," and Amazon recommends the STAR method for those answers.
There are sixteen Leadership Principles:
What our Amazon question bank looks like
Devana's question bank holds 68 Amazon questions, written to reflect how Amazon interviews: its products, its published values and the round types candidates describe. They are our questions, not leaked ones. How they divide up says a lot about where to spend your preparation.
| Round type | Questions | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Coding | 28 | Best sellers over a rolling window; Sequence a driver's delivery stops; Fulfil an order from the fewest warehouses |
| System design | 13 | Design the product detail page service; Design checkout and order placement; Design inventory for a flash sale |
| Technical deep dives | 16 | Dive deep on a service you own; When eventual consistency becomes visible; Choosing a datastore for order history |
| Behavioural | 11 | Customer Obsession: acting on customer feedback; Ownership: beyond your job description; Invent and Simplify: removing complexity |
31 of the 68 are rated hard. The topics that come up most often are Scalability, Systems Design, Databases, Hash Map, APIs and Concurrency.
๐ฏ Practise these out loud
Create a free account, open the question bank and filter by Amazon. Any question can be practised as a 30-minute voice interview with an AI interviewer that talks, asks follow-ups and runs your code. The free plan includes three interviews a month. Create a free account
Two things stand out. The technical questions come from Amazon's own business, retail, fulfilment and logistics, so the data structures arrive dressed as orders, warehouses and delivery routes. And every behavioural question is named after a principle, because that is how Amazon frames them.
How to prepare
- โ Build a story bank, not sixteen stories. Eight to ten real stories, each able to cover two or three principles, beat a thin story per principle. Every story should say what you personally did and end with a number. How to answer behavioural questions beyond STAR covers the structure.
- โ Write code that would compile. Practise in a plain editor, name things properly and handle edge cases, because pseudocode is explicitly off the table.
- โ Design against the six objectives out loud. Say how your design stays reliable, what it costs to run and where it stops scaling. Frugality is a principle, so cost is a fair question in a design round.
- โ Rehearse the online assessment timing. Two problems in 90 minutes leaves no room for a slow start. Do timed pairs of medium problems.
- โ Think like the business. Inventory, orders, delivery windows and reviews are the raw material of Amazon-style questions. The system design mock interview guide shows how to structure the hour.
Frequently asked questions
How many interviews are in the Amazon loop?
For SDE II, Amazon says four 55-minute interviews. Other roles and levels vary.
Can I write pseudocode in an Amazon interview?
No. Amazon's prep page asks for syntactically correct code.
How many Leadership Principles are there?
Sixteen, listed above and on amazon.jobs. Expect several of them to come up across the loop.
How long does it take to hear back?
For SDE II, Amazon says you should hear within five business days of the loop.
