Amazon Business Intelligence Engineer I interview questions

It's a four step process: 1. Phone Screen 2. Technical Skills Test - Phone and Collabedit 3. Phone Interview w/ Hiring Manager 4. In-Person Interview - Full Day The position requires use of SQL, ETL, and Reporting. This department currently uses Oracle 90% and are migrating to Redshift. Their ETL tools are designed internally. The initial phone screen was quite pleasant. During the screen, the revealed the salary was $110K-130K (Seattle). The technical interview was a nightmare. For some, it might not be so bad. The questions were very fair and easy, but I got pretty nervous. Practice using Collabedit. They basically described two simple tables, listed some column names, then asked me to solve problems. I write much more complex queries than what they asked, but the editor did not allow me to insert for some reason. That caused me to panic, so I'd suggest logging on to that site immediately just to get a feel for it. I like to visualize what I'm working with, so I started typing the column names, etc. Every step I was taking, the interviewer would ask, "Why this? Why that?" Which is fine, but annoying as I am gathering my thoughts. Again, maybe no bid deal to some people. SPECIAL NOTE!!! Be familiar with non platform specific methods of solving problems. For example, I tried to use a simple Oracle function, rownum. The interviewer immediately said not to use that and to do it without functions. Additional advice. While this might seem simple, don't overlook the fact that you are being graded by someone who is not sitting in front of an actual database. By this, I mean there is not way to actually see if your queries work. With that in mind, the questions will be simple, but you won't have the same luxuries you normally have, like Stackoverflow or a good editor. No trial and error either. So that means they are likely pulling questions from... a handbook? So before I apply again, I am going to practice lots of "simple" queries. It's like doing math on the board. Maybe you can solve a calculus problem on your own, but fail to add two number in front of people.

It was for a level 5 BIE, interview was scheduled with a senior manager, 5 minutes into the interview, it was evident that this was not going to be a match of skills. I had been expecting questions from SQL but the interviewer did not work on the database directly. The interviewer was looking for someone with knowledge of data architectures to work in tandem with the Data Scientist in the team. Rest of the interview went smooth. Questions were mostly based on the resume.