I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Sep 2012
Interview
Applied online through as a new Graduate. They called and asked to set up an interview. First interview was lots of questions based on material like what are the 5 Principals of Object Oriented Programming. They ask lots of questions about your former work (if you only have school projects they ask you to talk about what you did). They will then ask you questions about those projects such as what programming designs you used (Singleton for example) and ask what characteristics that design has. The last 15 minutes of the interview is a programming question. My question was to write a method that sorts 2 Array's into one. You write this code quickly and tell them over the phone how you wrote it (including parentheses commas, ect). He asks you clarifying questions like if you wanted this to run faster how might you right it, and assuming we wanted duplicates how would you need to modify the code.
The second interview was much more programming based. 20 minutes was general questions followed by a programming question which was done online on a website where both the interviewer and the interviewee could both see and work on the code. I forget what this code was but its a fairly simple method to write. At the end of the interview I was asked to write a method for StringToDouble in the next hour (following the end of the interview) and then to email it to the interviewer. This method had to include thorough error checking and a method to test various cases (invalid characters, double too large, ect).
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Which design patterns did you use in your projects and why?
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 (Dublín, Dublín)
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.
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,