I applied through a recruiter. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Jul 2019
Interview
I was contacted by a recruiter on Linkedin. I was a great match for the job description that was posted. I had 1 phone interview set up with the Director, but at the last moment he could not make it so I had a rushed, unprepared interview with someone else on the team. Phone interview was mostly regular data warehousing concepts and SQL questions (types of joins, paritioning, etc). I did well enough in this conversation to make it to the on-site interview. The radical differences in expectations, questions and answers to my questions about the role/team between the 5 interviewers made me think that they were not on the same page about this role. The Data Engineer said that BI Engineers just build views that the users ask for; but then he quizzed me on data engineering concepts for the rest of the hour. At least in my interview with the BI Engineer who would be my peer, I actually wrote SQL for the first time in this process (on a worksheet they had printed out for me, during the last interview of the day in the final round on-site). But the BI Engineer said that they basically do everything and data engineering would only get involved in really complex situations; he then proceeded to also give me a vocab quiz on advanced data modeling and big data performance topics. Mind you, the job description only required "Experience with MS Excel, Access and SQL/SAS"... "MBA preferred"... I thought they were looking for someone to develop KPIs and help automate their customers' processes... not architect the whole Redshift cluster. On the plus side, if you read and memorize Kimball you can crack this interview with very, very little actual SQL skills.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
From a financial analyst: "Why isn't Excel your favorite analytics tool? Isn't it the best? What would you possibly use except for Excel?".
From data & BI engineers: redundant vocabulary pop quizzes on dimensional modeling, performance tuning, big data. Really simple SQL questions that required knowledge of joins and Group By.
The interview process was smooth and conversational. The interviewer was calmly asking questions about my previous work experiences and listened patiently. He even gave me ample time to frame my answers.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1. Tell me about your previous work experience.
2. Asked few SQL questions
few rounds of interviews ranging between technical and conversational. Mostly in the form of " tell a story of time where ..." to show how you relate to amazon LPs
The first interview is a technical phone interview that assesses your skills in SQL and Python, specifically data analysis with python. The interviewer pastes the description of an SQL problem on the code editor and asks you to write your answer while describing your thought process. They give you hints when you're stuck.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Could you tell me the steps involved in the data analysis process?
