I applied through college or university. The process took 2 days. I interviewed at Amazon in Nov 2013
Interview
Resume given at campus job fair. The entire process consisted of 4 in person 1:1, 45 minute interviews at my school campus. First, an initial interview. If that one was passed, then they scheduled 3 more interviews with different interviewers over the following 2 days. The following day they extended me an offer. This was the same process for everyone who interviewed at my school.
Along with the offer, they invited me to fly up to the Seattle headquarters to see the site and meet with current engineers, have dinner, etc.
Somewhat strange as I was expecting the process they've done in the past, where they do an initial phone/on-campus interview and then fly you up for a full day of interview on-site.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Nothing unusual or unexpected. Basic technical questions about linked lists, binary search trees, circular arrays, OO design. Pretty casual process actually.
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
